Day Two: Making Ramla Our Home

Tuesday, August 8

Once again, I am writing my blog entry for today the day after (so on Wednesday). I have found that it is a lot easier for me to write about the previous day rather than about the current day late at night since we have been up until around 3 am the first 2 nights and I do not want to leave out anything.

Today (Tuesday) was a really fun day exploring Ramla on our own. Unfortunately, we had to be awake at 7:30 am (even after going to sleep at 3 am, but hey it was our first night and we had to do it up right) for a guided tour of Ramla. Now I’m not going to say that this tour was anything for the memory books, but it was really nice to just be able to walk around and see things around town. We started off by walking together with Chava (our mom, and from now on I will just say Chava so remember it!) to the White Mosque and White Tower, which are some of the oldest standing buildings in Ramla. Back around 700 AD, Ramla used to be the capitol of the Muslim religion. It was a very important place for them to pray. Um…so I’m sitting here trying to think of what else to say about that but I got nothing. Ramla does have one of the richest histories out of any city in Israel, but they do not know how to promote it to Israel and the rest of the world.

To Israelis, Ramla is the biggest dump in Israel. They all think that Ramla is a terrible place to live. Every time I had told Israelis that I was going to be living in Ramla for 5 months, they would all laugh and say good luck (which I must tell you really inspired me and made my decision a lot easier….just kidding). Ramla has a very bad reputation because of what it used to be like. There were times when violence was all over and drugs were prevalent around the city. Now, I am just saying based on what I think is true, things still aren’t the best, but the city is definitely turning itself around and making a bif comeback. Although the city is 28% new immigrants (many from the former soviet union, Russia, etc), 22% arabs, about 20% black Ethiopian jews, and the rest regular looking and living Israelis, the people here seem to get along really well. There really aren’t ever big problems with the different types of people all living together, which can also be very hard on the city, but it has been going fairly well for quite some time.

Anyways, back to the tour…so after visiting the two holy muslim sites, climbing to the top of the white tower and looking over ramla, seeing tel aviv in the distance, we headed to a place that is a very cool archaeological site in Ramla. Oh yeah, I just remembered that I need to explain why I am not volunteering yet and when that will start. I am sure that some of you are wondering what the heck I am doing just hanging out in Israel when I should be volunteering right? I will tell you why very soon. At this site was a really amazing underwater cistern, which is a place where water used to be kept for drinking and whatever. It was a really old looking underground water cavern, but they decided to turn it into some sort of tourist attraction because when we got down there, we noticed something strange. At first I thought that this wasn’t the kind of place where you would drink water, but more of a swimming, bathing area (back in the day that is). But when we got down there, there were 3 like row boats sitting on some kind of dock that we proceeded to get into and paddle our way around this ancient drinking water thing. It was a lot of fun, but when we had circled the entire thing 4 times in 10 minutes, weaved in and out of every column, realized that it really wasn’t that much fun and that we were ready to get out haha. But for real, it was fun for the first…I don’t know….minute.



After that we headed to the Shuk, which is Hebrew for market. The market they have here is known as one of the best (if not the best) in all of Israel. Fresh everything. Meats, cheeses, spices, TONS of fruits and veggies, and all the other random things you can think of. We started off as a group trying to buy groceries, but soon realized that shopping as a unit of 10 was pretty dumb. So we broke off into food group groups and did our shopping. I was with Daniel and Josh, and we didn’t even buy anything until the last second out of the Shuk. We just walked around looking at stuff. My stomach had been hurting the whole time we were there, on and off, like it used to when I was younger, and then I just had to find a bathroom. One thing that I just HATE about Israel is their lack of acceptable bathrooms. Now acceptable doesn’t mean clean floors, seats, or whatever, it means having a door on the stall, toilet paper, and soap. This one had one. If I had to choose which one to have, I honestly don’t know which one I would choose…Probably not soap tho. Ew, gross just saying that. Anyways this one had everything but toilet paper, soap, and clean anything. It was just nasty. So I went in and lets just say that I used to think notebook paper was just for taking notes….Maybe I went too far with that comment but I just had to get it out, it was just nasty. And then I get out and realize there was no soap. Even nastier. I went to get falafel with my friends and told them I would buy one if they let me wash my hands there. Thankfully, they had soap or I would have had to burn the place down. The falafel was good. Too many peppercinis tho, really hot.

After the market we paid about $1 to get a 5 minute cab back to our place. Oh yeah, and we bought a soccer ball which will come in handy soon. We can take a cab from any place to any place here for about $1. Yay for being lazy! Although it’s pretty hot out so shut your face. We came home, juggled the soccer ball inside for a while with about 4 of us, almost breaking many things, then 6 of us decided to go play soccer somewhere. Just leaving the house Josh called us and said he stumbled upon some kids playing near our house. We showed up and started playing soccer with these Israeli kids. It was soooo much fun! We were playing on a basketball court that had metal goals beneath the hoops. We would play to 2 on teams of 4. It was awesome. The older kids wouldn’t let the younger kids play. It was pretty sad/funny how they would beg to play but then told to shut up and get off the court. Maybe 1 of the Israelis spoke English, so we just communicated through signals and stuff. We would laugh, pat eachother on the back, and just understand what was happening. It was our first experience with the locals of Ramla other than our first night with our neighbors. If any of you have seen “The City of God”, the kids all looked like those kids, or at least reminded me of them. I thought they would kill us any second, but not really. They were just having fun. After playing for a while we left and said we would come back tomorrow. Some Ethiopian kids came to play after we left, they had been waiting to play, and they were much better than the Israelis we played with who were still pretty darn good. What an amazing time we had. Such a great memory.

We came back to the house and had dinner. It was really good since we just went shopping. Chicken pitas with fresh grilled veggies. Awesome. Oh yeah, after coming back from the Shuk earlier we all took a nap. Mine was like 3 hours. I woke up, and my room was dark, like I said it could be at high noon, and had no idea what was going on. I thought it was the next day. I chilled in our bomb shelter for a little bit (which is actually one of the bedrooms, and its not the bomb shelter actually, its just a room underground with really thick concrete walls that could be used as one) because that is the only place where we get internet. I don’t get it…We also get it if you sit on the sidewalk in front of our house, but with a laptop, just doesn’t seem too bright.

But then after dinner we were all kind of tired. Just sat around hanging out. We chilled with the neighbors again but this time we walked to a nearby park and smoked hookah (which is just flavored tobacco with no additives in it. Israelis smoke this from the time they are 12 or 13, its just something to do while hanging out). We sat there for a good couple of hours, watching the Israeli guys try to hit on our girls, but failing miserably because they are just too aggressive and don’t get how things are different. They are definitely really cool guys, but they were making the girls a little uncomfortable, even though I kept telling them how to be, they just didn’t get it. It was funny haha.

So I came back at like 2:30. Everyone was still up just reading and doing nothing much cuz we all took those long naps earlier. The girls room still doesn’t have AC so Daniel my roommate (just Daniel from now on) elected for us to sleep in their room cuz ours is all nice and cold. Wasn’t so bad except I woke up like every 30 minutes, because it was too bright or mostly because I kept sleeping on my arms and waking up with none. I mean they were numb. I hate that feeling. But at the same time its pretty cool to be like, whoa I have no arms! I can see em but they are totally numb. Anyways, sorry that has nothing to do with anything…

That was my day. It was really cool to finally get to hang out in Ramla on our own. After we were left at the Shuk at 10:30 am, the rest of the day was ours to do whatever. We got to know the city, and I actually know how to get places now and where I live relative to other places. Oh yeah, I promised I would let you all know why I haven’t saved the world yet (through my volunteering). They want us for the first week to get comfortable with living in a new place. Get situated, settle down, do a little exploring. Then the next week we start the Ulpan classes (Hebrew classes). This week, next week, pretty much at random times, we are going to take trips to see things, meet people, do things. The third week we go to all the places we can possibly volunteer and then the week after that we have picked what we are doing for the next months. We are just trying to establish ourselves in Ramla now. We are no longer tourists, but now are citizens of this city. This will be our lives for the next 5 months and it is a good idea to get comfortable with this. I like the way this is going, and we cannot wait to get to making Ramla a much better place.