Catching Up, Part 1: My Friends in Israel

Hey everybody! Remember me? Sorry, I know it’s been a long, long while. January has by far been the craziest month of Nativ so far. I’m going to try and separate the month into three distinct blog entries, in an attempt to break things up for you, my reader. But I will say that if you’re going to sit down and attempt to read all three of these entries at once, you should 1. get a certificate of completion at the end and 2. get yourself a snack or a cup of tea or coffee or something right now, because it’s going to be a long haul.

That being said, I’m going to go back to the ‘beginning,’ or at least what was the beginning of all this craziness. So aside from Ginsburg, who came to Israel on an Emory program and who you were introduced to in the last blog post over a month ago, Jenna was the first friend of mine to arrive in Israel. Jenna is one of my best friends from USY, and she’s a year older than me and goes to Barnard. She was coming to Israel for a cousin’s wedding and made some time to see me. So the Shabbat after Christmas, Jenna invited me to spend the weekend at her uncle’s house in Haifa. It was a much-needed, wonderful weekend. Her family is really sweet and I was there for the post-wedding dinner, so everything was a great celebration. It was also great to see her parents, since I’ve spent a significant amount of time at her house at home. Having them around was really comforting, especially after Christmas without my own family. Her cousin Annie, who is a few years older than me, also took us to a club on a Kibbutz that night, and it was really fun just to be hanging out and dancing with Jenna again – almost like being at another USY dance, but with more Israelis.

Jenna then came back with me to Jerusalem, where she stayed with me in my dorm for a few days. Mostly we just relaxed and caught up, and as much as I love my new Nativ friends, nothing compares to being with the old friends of mine who I hung out with throughout all of high school. It was just really great to have her around. It was also an amazing feeling to be able to show someone around Jerusalem – to show her my favorite places to eat and to hang out and to know my way around this city that is my home right now.

The following Tuesday, while Jenna was still around for one more day, my USY friends from my grade arrived – Jake (my prom date), Jeff (who lives down the street from me and who I went to high school with), Rachel (who is the reason I spend so many Shabbatot in Teaneck) and (Ariel) Touger (who was one of my first friends in USY and a big part of the reason it became such a huge part of my life). Keren, Adam, Ashley, and I all waited outside our building as their sheirut (a sort of taxi van thing) dropped them off from the airport. It was a movie-like, picture-perfect reunion, complete with lots of hugs and high-pitched screaming from the girls. The four of us waiting for them had even had to decide who got to hug who first, and our friends barely stepped off the sheirut before they were attacked, let go of, and attacked again, a process that was then repeated three or four times.

That morning the whole group of us (I can’t remember exactly who came and who didn’t, but there were at least nine of us) went out for breakfast at CoffeeShop, one of my favorite places to eat in Jerusalem. It was really unbelievable to have everyone there, all together, again. Only this time, we were all together in Jerusalem, and our friends had traveled (literally) across the world to see us. We all missed Todd, the absent member of the group, but no worries, he arrived a few days later as well. I have to take a second here to say that I am absolutely one of the luckiest people I know to have such great friends. Over the next few days there was a lot of schwarma being eaten, a lot of hanging out and running around Agron, a lot of hugging (we’re a very touchy group of friends, to say the least), and a lot of joking and laughing. Although at times it was very much overwhelming to have all of my best friends staying with us in such cramped quarters after having been away from them for so long, it was beyond glorious to be together with everyone and I managed to get some alone time with each one of my friends.

Of all the time with my friends here, most of it was spent just doing ‘stuff’ in Jerusalem, but there are a few things we did that stand out. One of them was that on the night of new years eve, 13 of us (including some Nativ people) went to a really nice dinner at River Noodle Bar, a great Asian restaurant that’s nearby. It was just a lovely evening to have everyone all dressed up and go out and eat good food. The rest of New Years Eve was fairly uneventful, although I did miss seeing the ball drop.

Another thing that was a lot of fun that we did was that we went to the Science Museum in Jerusalem. I’d never been there before, but it was close and something easy to do on Friday morning before Shabbat, so Ashley, Rachel, Jeff, Jake and I got up early and went. It was actually really fun. We were the only people there over the age of 7 who weren’t parents, but we made our own fun – we even did the craft in the kiddie craft room. There was also (and this is for you Aunt Trudi) a great Einstein exhibit, with his original manuscript on the Theory of Relativity, and the original letter he wrote to a little girl where he said “Do not worry about your troubles with mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.” That was really interesting to see. But the best part about the science museum might have been what happened after the fact. Two of our friends, Matan and Jason, hadn’t wanted to wake up with us to come to the museum. So we decided to tell them that it was AMAZING and the BEST THING EVER so that they would be sorry they didn’t come. Somewhere along the way, someone also decided to tell them that the science museum has an anti-gravity room.

Upon hearing this, Matan said “We HAVE to go, I’ve ALWAYS wanted to go in an anti-gravity room.” Additionally, coming up this week we have three days called the ‘Israel Today Seminar’ as part of Nativ programming. One of these days is spent in Jerusalem, and we all had three options of what we wanted to do that day. One of the options included the Science Museum. When we were filling out forms listing our choices, Ashley overheard Matan telling everyone around him to sign up for the Science Museum…because they have an anti-gravity room.

Another day, Keren, Rachel, Touger, Misha (my friend from Nativ) and I all went to the Biblical Zoo (I have no idea what makes it a Biblical Zoo as opposed to just a regular zoo). Even though I’d already been there on pilgrimage, no one else had. It was a great day, partly because the Biblical Zoo is a very nice zoo with lots of animals, and partly because it gave us an excuse to take all sorts of funny pictures.

One of my very favorite nights of having all my friends here, however, was Girls’ Night. There are five of us who are best friends from home, and usually we all chip in to get each other birthday presents. This year, with everyone so spread out and far away, we decided that instead we’d all just treat ourselves to a nice dinner while they were here. So Keren, Ashley, Rachel, Touger and I spent quite a few shekels going to dinner on Emek Rafayim one night. Dinner was great – it’s really nice to feel like you can order whatever you want after months of being on a budget – and it was wonderful to be together the five of us again.

Overall, it was truly amazing having all of my friends here to experience my new home with me...and I'm already counting down until when I can see them again =).