The Average Israeli

A week or two ago (honestly time has gotten so skewed in the last few days, this activity could have taken place months ago and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference) our OSP did an activity called "the Average Israeli" where we basically discussed/learned about the life of, you guessed it, the average Israeli. Our thoughts before the game: The average Israeli is a college aged male, who wears jorts, crocs (Thomas, crocs are super successful in Israel, I have NO clue why), bro tanks, and have long post-South American backpacking trip hair/beards. Now that we have our "average Israeli" in mind, we move towards the activity itself. We played a sort of "game of life" where we each had a game piece that was a different group within Israel (I was an Ethiopian refugee) and we "rolled the dice" (spun a dreidel with numbers on it) and went through the life of an Israeli. It went from birth through elementary school, high school, year of service, the army, etc all the way through marriage and children where the cycle theoretically starts all over again. This game was interesting for me, but since I have family here in Israel none of it was all that new to me. But recently it's gotten me thinking, the average Israeli is really fantastic (minus the crocs, I just can't hang with that trend).

When all of this balagan (Hebrew for chaos/mess/craziness) started on Wednesday my American friends and I had all of our Israeli friends, even people we had just met a few days before, offer for us to come stay with them and their families outside of Beer Sheva. As each of my 3 flatmates left to go home, they all offered to take me home with them if I wanted to get out of Beer Sheva and didn't have anywhere to go. Once we finally left Beer Sheva and took refuge on Masada (as one of my friend's brothers noted, refuge on Masada usually doesn't work out to well for the ones hiding out...) and eventually Sde Boker we encountered tons of other Israelis more than willing to take us in and offer us a place to stay. Here in Sde Boker, despite being not a very populated area filled mostly with PhD or Masters students, those who do live here have been wonderful. Last night the student union hosted a "refugee party" where a bunch of different people brought food, they provided us with everything we needed to eat, and just hung out with us, gave us something to do. My cousin (well sort of, I'm not entirely sure how we're related) who is also doing her PhD here came to hang out last night and told me about a Thanksgiving dinner that a friend of hers is hosting here in Sde Boker on Thursday that she invited us to as well. In general all the Israelis we have met throughout this whole ordeal have been so wonderful, realizing that none of us have ever been through something like this before and they have been so open, friendly, and hospitable. They also think they're really funny, when I say I study International Relations and Conflict Resolution, they tell me to go resolve the conflict. I usually respond that I'm not qualified yet, I haven't finished my degree, but maybe we just need to get the Holy Trinity here and things will work itself out.

Just a little update about the last few days and what we've been doing, we left Masada Friday morning and arrived in Sde Boker sometime Friday afternoon. We napped, hung out, relaxed, attempted to find internet to check news and see what is going on in the world, and eventually went to sleep. Saturday we hiked to Ein Akev, a natural spring near Sde Boker. It was a hike I had already done before but the route we took on Saturday was exactly opposite the way I went a month or so ago when I did the hike last time. It was nice to see it from a new perspective, and this direction was a WHOLE lot easier and my legs were a lot happier afterwards. We had another bonfire Saturday night (we had done one Thursday night before Masada), and exhausted from the hike crashed early. Sunday, the day classes theoretically would be starting again if the war wasn't going on, we had a mini lecture about Patents and Intellectual Property (random, I know) and an information session about what was going to happen in the next few days. Conclusions: We're staying in Sde Boker until at least Thursday, and on Thursday we will either go back to Beer Sheva to resume life as normal or we will return to Beer Sheva to pack up our things and move our semester down to Sde Boker for the last 5-6 weeks, however long it is we have left. Now personally, and this opinion is shared by everyone else that I've talked to, I prefer the first option. Sde Boker has been great and all, but there is really nothing to do here and all the students are PhD students doing hydrology and bio-technology and desalination and all of these things that we know nothing about. At least back in Beer Sheva students were more our age and we were able to easily make friends, not the case here in Sde Boker. Plus, I think if I had to stay here for the remainder of the semester, I would go stir crazy and the Masada murder/suicide option would be looking pretty great (exaggeration of course, but I would be really really bored). For now, we're just continuing to have these little mini lectures that don't actually count for anything but are just to keep us busy. Tomorrow we're going on some secret adventure because we can't be in Sde Boker during Ben Gurion Day (apparently the Prime Minister is showing up, it's a big deal). Wednesday Abby, Sam, and I (and anyone else who decides they want to come) might be heading up to Rehovot or Tel Aviv just to get out of here for a day or so in case we're stuck here for the rest of our study abroad. So that's life right now, here's hoping a cease fire starts soon and life can return to normal and I can get back to Beer Sheva.