And so it goes...

Sun. July, 20/08

Its three weeks into the Hillel Bat Yam volunteer trip (or whatever it’s called) and things have basically set into a pattern. Every morning I drag my bed into the house, and survey the landing that passes for my room, my own room. I then walk down from the top floor and join the group again. After doing sundry morning activities I go to the kitchen and scrounge up some breakfast from the remains of my last meagre shopping trip. As I begin to eat the other volunteers trickle down in twos and threes discussing ... well, anything really – mutual friends in T.O., a conversation they had last night, or a club they went to. Except for Jonas. Unless he’s unreasonably exhausted he runs in from the beach 45 min. before we have to leave and has a very short and sandy shower.

We all know by now which days we are meant to be in Bat Yam and Kiryat Moshe. In both places everyone has learnt the children’s names and has chosen favourites among them. In Bat Yam I think the general consensus has rested upon Me’or (in fact we had an incident where there was a slight yelling match over who would have him in their group). Kiryat Moshe is less decided – maybe because each of us is only there once a week. Thanx to Karen and Romi our work days are more organized – we now have lists on the kitchen wall of what activity we’ve planned for each day and who is responsible for organizing each one. This has had the most excellent results of making us favourites at the schools.

So, surprisingly ten strangers have managed to get along pretty well in one house, and ten North Americans have managed to hold their own in an entirely foreign cultural setting.

Of course there are some problems, like the food problems. These generally result in Jen yelling about a lost cucumber or Lexi posting “Missing” signs for her turkey on the fridge. There are also problems with the children sometimes – you know, they get a bit wild ... and then start tearing hours of our work to shreds!!! (Well the game was pass the parcel but the kids took it a bit far.)

But honestly the kids like us, the games we come up with work most of the time and no one has gotten frustrated enough to tear the house down. So all in all I think we’ve done pretty well for ourselves. The only thing I regret is not being taught enough about the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian immigrant experience or Ethiopian culture. – I guess I can’t have it all, though.

Always,

Vardit Lightstone

(except when I’m not...)