I could not have asked for a better apartment. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine living in a place where English, Hebrew, Spanish, French and Russian all have a place in everyday conversation. I moved into the Student Village (the Kfar Studentim) not even a week ago and took the fifth room of an apartment shared by a Swiss, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, and an Uzbek. I’m the odd one out it seems, and I love it.
Alice is the life of the party. She’s friends with everyone, goes to Tel Aviv every other day to soak in some rays, and speaks Hebrew like a native even though she’s been here only one year. Her Hebrew lilts with her French accent. She waiting right now for her boyfriend, Yosi, a soldier in the IDF, to pick her up in just a few minutes, and she’s racing around trying to prepare.
Leah sits on the couch right now talking to her boyfriend Lior. She’s the disciplined one, managing the goings-on of the apartment and any money transactions we have as a group. She’s been studying for her macroeconomics exam for the past week, and she treats it like ajob. She’s originally from Russia, but moved to Israel when she was 4 years old.
Gila made aliyah from Venezuela a little while ago and studies psychology. We speak in Spanish sometimes, but it’s hard for me to keep up with her speed and accent. I can always find her smiling. She’s a practicing Jew, so I’m learning which plates, silverware, and cups I should use if I’m making meat or if I’m making something with milk. It’s difficult to keep kosher, I’m finding.
Tanya is the Uzbek, and is a sweetheart, shy and unassuming. She is known as the mom of the house, fixing any broken appliances, cooking soup if someone is sick. She spends much of her time in Be’er Sheva where her boyfriend lives, and she works until 11 on most nights, so we don’t see each other very much. She’s planning to move to Be’er Sheva at the end of the month to be closer to him.
I met another free spirit on my first day of class. I was low key at that point, just getting lost in the crowd, when this tall guy in D & G sunglasses and piercings all over his face said “hey” to me. That was it. Instant friends. We talked as if we’d been friends for years and kept walking to HU until we discovered that we were in the same class, Aleph 6 – higher low Aleph. It’s the class where the students are supposed to know the alphabet, but basically nothing else. We are learning cursive and print simultaneously (Dfus ve’ktav). It’s weird writing from left to right, and it’s even stranger to write in the opposite direction after five hours of class.
I just which I knew more, that I could just force it into my brain like a sleeping bag into its sleeve, but instead it’s s low but sure process.
It’s hard to imagine I’m here for another two months. There are so many adjustments to make, so many connections to make and experiences to have.
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