Sukkot!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the holiday of Sukkot, I shall attempt to explain it a bit. For those of you who are familiar with the holiday, I'm guessing some of you still don't know all that much about it because it is confusing and repetitive and even after having experienced it in Israel, I myself am still unclear about a few things. Basically Sukkot is a week long celebration of the harvest in which people sleep and eat outside for the duration of the week in a hut/fort structure called a sukkah (sort of like when the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years). I have enjoyed seeing the sukkahs crop up everywhere around Netanya--on street corners, front yards, roofs, and most commonly on apartment balconies. I don't know if people actually sleep in them, but I do know that they usually decorate them with (tacky) fake plastic fruit and paper chains, and that at a minimum the first meal welcoming the holiday is eaten in the sukkah.  To me, Sukkot does not have that much of a religious significance and I don't understand why it warrants the entire country taking off work for a week. While not everything was closed like during Yom Kippur, many things were. The school where I work, for instance, has a two week break for the holiday. Tragically, so does the 9 shekel felafel place down the street. Many of my fellow fellows (Sorry, I had to!) took this time to travel abroad, but I wanted to stay put and enjoy being in Israel exploring the country and Netanya a bit more.

For the first night of Sukkot, I went with Casey to another host family in Netanya. They lived in a beautiful, spacious, three story apartment with stunning beach views (I feel as if I am writing a real estate advertisement for their home, but really it was as amazing as it sounds). Their sukkah was on the roof of their apartment building, and since they are the only ones with access to the roof, eating outside overlooking the sea was an amazing experience. While the view was easily one of the best parts, they had no tacky sukkot decorations, and there was electricity and proper lighting throughout the whole meal (despite some rain), so that was all good as well. The family was extremely nice and the food was delicious. It was a Persian family (so the food was extra delicious), and the mom was American. She and her children are all native English speakers so it was nice to have Israelis who could communicate well with us. The extended family that showed up did not speak English so well, but were happy to meet us and talk to us a bit nonetheless.

During the rest of the break, I mostly lounged around and hung out with the people from my group who stayed in Netanya. I was able to catch up on my tv shows (finally) and unpack some more, so that was nice. Also, I loved going to sleep around 4am and waking up in the early afternoon, as this is the closest I will ever get to being nocturnal (which I totally would be if it were socially acceptable). While this probably sounds like profound levels of laziness to some of you at home, I actually did spend the holiday doing cool things. I spent one of the days in Tel Aviv where I went to Nachlat Binyamin, the open-air market where local artists come and sell their work (everything is hand made). It was exactly as I remember it from two years ago, and I saw much of the same artwork. I still enjoyed it very much, and was happy to be there. I also visited the Tel Aviv shuk, and it made me very thankful that the one in Netanya is much calmer. The vendors at the Tel Aviv shuk are so pushy and try to sell souvenirs a lot, as it is a pretty common tourist destination. The Netanya shuk, on the other hand, exists mainly to provide cheap fruit, veggies, meat, and nuts to the locals.

All in all, I enjoyed Sukkot, but thought it was much too long. By the time it was over I couldn't wait to start working and get into a routine.  My first day back was great and I loved that I was finally able to begin getting to know all my students!

Melanie

I have no pictures of Sukkot, please enjoy this picture of me feeding some goats instead.

I killed a mosquito with a squeegie.

It deserved it. I woke up yesterday morning with four mosquito bites on my arm. Unfortunately, mosquito bites here aren't like normal mosquito bites. They look like big ugly purple golf ball welts and they take a while to go away. Having four on the same arm makes me look diseased. So when I saw the mosquito buzzing around the bathroom that morning I knew I had to get my revenge. It landed on the ceiling so I grabbed the squeegie and acted fast. I guess its a good thing that the showers here are weird and flood the bathroom requiring one to squeegie the entire bathroom floor after each shower. If it weren't for the squeegie, who knows, I could still be falling victim to the vicious bug.

In all seriousness though, I actually have a lot of exciting real news for this blog post! The ceiling next door finally got fixed so on Monday I said adieu to my temporary roommates and welcomed Leah who I will be living with for the remaining nine months (I can't believe I've been here for a whole month already!). It is very exciting to finally have space to put things, but since I have already lived in the room for a while I am finding it hard to motivate myself to unpack everything. I have the next two weeks off for Sukkot though, so I will have plenty of time to do so soon.

Last week I got my school assignment. I will be working at the Rimalt school in Poleg, the wealthy southern part of Netanya. I was confused at first as to why I wasn't placed in a low-income school, but after working at Rimalt for a few days I realized that everyone needs help. Just because students go to a better school doesn't necessarily mean they are motivated and excited to learn English, and it doesn't mean that I won't make a difference at Rimalt. My teaching partner, Casey, and I will be working there with two of the English teachers and will be working with students in grades 4-6. Ester, the English teacher I will be working with has Tuesdays off so I will only have a four day work week (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). We got really lucky with our placement, as the school is really nice and the people who work there all seem friendly.

The first day at the school we were welcomed with a small but nonetheless exciting concert. We walked into a classroom with a welcome sign all the students had autographed. The chairs had been placed in a circle around the room and we were told to sit in the middle. It was actually a bit nerve-racking to sit there with a bunch of Israeli children staring at you, but luckily the presentation was entertaining and I laughed through most of it. First the students sang a 10 minute rendition of Bob Marley's "Don't worry." Next, a few students read a speech in English welcoming us to the school. The final part of the show was my favorite. They had choreographed a hip hop routine just for us. It was to modern American hip-hop songs, and the students went all out for it. We have it on video but I'm having trouble uploading things at the moment. When I get everything sorted out with my camera I will post pictures and the video. After the big presentation, we were fed chocolatey goodies the parents had baked for us. Then we were taken on a tour of the school.

The second day at the school we observed in the classrooms. It was so great to finally be able to help out the students a bit and start getting to know them. We were told that for the first few months we will only be given the advanced students who are bored in class because their English is already pretty good for their age. During the observation, I was able to help a few students out during the lesson. I thought it was really cute that a few of them tried really hard to impress me with their English skills. I met a student who was born in America and speaks English with her parents at home. She is super advanced and I can't wait to work with her more, even though one of the other students felt the need to warn me that she was crazy.

Even with the students that speak English really well, there are also students on the opposite end of the spectrum who have no English skills whatsoever. In one of the classes I observed, there was a little boy who knows literally one word in English. What is that word? "Igloo," of course. I don't know where or why or how he learned that word, or why it is the only one he remembers, but he uses it to describe everything. If he wants to get my attention? "Igloo." If he wants to tell me to use Hebrew instead of English? "Igloo." To be quite honest, I'm not even sure he knows what it means, but the first time I heard him use it a bunch of students laughed so I thought it had another meaning in Hebrew and made sure not to repeat it until I checked with the teacher. Apparently it means the same thing here as it does in America, so I am still clueless as to the significance of "Igloo."

That's all for now, although it is important to note that this post was started about a week and a half ago so ignore the time frame I provided in the beginning. Also, I should say that I now have nine new mosquito bites on my legs from a different but equally evil mosquito who I expect to find and squeegie attack as soon as possible. I will post soon about my Sukkot holiday break.

Bye! Igloo!
Melanie

School interior. My classroom is upstairs to the right.

Partial view of my classroom before getting spruced up a bit.