I am here

This place is a serious time warp. The days mesh together so perfectly and quickly. I have a hard time remembering all the wonderful things that have been happening.
The mosquitoes still really, really love me. Last night they dined on my face again and now my eyelids are incredibly swollen. I can't imagine what it will feel like to look normal again.
This past weekend (is it Thursday already?) I met up with the group from HHS. Can I just say how absolutely needed that was? I had no idea how awesome it would be to be in Israel with some tangible elements of home. Thank you to all of them. Thank you for letting me hitch a ride and overstay my welcome and crash the party etc. Those excursions gave me what I need to keep going.
Zichron Ya'akov is simply beautiful. And the members of Sulam Ya'akov even moreso. I cannot wait to go back there. Hopefully for another Shabbat in the coming months.
That's right, I said months--plural. Truly I was struggling to figure out what to do here. As the days passed, I couldn't imagine leaving. And when I really thought about it, I couldn't imagine going to a kibbutz. Just not my scene. As seems to be the case with everything here, I am having great difficulty getting the required information for the Israel Trail. I feel confident in my abilities, but I still need a map. I know, very demanding. I walked to the Gilabon waterfall with the HHS group and realized that I am looking forward to getting out there on my own. I am physically getting in much better shape than when I arrived and that feels great. As long as I continue to stick to not doing strenuous exercising from 1-5p basically, all is well. The time for doing this is shrinking. It now turns out that I need to be back in Jerusalem on June 29. And a friend wants to go to Eilat until June 20. I guess it's still 9days and that's good.
So why do I have to be back by a certain day? There's a little welcoming for the summer class that I am taking. Learning has always been an important part of my life. This trip is no different. And this trip has so many different avenues in which to continue learning. The program I've chosen to do combines ulpan and yeshiva. Ulpan for 3.5hrs/day, and yeshiva for 4.5hrs/day--five days a week. This is done at the conservative yeshiva in town (www.conservativeyeshiva.org). Originally I was somewhat opposed to learning Hebrew, truthfully. But why? Because I thought it was not something I could use very readily and really only in Israel. As I am here, I have decided that learning Hebrew is so much more than that. I'll gain some ability to understand biblical Hebrew from this ulpan. I won't be able to carry on conversations with Israelis at its conclusion, but I will have a much larger understanding. Even more importantly though, it connects to my people in another way. Hebrew is the language of the Jews, and I am a Jew. Language is a vital element in any culture.
My misperceptions and stereotypes of yeshiva prevented me from looking at that as an option. I heard that I just had to check it out from so many people. So I found one nearby (M'dreshet Rachel V'Chaya) and I was pleased that I proved myself right initially. The place felt like a cult, a brainwashing institution, a place for lost women who will just churn out lots of babies. I smirked at my discovery. And then I recoiled because I realized that I had just found a place that I knew would prove me right. Like statistics, you can find a study to prove any point. I looked further. While I'm not a feminist, I have a hard time with separation of duties and obligations and rights and learning and etc. Therefore, at this point I chose to eliminate any yeshiva that was only women (and of course only men). That really shrinks the pool. Anyway, I found the conservative yeshiva and entered with skepticism and with my defenses high. The garden, the smiles, the warmth, the beit midrash, was too much for my defenses. And so I just soaked it in. I spoke with three of the rabbi's there. I talked to students, I talked to the secretary.
I found myself in the position of trying to talk myself out of staying. And I couldn't come up with reasonable answers. I have to do this.
The program runs from July 1 to Aug 9. I am still trying to work out my flight details, so I don't know the exact date that I'll be returning. For those six weeks I'll get to experience life in Jerusalem with the structure of learning and the freedom of the weekends to do whatever (shabbat all over the country with new friends).
I know there are people at home who don't know why I am here. Some days verbalizing why I am, I can't either. "Do what you can, when you can" (thanks mom). Plus, what do people want most, what do they want more of: time. Not money, not things, but time. And right now, I have the time. I have more time than I ever thought possible. So to say to myself, I need to go home to get a job and sit around waiting to be accepted to grad school, isn't enough to leave here. Because here I am understanding what it is to be Jewish from all over the spectrum. I am making friends from all over the world. This is an extreme country, perhaps one of the most diverse in the whole world, and I am here. I am here. Dad once talked about some things in his life and he said, he just knew. Right now, this is what I know.
I'll try to put more down in the coming days and keep everyone posted with my little adventure.
Hope all is well at home. Please keep Holli Berman in your prayers. Please feel free to write/call, I love hearing from home. With love til later--Rae