Our First Shabbat in Ramla

Friday, August 11th

Today was our first shabbat in Ramla. We had nothing at all do to today except to be ready for Shabbat by later in the evening, so a lot of us just sat around the house and hung out doing nothing much. We finally got to sleep in until as late as we wanted. It was awesome. I think I woke up around noon, but when I went downstairs to hang out for a little, my stomach was still hurting me a lot. Even though the pain went away the night before, it came back in the morning. I feel like when I am doing something that takes my mind off of it, it goes away, but when I am just sitting around doing nothing or whatever, I think that I think about it and make it hurt. I do believe I have some control over it. Maybe it's anxiety? Maybe it's stress. But from what? All I know is that I am LIVING in a new place, eating completely different food than I am used to, and I have a pretty bad stomach as it is. Anyways, if this keeps up I am going to probably go to the hospital to get some tests done, which is probably the last thing that I want to do, but I am miserable right now and it is hard to enjoy myself when it feels like this.

Anyways, I went back to sleep for an hour and it was really relaxing. Like I said, I think I have some sort of control over it because when I woke up the pain was gone. Soon after tho, it came back...I feel like I am being tortured by my own mind. It is crazy. Whoever is reading this, don't freak out. It is pretty painful right in the center of my gut, but I am doing all that I can to fix it. Hopefully it gets better. I have heard of travelers stomach, but for now I am just dealing with it. Has been really hard to be myself tho when I think about it all the time since it doesn’t go away. To continue…

When I woke up me, Jay, and Todd went to the Shuk (market). We walked there and I gotta say it is SO hot out right now. It’s funny how the weather here is exactly like that of Tucson. Hot hot hot summers, and hot to cold, cold to hot winters. We all can’t wait til winter. Everyone walks to get places in Israel, and much more in Ramla, and its interesting to see that everyone walks like a sloth about to die. Everyone drags themselves around like I can’t wait to get there. I hate this. I need a car haha. So at the Shuk we just bought some stuff we didn’t need, tried to talk to some girls with not much success, and came back. When we got back we just sat around doing nothing, everyone started to get ready for Shabbat and got picked up by their families.

Daniel and I are with the one family that took us salsa dancing (or at least tried to…). They are a VERY nice and fun family. The have one daughter named Maytav (22), and 3 sons, Gil (18? a guess), Sassi (24?), and their last son is actually now one of the 8,000 ground troops in Lebanon. I asked where he was and they told me, and it just hit me like a rock. Wow. Their son is literally up there as we sat there fighting for his family, his country, his life. It was an eye-opening experience like none other. Shabbat is very special in Israel because that is the one day of the week that families come together and eat a meal and talk about what is happening in their lives. Dinner was very good, the same stuff we have been eating day in and day out, but home cooked. I played it all by ear on how to act. We ate dinner for about 10 minutes talking, then turned on the news and watched the report on Lebanon while we finished up. It was at that point that I got really emotional (I told you im a little softy! Especially in Israel). Just sitting there watching the report of soldiers getting killed, wounded, etc, I was just thinking that any minute they could get the worst call of their lives. GOD FORBID! During dinner they offered Daniel and I wine. We accepted obviously. The father had like 1/3 a glass, and Daniel and I finished the rest of the bottle. It’s almost like they made us. They kept refilling our glasses. Towards the end of dinner I looked around at everyone’s plates. They were all members of the club. You know that club that sucks when you aren’t or don’t want to be a member? Yeah the clean plate club. I had half of my stuff left. So I looked at Daniel, looked at my plate, he gave me a stare, and I finished it all. It was hard I was stuffed… Then we sat around watching Israel’s American Idol, called “A Star is Born”. VERY good looking everyone, great voices. Everyone was talking in Hebrew so I just sat there in a daze watching this show. The wine made that a good call.

While we sat there they told us they had planned on taking us out for the night. We agreed. Gotta love our family. The mom and dad are very nice, and their kids are all really fun. Not to mention their daughter is pretty cute. But I think Daniel is gonna win that battle. Stupid loser speaks Hebrew and is always a step ahead of me. Whatever, he will be a good wingman. When I learn a few simple Hebrew words, we are going to go around to girls and Daniel will talk while I throw in cute little quirks like “cool” and “fun” and “dance” etc. It will work. The seeds have been planted and its time to start hoeing. So we got back to our house and got changed to go out. The rest of the house was already back, telling us they were about to go to bed. Yeah, right. So we got our cars full, with Sassi, Maytav, her friend Ef’Rat who I call Effie (danced with her a lot), their cousin Liron (very cute), me, Daniel, Josh, Jay, Aaron, and Naomi. We headed off to Herziliiya and I must say that when we got there it reminded me of Panama City Beach, Florida during spring break. The roads were jam packed with traffic, literally all people going out to clubs. In the stand still traffic with Daniel, Aaron, Maytav, and Liron, it got to be a sauna in the car. They don’t use AC, which is ridiculous. Daniel and my legs were stuck together. Yeah, sucky. I decided to roll my window down even tho I KNEW that I wasn’t supposed to because there was an Israeli flag hanging out of it, and it blew away. I decided to tell Liron about it later.

We finally found a club to go to called Voice. Very cool and fun place with great music. We danced all night. By all night I mean til 5 am. We got there at 2. I walked all over the club trying to dance with Israeli girls and got rejected by about 95% of them. That is a good percentage to tell you how many I talked to. All of them. It was fun tho haha. I met a girl named Lotem, who I went for a walk with with her friends. I decided it would be a good idea to steal someone else’s Israel flag out of their window. Too bad I couldn’t get the window open so I just broke it off. So now there were 2 people who’s flag I had ruined. And this one couldn’t even be put back on a car since I broke off the mounting piece. I hate myself. I tend to do a lot of thinking after I do things. Usually that is a bad way to make decisions. So I tried to crotch it into the club and the front door guy saw it. He looked at me like I was partially handicapped in my head, I just looked at him and said “flag”. He let me in but I felt dumb. I walked up to Liron and said “Hey I like that Israeli flag on your window of your car”. She said thanks. I said “oh and about that, yeah it blew away, sorry. But I got you a new one.” I pulled it out and she laughed. Probably not at how cute it was but at how stupid I am. The best thing was when they played a dance version of Hatikva (Israel’s national anthem) and I was dancing waving the flag around. Some Israeli guys came over and started dancing with us, wanting to wave the flag too. It was such an amazing, uplifting feeling. Can’t really understand it unless you’ve been here and love this country like I do. Just waving the flag around during this time felt so powerful to me. We ended up leaving the club at 5 am, drove back, almost seeing the sun rise and got to bed at 6 am. I definitely did have a good time with Effie (Maytav(our host family’s daughter)’s friend). We danced all night and were supposed to go to the beach in Tel Aviv the next day but yea, I think sleeping til 2 messed that up a little. I will probably get to see her again tomorrow (Sat) at some party thing. Oh yeah, and we ate some pita when we got home, naturally. I made Jay and I a pita with rice, hummus, ranch (oh yeah! I brought 4 powdered ranch packets with me haha. Theyre a hit! And I love that stuff so when its gone I probably wont leave my room…), hard boiled egg, and chopped onions. YUM huh?! Maybe that’s why my stomach keeps hurting…stupid weird Israeli food.