ramle17-18

[ramle17-18]

12/1

ok a lot has happened so i’m gonna break it up by subject again i guess

ummm so first off our house is literally dying lol. we’ve had a major leak from our kitchen ceiling for over a week now, and then last night our upstairs toilet stopped working and rachel and sultana’s bathroom is flooding. destination israel has been really incompetent about getting this shit fixed and it was kind of a last straw thing, so i wrote them a very strongly-worded email the other day and i have a meeting with gregg and ofir on sunday to discuss it.

hodaya canceled our date for last tuesday bc she “caught a cold” and hasn’t contacted me since lol. we had been talking pretty consistently for 2 weeks or so and i thought it was going somewhere but! guess not. i’m not even really taking it personally, it’s just frustrating bc now i’m at square one with no prospects and i’m just lonely and touch-starved and whatever.

we had a house thanksgiving last thursday and it was wonderful :) matt and i also successfully ordered weed from telegrass and it was good, except having it here meant i was smoking way too much and too often - also joints are really inefficient and wasteful so we really need to get a pipe or something bc it’s expensive as fuck here, like $28ish per gram. matt and i got 5g together and split it, and i spent like basically a week from when i first went to hannah’s for shabbat (which i’ll talk about in a sec) until the end of the weekend after thanksgiving in a hazy stoned fog, doing nothing and eating everything. so like. i need to learn moderation as usual.

but hannah’s for shabbat!!!! it was AMAZING, and i’m going back tonight and i’m so so excited :) her leftist friends and gay friends are soooo cool, madeleine came with last time (the last bus to jlm didn’t come so we had to get a gett which i paid for..lol it was 200 shek but whatever) and we had smoked, sing a couple kabshab tunes, smoked, had a lovely dinner, and spent the night smoking weed and hookah and talking politics. it was lovely. then the next day we spent smoking and doing various chill activities in a lovely park. i loved it! i believe tonight they said there’ll be fewer people, which will be nice but also i think they said josh won’t be coming, and i really liked him! i literally stayed up until midnight last time after everyone else had left/gone to sleep and we were discussing like communist theory it was so great

miriam came and did my first observation yesterday because i was sick when she came to do marleigh’s. i got a perfect score which was great, but i also really hate miriam lol. but anyway we did a cute activity with the kids where they made menus for an imaginary restaurant and then i made them fake money and they took turns ordering at each others’ restaurants and being cashiers, chefs, and waiters. they loved it :)

i honestly can’t think of anything else major going on lol. uh weight-wise i kinda lost november’s progress bc i spent like a week or 2 high-bingeing, so i reset at 138 and i’m gonna go from there. but it’s probably better anyway, talia told me i should take a month off for the sake of my metabolism. i feel like some part of me is shrinking still though bc i’m noticing i have more room in my fitbit band, and it was tight when i moved it to the 8th hole. i can’t tell if there’s a way for this material to loosen or stretch though so i’m not sure.

[ramle17-18]

11/13

better week than last!

monday was fine as far as i remember - school was good and ulpan was actually good, and then sultana and i walked to the sandwich place and back (there was a huge drama thing going on in bat yam which i will discuss at the end of this post)

tuesday - kind of awkward in the beginning tbh, marleigh has been getting really visibly jealous whenever i hang out with sultana and was kind of bitter about it monday night when we got home, but by the end of the day we were fine. i don’t even remember really doing anything that afternoon, i guess this whole week has been pretty chill haha

wednesday - school was fine, ulpan was fine, sultana and i went to the arab store after and came home, really nothing of substance

thursday - thursday was a long day just because it’s our longest day, but again as far as i remember nothing really happened

friday - i went for a nice 2 hour walk in the morning, to herzl and back and then around the track for an hour while i talked to talia. kept reading the moonstone all day

saturday- another nice walk in the morning, and then mostly reading all day. saturday night we watched the sixth sense, where i can proudly say i figured out the twist even though i’d never seen it before and didn’t know it :) afterward talia called me and told me that nonnie really hasn’t been doing well and i cried, it’s just really hitting me that she’s going to die soon and i have absolutely no idea how to handle it.

also saturday i met this girl hodaya on this weird israeli gay dating app and she’s super cute and we talked all day, i think i’m gonna text her later today and see if anything comes of it

sunday - our sunday activity was just talking about jewish identity with nurit. matt didn’t go bc he had a day off to be with family, so it was just the girls. ended with an intense discussion with nurit about why it’s not acceptable to talk about peoples’ bodies.

i had also gone on a walk sunday morning to herzel and back and stopped at the shuk and the bakery, then after the activity walked to the post office and then around the entire mall and bought a really cute shirt, then walked home, so i got over 20k steps :)

-

weight-wise things have been slowing down which i know is a good thing, but it’s stressing me out a lot. but i know my waist is also getting smaller, and also the smaller i get the more noticeable any new changes will be. paper towel theory and all that.

-

so the bat yam drama is that apparently on the negev/eilat trip maude hooked up with dor. originally she said nothing happened, then said something happened, then said it was sexual assault. emily made a post about it on reddit and a bunch of people saw it, maude reported dor, dor has now been fired.

i hate men.

[ramle17-18]

11/6

weird, kind of not great-ish week!

so sunday we went to the yitzhak rabin museum for our sunday activity, which was interesting enough, except i was super anxious during it because sultana and i had a huge fight the night before (we were watching black swan and basically i said nina’s mom was abusive and sultana was really offended bc she lived in the dance world before or whatever and it ended in a nasty way) but we made up that night and it was good. there was a political discussion after we did self-tours of the museum (which were tough because we had those audio things and half the time it was impossible to tell which thing the audio corresponded to, and also because it made it really hard to read things while a voice was continuously talking into my ear), and i very pointedly didn’t say a word during it lmao

monday we had that stupid masa event thing, where we went to this enormous conference center in jerusalem and they gave us tiny snacks and beer (which i obviously didn’t drink) and hours and hours of mingling and then a “concert” and multi-media presentation of outright nationalism. i hated it lol

tuesday (halloween!) was pretty good! sultana and i ended up going to rehovot for pasta, i got fettuccine with cream sauce, spinach, and smoked salmon, and it was DELICIOUS. and then we walked around rehovot for like almost an hour and a half and had a really great talk.

wednesday nothing notable happened - we had a fine day at school and then ulpan was as fine as i guess it’s going to be.

thursday we left for the negev/eilat trip. and yknow, god forbid i go on a trip and don’t feel so anxious that it makes me nauseous. the entire bus ride was hell, i literally thought it was going to puke at one point. but we went on the salad trail and then to our tracks and stuff and it was fine. everything was fine, dinner at the hostel, the bonfire..and then partway through the bonfire i knew that if i didn’t get to a bathroom immediately i was going to shit my pants. so i said i wasn’t feeling well and ran back to the room to begin what literally would be a night of awful, awful bathroom experiences and eventually puking. i’m pretty sure it was food poisoning.

they let me go home the next day, surprisingly, which i didn’t think would be the case. i traveled from an hour south of be’er sheva to home all by myself and didn’t get lost or make any mistakes! they didn’t want me to come back but they let me, which i was happy about, and when i got home i literally slept for 15 hours. it was great.

friday and saturday i just hung out with madeleine, who was home bc she has pneumonia (which we just found out yesterday), and we had some nice bonding

and then yesterday we had a sunday activity painting the inside of the campus to help with their renovations, and it ended with matt and nurit being rude to each other over the group chat (matt started it unnecessarily and was very very rude) and then nurit deciding we were going to have a house meeting immediately, and dor showed up.

overall i think it went well and was productive, i ended up saying a lot about how i feel like i can’t trust nurit because i can’t know that she’ll keep things confidential when i talk to her, etc. we’ll just have to see what happens.

-

weight-wise i’m still hovering around 137 and it’s really annoying. i haven’t been drinking enough, though, so i’m gonna try today and see. my stomach is also bothering me this morning which is awesome. love it. the only consolation is that i think my inches are still going down, this morning my waist was 32.5in and my stomach was 36.5in, and considering my waist used to be like 37in i’m not gonna complain

[ramle17-18]

10/30

lmao so i've been really really awful about keeping up with journaling. i wrote an entry about a week or so after the last one and then more than halfway through tumblr decided to delete it without saving it as a draft :) and i just simply didn't have the energy to rewrite it. so i will try to summarize everything that's been going on, because i hadn't even started school yet in the last entry. i think it'll be easier to go by subject than by day in this one just because so many different things have happened, and it's over 2 weeks' worth lol. so!

school:

we started school! we've successfully completed two weeks :) some days are definitely rougher than others, some kids are definitely rougher than others, but overall they seem to love marleigh and me a lot! the first week we just did nametag-making activities so we could start learning their names and get a rough idea of their hebrew levels (they're really all over the place). all last week we did halloween activities with them, which they LOVED. we did trick-or-treating games and then i drew these enormous word searches on the board for them to all take turns solving as a class, and that seemed to work really well with their vocab words so i think that's something we'll use again for sure.

iris, the school counselor, is apparently going to be giving us food every wednesday, which is honestly amazing. she's so incredibly sweet, but also very shy because her english isn't good so she barely talks to us. but she's adorable and so so nice.

i'm frustrated with hana, the other english teacher besides avital, because she just never seems to know what the fuck is going on with anything ever. but thankfully we really don't have to work or even talk to her very often.

marleigh and i have been working super well together, and i really do stand by what i said about not feeling like i would want to have been paired with anyone else in the house.

ulpan:

we also started ulpan. unforunately not as much of a success, which has been incredibly fucking frustrating. so basically what happened was, we went in for our first day about two weeks ago (wednesday the 18th i think) and she passed out these long-ish passages with questions to answer. everyone except me was like "nope lol" but i tried to do it, and immediately yael, the teacher, came over and was like "no you're doing this wrong" (because i was translating sentence by sentence so i could remember what i had read when it came time to answer the questions...she didn't explain to me why it was wrong to do it that way nor did she offer any alternatives but uh ok). she also doesn't speak very much english which would be fine except it just doesn't lend itself well to our situation which is so unnecessarily complicated.

anyway, so after that she wanted me to just start at the beginning with everyone else, yknow like the very very beginning with the letters and "ani jami, at yael" over and over and over and i was going to lose my shit. so i was asking if there was like an in-between level i could be put in because the second level (which is what the passage was from) seemed a little too hard for me, and she responded by...giving me another passage worksheet. and everyone was getting annoyed with me, and i felt bad, but also i had been looking forward to this since before even getting here, we had to wait a month and a half to start, and i really refuse to not learn anything at this point.

so i went into the hall to work and madeleine came out a bit later and nurit came to talk to us, and i guess yael told nurit that she thought i was very disrespectful and that i clearly don't know as much hebrew as i think i do, and that she knows what she's doing etc etc. (i also don't like that nurit told me that but i'll get to that in a minute lol). by the end of the day yael said she would try to find something in between for us, which is literally all we'd been asking for from the beginning.

so we left pissed but relatively mollified. we went back the next monday and yael's supervisor, gila, was there. she told us that basically instead of us all having a 2.5 hour class, madeleine and i would come in at 5:30 and work until 6:30 or 6:45 and the others would have from 4-5:30. everyone was pissed, fairly so, and so madeleine and i brought it up to gila and we were like "we just thought we'd be doing stuff to the side so we could ask her questions but that she would spend most of the time with the beginners, we don't want to take any of their time away from them" and she gave us this whole speech about how it's not allowed to work that way etc. which is bullshit. but anyway so we went back at 5:30 and then at 6:15 out of NOWHERE yael shoves all her shit into her bag and is like "ok see you next week!" and fucking bolts. and madeleine and i were like uh????

so we went back the next wednesday (which was last week) and tried to tell yael how we were feeling, but as usual she kept speaking over us and trying to guess what we were going to say before we said it, and she kept being like "so you want to come back into the other class?" and we were like "NO, we just want the others to have the full time that was promised to them." and so she takes us into the hall and she looks at me and goes like "i know you complained about me. i really think you need to trust what i'm doing and you need to have a more positive attitude about ulpan." and i was gonna fucking punch her. so then i was like "to be clear, are we done at 6:15 or 6:30? because gila said 6:30 a bunch of times the other day." and she said some bullshit about how the hour includes a 15 minute break and since she doesn't need the break we can just do the 45 minutes. but as matt pointed out later, it's supposed to be 75 minutes including a 15 minute break, so she's skimping off literally 25% of our lesson and we're now getting 45 minutes twice a week. she told us we can sit in on the other class and do work off to the side if we want, but they can't stay after. so like i think we're just gonna sit down and shut up and keep working on our own lol.

this woman's teaching methods are also fucking ridiculous. madeleine tried to use an infinitive and said it wrong and yael literally was like "ok, if you don't know how to do something correctly, don't do it at all." and also doesn't give us time to write anything down "we don't have time we don't have time!" and i just can't stand her. the stuff we're doing is also below my level but like i said i'm just gonna deal with it and keep working on duolingo. talia also sent me the online version of her hebrew textbook so i'm gonna use that as well and just do work on my own.

nurit & house drama:

well! first off, nurit finally got involved with all of the matt and rachel drama because he was being awful awful awful to her. so in typical nurit fashion she decided that the best way to handle the issue was to first speak to sultana and marleigh, then matt and rachel separately, and THEN matt and rachel together, which is literally the opposite way from how i would've done it, but whatever.

we've also noticed that in addition to her lovely habit of being "blunt" she likes to gossip. a lot. about us. to one another. and it makes us super fucking uncomfortable. yesterday i was in the car with her on the way to the rabin museum and she just started talking shit about matt to me, i was so uncomfortable and then of course immediately went to him and told him about it lmao

we're also butting heads with her because she keeps planning all this shit without any regard for what we want to do. her sunday activities have mostly been flops, and she ignores all of our input or suggestions. we went to the ilana goor art museum in jaffa which was actually really cool, but the tour was an hour long and she was like "what should we do after, i think we should do team-building, we can go to a park and i can bring a ball" and i was like "can we just stay in the museum? it looks really big on the website and i'm sure there are going to be things the tour doesn't cover" and matt and madeleine agreed, and nurit basically went into this whole thing (prompted by matt being kind of a dick ofc) about how she's in charge and we're being insulting and blahblahblah.

basically she has no problem with bluntness when it's coming from her but the second it's directed at her she gets super defensive. all i know is i'm never telling her anything about myself again because she can't be trusted to keep it to herself.

weight:

lowest so far is 136.2. i've been hovering around 137 on and off the past few days though, i think it's because i'm constipated tbh. idk if it's because i'm not eating enough or what. but i went down a notch on my fitbit strap :) we have the eilat trip this weekend and i think i'll wear the purple suit instead of the black one.

misc:

i ended up not going to hannah's halloween party :( they were super nice about it obviously but i felt bad. i just haven't been sleeping well and i was so exhausted, plus madeleine was sick and didn't really want to go either, so i just stayed home.

in other news i've been pretty good about reading! i just finished 'rebecca' by daphne du maurier yesterday and really enjoyed it. i want to try and read more classics by female authors.

we also watched pulp fiction and i didn't like it. we saw mother! and it was alright, super crazy symbolic but the movie itself was...a lot.

i think that's really it?

[ramle17-18]

10/8-10/14

ok so sunday (the 8th) is when i finally got out of bed and felt comfortable going for a walk, so i walked to the shuk by myself, did a little bit of shopping (and bought a scale!), and then took the bus by myself for the first time. 

to be completely honest, i haven’t done anything for all of sukkot. barely left the house (although being sick for like a week was a good excuse for a lot of it lol). marleigh keeps judging me for it but like. whatever

we finally got martyrs to work the other night, and i didn’t really like it lol, and then last night i watched 2 eps of black mirror with matt because i wanted to stay up to wait for sultana to get home from the airport, which was around 11:30. she was happy to see me i guess but when marleigh came downstairs she freaked out, which, i mean it makes sense it just. yknow . whatever!

i feel bad because i feel like between here and my main blog i complain about marleigh a lot, like definitely more than anyone else, and that’s really not how i feel about her. i really do like her a lot, we’re friends, and i’m really glad i’m going to be working with her this school year over any of the other three options (all the kids would like sultana more than me, matt and i would butt heads a lot i’m sure, and rachel and i don’t have personalities that would be compatible for that kind of job). 

i think i just feel like marleigh is judging me all the time. she always makes comments about how i like don’t do very much in my free time or how i never leave the house, or i’m so critical that i’m never satisfied with anything, etc. tries to offer me advice for like..weight loss and mental illness without a) knowing what she’s talking about or b) knowing anything about me. very much one of those like ‘positive thinking and yoga will cure you! just stop being so negative!’ people and like at some point she was trying to tell me that i should be eating 2000 cal a day because that’s what’s recommended, and that 1100-1200 is way too little and i’m starving myself. but . hi i’m 4′10 and trying to LOSE weight, if i ate 2000 cal every day i would gain like a pound every week lmfao

speaking of weight loss, though, i was 140 lbs this morning :) so i’m only 12 lbs away from my lowest weight when i lost all that weight a couple years ago. although it’s been VERY difficult for me to see it in the mirror still. those green shorts might (hopefully) fit soon though, i think. which is good because i’m running out of options. not sure what i’m gonna do when it gets cold enough for long pants and i have 3 pairs of leggings and 1 pair of jeans lol. maybe go clothes shopping since i really have some cash left over from the stipend, at least this month. i’m aiming for 110 (or maybe 107.5 just so it’s an even 70 lb loss which sounds impressive lmfao) but tbh i might wanna go down to 105 or 100 depending on how i feel. definitely (probably) not below that, though. what’s annoying is that there are very few people i can talk to about my ultimate goal bc most people, like mom, would be like THAT’S TOO LOW YOU’RE GOING TO STARVE YOURSELF when in fact it’s directly in the middle of the recommended weight for my height, and since i’m not packing very much muscle i think it would actually make a lot of sense for me to hover around there. when i’m there i’ll try to start recomp because it would be nice to be a little toned, but for now i’ll settle with the goal of being able to feel comfortable being photographed lmfao. 

i did start c25k up again, though, i’ve only done 2 days so far and i probably should be doing day 3 right now instead of writing this, but i haven’t slept well the past 2 nights so i’m probably just going to do it tomorrow instead. and i also started doing a very small amount of bodyweight exercises. my fear is, of course, that it’ll slow down my weight loss, which it will, and as much as i know to trust the science of “just because you’re not losing weight doesn’t mean you’re not losing fat, muscle weighs more than fat” etc, it’ll be really discouraging not to have that marker that i can graph every day just to know where i’m at. that’s another thing, if (certain) people in the house knew i weighed myself every morning they’d probably flip their shit and think i’m neck-deep in an eating disorder, when in reality it’s so much healthier for me to see the daily fluctuations and be able to look at it as a trend line. if i only weighed myself once a week, let’s say i weigh myself after a day of exercise, or after a particularly sodium-filled day, or just a day i didn’t drink as much water as i thought i did, i would be really upset and discouraged to see a gain on the scale. but in doing it every day i’m much more okay with fluctuations and it’s helpful to see that the overall trend is still going waaay down. i mean i’ve lost almost 40 lbs. (which you’d think i would be able to see in the mirror by now lol)

hmm i feel like i’m not using this journal in a way that will make me happy i kept it. i mean, it’ll be cool to know how i was feeling about certain things, and it’s a personal journal instead of a blog, but i still feel like i’m going to look back and be like “why did you spend so much time complaining about your roommates and talking about your weight loss instead of describing your experience abroad, dumbass?” but also as i keep pointing out to literally everyone, we still haven’t started teaching yet. (two days!!) once we’re there i think i’ll have more to talk about.

the first few days of november we’re going on a 3-day trip to the negev and eilat. i’m excited for it, but also really anxious lol. we also didn’t get to pick our roommates this time like we did last time (although idk if sultana and marleigh would’ve even wanted me to room with them again, they probably would want sydney or rebecca) and i’m really hoping they don’t just stick us with some random people for 2 nights.

we were offered 4 tracks for the educational sector of the program: technology, bedouins, the gaza strip, and the black hebrew israelites. naturally i picked the bedouins lmfao i have no interest in hearing masa propaganda about how hard it is for the israelis to live in gaza (the email seriously was like “learn how these people live as they just try to keep their families safe in the settlements....ok then don’t fucking illegally settle on other peoples’ land?), etc etc. of course the gaza one was the most popular lol. but i was told aaron jaffe is anti-israel (and everyone was like “uhhh why are you even on this program” like shut up lol) and i think he’s doing the bedouin track as well, which was pretty small last time i looked, so even though we haven’t talked before maybe i can strike up a conversation about it because i haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone yet and it’s getting tough.

and then we basically have like a day of free time, during which i’m hoping to go snorkeling and/or swimming with dolphins, which will be amazing. maybe i’ll go shopping or something. but beyond that i don’t know what i’m going to do or who i’m going to hang out with, which makes me worry that i’m either gonna just be following people around like a lost puppy (as usual) or holed up in my room “relaxing” for shabbat because so many activities are optional. there’s an early morning hike on the second day but i decided not to sign up because i don’t particularly like hiking, it’ll be hot down there even though it’s november, and i probably wouldn’t enjoy myself. it just didn’t seem like the best time for a physical challenge, a 2-3 hour hike up and down mountains or whatever. but it’s fine.

oh, i totally forgot to mention that matt and i smoked together! it felt so high school, smoking out of an apple pipe and getting high off such a small amount (for him, i think for me it was pretty standard lol). it was fun though, we watched se7en and then i went to bed early. i think indica makes me too sleepy. 

he made weed butter too which i tried but didn’t find worth it, it took like 2 hours before i felt anything and then literally all i wanted to do was go to sleep. so i don’t think i’m gonna have any of that again. which is fine because i don’t want that to be a regular thing, anyway. i don’t wanna get sent home lol

[ramle17-18]

10/7/17

ok so i missed like 2 weeks of journaling cool cool cool cool cool

i’ll try to see if i remember what happened lmfao

so the sunday after rosh hashana - we had an enrichment activity that was really just nurit talking to us in the english center and eventually us discussing our expectations of her, ourselves, and each other. wow this feels like it was so long ago lmao but she said something that really bothered me. she was talking about the different ways she interacts with all of us or whatever and she basically looked at me and was like “jami, i feel like i don’t know anything about you, you’re so reserved and closed off” or something and it made me feel really fucking awful for a couple days lmfao. she even said like “i want you to talk to me, i don’t even know if this is something you would’ve preferred i talk about with you privately” which...no shit? why would this be a conversation i would want to have in front of everyone lol?

i later brought it up kind of passive-aggressively while talking to matt and marleigh and it just turned into a whole slew of ignorant pop psychoanalysis and “well if you know it’s irrational to be upset about it then don’t be upset about it” which just left me feeling infinitely shittier.

we also pulled names from a hat to make rosh hashana cards for one another and sultana and i pulled each other, i wrote something really long and gay and dumb but she made me a cute apple-shaped card and wrote some really sweet stuff

monday - we had our last pedagogical training. it was useless as usual until miriam’s guest came in, who i think is an actual professional pedagogical instructor, and she gave us some awesome (and organized) insight and ideas/materials.

tuesday - thursday we had our final observation days. personally i think 3 was too many, especially because we had already spent several days at the school, but whatever. i don’t really know if i gained a whole lot from those days.

wednesday night we went to jaffo to eat shakshuka at this place marleigh and matt are obsessed with (called dr. shakshuka - it was good, but imo not obsess-worthy) and then we went to an outdoor showing of the breakfast club, where i drank like a quarter of a bottle of wine and was sufficiently tipsy enough for everyone to think i was hilarious 

thursday night we had the mixer dinner/activity with the latinx community of ramla, but (aside from rachel) we mostly ended up talking amongst ourselves and we left sort of early. sultana and i were gonna watch a movie, but then i decided i wanted wine so we went and got 2 bottles, and all of us except marleigh (who was in a bad mood and was in her room) ended up playing never have i ever, truth, and then arguing politics until 1am. it was a fun night

friday was erev yom kippur, so as far as i remember i didn’t do anything

saturday was yom kippur, and i fasted. during the evening we went and met nurit to go to a synagogue and listen to the shofar, and i really really disliked it. it was the first time i’ve seen women and men separated for tfilot, and like...it would’ve been one thing if it had been men and women in the same room with a rope separating them or something, but instead all the women (and screaming children) were shunted off to a little side room with very little room, not enough chairs, not enough siddurim, and a very obscured view of what was happening in the main room. we could barely hear, too. and yet when the shofar was blown several women were still crying. it was astonishing to me that they were still able to connect enough to be so emotional when it felt like they were given the absolute bare minimum to work with

sunday - i FINALLY got to see jerusalem!! it was beautiful. i loved it. so much. first we went to this church where jesus was crucified and buried and then resurrected, which was actually really cool. just the idea of people who lived thousands of years ago standing where i was standing, touching what i touched, was so novel and impactful to me. at home when i get that feeling it’s because someone 300 years ago was touching it, now it’s 3000 years. it absolutely blows my mind.

then we went to the kotel!!! i did end up tearing up a little bit. i prayed for a few minutes and also stuck a note in the wall, it was pretty spiritual. it was also smaller than i thought it would be for some reason.

after that we went to the city of david, which was cool. we walked up and down a lot of stairs and then went through this ancient aqueduct thing, which freaked a couple of claustrophobic people out but didn’t bother me.

after the tours we had about an hour and a half of time to explore the shuk in jerusalem, so we got these awesome malawha (?) sandwiches sultana knew about and then ended up at a bar. the bartender was a 19 year old blonde girl and she was literally one of the most beautiful girls i’ve ever seen in my life. we ended up sitting with a couple of bat yam people, and gabe was flirting with everyone and even flirted with me a little bit which somehow resulted in some stupid and ugly infatuation for a few days (which i am now over).

we were late to the bus and ended up getting yelled at lmao

i don’t even remember what we did that evening after getting back.

monday - more talking about stuff with nurit in the english center, then we went to her other sister’s house with her sister and nieces and nephew to help build a sukkah. it was an ok time, matt and i got kind of snippy with each other at some point and i think i ended up feeling kind of shitty.

tuesday - the last good day! lmao 

sultana and marleigh invited me to the beach and then to see ‘it.’ i originally said no but then changed my mind, so we went and spent a few hours at the beach. sultana invited sydney and “jokingly” told her to bring gabe, and it bothered me just because i wish she would ask before inviting people lol. i already hadn’t wanted to go and decided to go, and i just think the considerate thing to do would’ve been to ask marleigh and i if we were okay with it, rather than waiting until afterward to tell us. 

after the beach sultana ditched us to go find sydney, who didn’t wanna see the movie, so marleigh and i went by ourselves. it was AMAZING. didn’t scare me, but i really enjoyed it. i thought overall it was just a really well-made film.

when we got out of the theater sultana, sydney, and rebecca were sitting at a table right in front of the cinema talking to gregg lmao. he had just happened to be there and we talked to him for a few minutes, and he directed us to a good burger place.

on our way to get burgers we ran into harry and sarah, which was really funny. and then finally got to the burger place. the burgers were good, but i only ate half because it was so much food. i was sitting across from rebecca and, as far as i can tell, my suspicions that she doesn’t like me were only confirmed.

overall it was a good day. and then...

wednesday - i woke up feeling like complete and utter shit! i think i have the flu or the stomach flu or something, and i’m still getting over it. literally i’ve spent the past 3 days in bed doing nothing. it’s been so boring and i feel like shit. last night i was feeling well enough to eat and made the mistake of eating the other half of my burger, which was a bad move. i still feel nauseous.

i’m sitting in the living room right now but i genuinely think i might go lay down in my room again. also, rachel is in malta, madeleine is in china visiting dan’s family, sultana is in paris, and marleigh left yesterday for jerusalem, so it’s just me and matt in the house which is kind of weird.

[ramle17-18]

9/23

not a bad rest of the week!

tuesday night nurit’s mom and nieces and nephew came over to make shakshuka, and it was DELICIOUS. just tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, onion, eggs, and some spices. it was spicy but i really enjoyed it, and it’s definitely making me like fantasize about living in my own place and making shakshuka for dinner-  healthy, filling, delicious, etc.

we did some line dancing with the nieces after (they were so cute! and i got to practice my hebrew a bit because they didn’t speak english) and then i taught sultana how to do yoya, then we did zieben zieben which the older niece knew, bc apparently even the dance is from eurovision, which i didn’t know

wednesday morning we went to the bank and got our debit cards - awesome! except there’s no money in our accounts yet lmfao; then around noon david picked me up and brought me to his and rachel’s house to stay for the rest of the week.

wednesday night we went to noam’s house (one of their sons) for erev rosh hashana dinner. they had a cute dog and i was petting him and then he like laid down on my feet and gave me his tummy so i was rubbing his tummy, but then he was growling (which is assumed was a happy growl like riley) and then he tried to bite me lol..so then i was afraid to pet him for the rest of the night

dinner was good, a lot of stuff i didn’t like but i managed to find more than enough to eat. nothing particularly great, though. 

thursday - sat around the house and did nothing all day! i made some tarot cards out of notebook paper and pencil (which i’ve already managed to rip) so i might make some sturdier ones out of construction paper now that i’m home. 

thursday night we went to rachel’s sister’s house for dinner. the family didn’t treat me much differently than noam’s family did, but i liked them better for some reason. same deal with dinner, lots of stuff i don’t eat but i ate plenty, then we went home

friday - david and rachel took me to an idf memorial museum for the armored corps (which is the tanks). super fun! lmfao. i was really uncomfortable the entire time, and didn’t say much, and i think they picked up on that bc i’m fairly certain we ended up leaving earlier than planned. it was. awkward and not great

then we had a quiet dinner, the two of them, me, and gilad, david bbq’d some chicken and steak which was good. 

and then this morning david drove me home.

talia told me last night that when she went home riley got really excited to see her, and then went back to the door to look for me. even just typing it now it’s making me tear up, i really really fucking miss her and it makes me so sad that she misses me too :(

-

also i’ve lost weight since getting here somehow?? i genuinely don’t know how that’s possible, because i could’ve sworn i was eating more than i should be and not exercising nearly enough, but idk i guess i’m eating less than i thought. my blue shorts are getting a bit roomy, the only pair of actual blue jeans i brought were too tight on me before i left and now fit me almost perfectly, and the green little shorts aren’t too far off from fitting - i can button and zip them, they’re just tighter than i feel comfortable wearing in public (camel toe, etc)

i measured my waist with the tape measure i brought and it seems i’ve lost an inch or so. and then i weighed myself a million times at the garber’s, and adding an extra pound or so to be safe i’m about 147-148 pounds now. i was 155 on august 28th. i know i’d gotten down to 151.1 at one point, but the last entry i had in libra was that one, which makes sense because i was awful awful the week or two before i left. 

but yeah i officially reached (surpassed!) my goal of 150lbs which is the initial one i’d put into the fitbit app (hoping to have reached it before i left but whatever), so i have it set to 120 now as another short-term measure, which is pretty much exactly the amount of weight my first goal was, so i just need to do that again. seeing the scale on the app start at 148 and end at 120 instead of 177.5-150 is SO rewarding..even though i don’t see it in the mirror and hardly see it in any comparison pictures.

but i know it’s not the scale because like i said, my clothes are all fitting me differently now. so since i was able to do the first 30ish pounds in about 3.5 months, i’m gonna see if i can get down at least another maybe..20ish? before the end of the year. so if that happens i’ll be like 130ish when mom and talia come to visit, which will be cool because 129 is my lowest. 

i might invest in a bathroom scale at some point soon because it’s going to be difficult to stay motivated when i can’t weight myself regularly. although it’s been working for me for the 3 weeks i’ve been here already, so who knows. plus i saw on r/loseit this morning that someone had a bathroom scale that said he was 210, a gym scale that said he was 180, and a doctor’s office scale that said he was 168.5. so that’s terrifying, but also that variance seems really ridiculous to me. even if the doctor’s office scale is always a couple of pounds higher, that’s usually at most. so we’ll see.

otherwise hopefully the gym will have a scale, and hopefully we’ll get our gym memberships soon.

[ramle17-18]

9/19

feeling kind of shitty so i wanna just write it all down lol

saturday - absolutely useless day tbh, i genuinely don’t even remember what i did lol. i think that was the day marleigh and rachel and i went to the shuk and grocery store but beyond that did literally nothing

sunday - didn’t go anywhere but i got a lot of writing done! several sestinas, a villanelle, and an ok writing exercise. i tried to finish up the poems the next day but the inspiration had left me

monday - we went to sharet school, which seems to have a noticeably higher budget allotted to them than ben gurion does, but that’s fine. marleigh and i get our own classroom so who cares lol. the kids were sweet but i kinda hung back and let matt and rachel take charge since it’s their school

tuesday (today) - today was shit! we went back to ben gurion and we were supposed to play games with the kids and teach them a song. rachel really wanted to teach them that annoying bumblebee song (i’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me, etc etc) and she and sultana kind of put up a stink when i suggested we do something that isn’t so babyish bc uh...the kids aren’t babies. 

so first i suggested a disney song, like from frozen or something, because the kids would already be familiar with it so it would be easier to go through and learn the lyrics. but then this morning i came up with the idea of doing the cha cha slide because the lyrics are simple enough and it’s fun, and definitely age appropriate.

marleigh thought it was a good idea but like i said, rachel and sultana were fighting me on it for some reason. but we got to do it and the kids seemed like they were having fun, after solving 900 technology issues (which were mainly, miriam wanted me to show a video along with the song and i told her it wasn’t necessary, she insisted, we found a video, then spent over 10 minutes trying to get the audio to work, which led me to suggest again that we just do it without the video, which is eventually what we did and it was literally fine.)

but idk all the glitches made me incredibly anxious, plus the fucking director of mitf decided to drop by along with dor so i was just. anxious and i guess people could tell because they kept trying to assure me that i did fine, and like i don’t believe that they truly meant that but i also do think i did ok. it felt very camp-mode to me which i’m comfortable with, so i was able to teach the dance and it seemed successful.

miriam is just an idiot and she has yet to share anything useful with me lmfao and idk what was up sultana’s butt today but we kept butting heads. also one of the kids literally brought her a bag of chocolate today which, cool, she’s not gonna be at this school so.

like she might as well be lmfao obviously the kids like her and no shit, she’s pretty and nice and funny and warm and whatever the fuck, and they’re all gonna be disappointed when it’s just me and marleigh for the rest of the year. so it was just a bad self-esteem day and now literally all the other girls in the house are hanging out in rachel and sultana’s room and i kept walking by the door hoping someone would invite me in but nobody did so i’m just sitting in my room :) it’s fine. like i know they genuinely probably didn’t even see me walk past but also i walked past 3 times and like . whatever i just always feel left out and like nobody wants me here or i’m just an afterthought or whatever. i don’t know why i thought it would be any different here than at home lmfao

nurit’s mom is coming over tonight and we’re making shakshuka, and then tomorrow rachel and david are picking me up and i’m staying with them until saturday. i was kind of hoping i would go for dinner tomorrow and maybe thursday and then just stay home and chill the rest of this week, but rachel invited me for the holiday and for shabbat so of course i said yes, so i’ll be staying with them for another 3 nights. and that’s great! but i feel like i need to be more awake and social than i was last time because i don’t have the jet lag excuse, and i think we’re going to different family members’ houses both nights so. idk we’ll see

i just feel like shit so it’s whatever lol

[ramle17-18]

9/16/17

i’ve been slacking so much on writing these whoops! so, this past week:

monday - first day of pedagogical training. wanted to die because the adviser is the most disorganized person ive ever met and seemed to have no clue what she was talking about. it made me so nervous and anxious for the program lmfao. sultana was also nervous and i feel bad for her bc she’s gonna be at a school by herself, and i know that’s making her really anxious too

tuesday - we had our first visit to ben gurion, which is the school marleigh and i will be at. the kids were WONDERFUL. so adorable and they seemed to like us a lot! i was surprised to find out that the english teachers really did not speak english well, though. i guess it makes sense, since ramle is a poorer city, but it was strange to sit in on an english class and see that.

it was also sultana’s birthday, and we all had plans to go to tel aviv. but i was super anxious for the north trip so i said i had a migraine and stayed home, because i was nauseous and had a headache and knew i wouldn’t sleep well that night...i was correct lol

wednesday - north trip! i was nauseous all fucking day. we were supposed to go on a 2 hour(ish) bike ride when we got there, but they decided to take us rafting in the jordan river instead because it was so goddamn hot out. it was fun, although i got a glimpse of how seriously immature some of the bat yam folk are lol. then later we went on a hike which was way shortened and saw a waterfall, and it was absolutely stunning. 

we stopped at a lookout point where we could see the syrian border, and they talked a little bit about the civil war there. some people had been to that spot on birthright before and said that the last time they were there, they’d heard gunshots and things. it made me so uncomfortable that we were sitting there as happy tourists while people were probably getting killed within our line of vision, just on the other side of an imaginary line.

we stayed at a kibbutz that night and i roomed with marleigh and sultana, and we had a quiet night in of heart to hearts and tarot readings, it was nice!

thursday - still nauseous lmfao (although i realized i accidentally took two birth control pills by mistake somehow? so that might’ve been part of the reason why, plus anxiety, plus altitude sickness)

we went apple-picking in the morning and got more apples than we know what to do with, and then we went to tzfat, which was cool. we saw a glass-blowing demo which i loved, and also we heard from an artist who gets his inspiration from kabbalah, which was also really cool. i was so happy to get home though.

friday - didn’t do much, enjoyed a great sleep, went to the shuk and the grocery store and got some food staples so i can feel comfortable eating over the next few days. nurit kept offering to get me a host family, but i truthfully told her i can’t handle an israeli shabbat dinner every week, it’s just too many people trying to pressure me to eat too much food

[ramle17-18]

sun 9/10

ok so yesterday was shabbat, literally nothing happened. i sat on my ass all day and then binge-ate some chocolate-filled wafers and wanted to die. the usual.

today we had that masa kickoff event at a hotel near jerusalem. it was boring and kind of dumb but it was fine. we met a stray cat that was letting us all pet him and then he sat in my lap for a little and it was amazing. i saw jamie peters and she was really nice and i was just kinda [eye emoji] bc she unfriended me on fb whenever ago and then was asking me for my number which means she deleted me from her contacts at some point lol

i’m just tired idek yesterday and today were kinda nothing days

[ramle17-18]

week 1

well! i’ve already written several journal entries about this past week, but the website i was using to write them deleted them :) thousands of words! isn’t that exciting. so i’m gonna summarize the first week here and then continue using this blog, i guess, because even though this website is literal hell at least it (usually) saves posts lol

SO

i landed last friday (sept 1) and stayed with rachel and david garber. they were incredibly sweet to me even though i did pretty much nothing other than sleep or hide in my room and read. at one point we visited a monastery nearby in modi’in, which was beautiful! also jet lag is a bitch

the program started monday, so that’s when i moved into my house and met everyone. it’s actually a pretty sizeable house! we could have probably almost double as much space if there wasn’t so much storage from the program, tbh, but it’s ok because the other groups are all living in apartments, many of them with more than 6 people. so it’s cool.

there are 6 of us, 5 girls and 1 guy:

rachel - very very sweet! kind of like. a naive liberal with p infuriating politics, but she’s incredibly nice. kinda like dorky and awkward sometimes but in a very endearing way (also like aren’t we all lol)

sultana - sultana is so cool lmfao. she’s pretty and smart and has family from all over the world and has been all over the world and has done so many cool things! also some odd politics but like. whatever

marleigh - i love marleigh she’s so laid-back and chill and sweet and fun to be around!! she never learned the alef bet so i’ve been helping her, and she’s picking it up really quickly

madeleine - a purple-haired vegan lesbian with an “animal rights is a feminist issue” sticker on her water bottle. very much like a Tumblr Person. she’s incredibly kind and her girlfriend has been hanging out with us all week and i love them both and they’re adorable

matt - he’s like 28 and can be kind of an asshole sometimes but never toward us. he’s been super nice and funny and helpful around the house and stuff

and then me!

so somehow i managed to score the single room, which is honestly a godsend because i don’t know how i would survive without it. i really was unsure how i was going to deal with being overwhelmed and needing alone time and stuff, and that was one of my biggest sources of anxiety for this program. but everyone seems cool with it (matt has his own room too obviously) and also when i mention that ive never lived not at home, i have anxiety, etc, they all seem happy for me that i have the single so that im able to be a little more comfortable :)

-

tuesday was destination israel orientation, and basically we just went to a place in bat yam and poorly mingled and then had to introduce ourselves in front of everyone and it was just bleh. i was stuck standing by myself a few times, or otherwise following rachel around. i don’t know how to be social lmfao i’m gonna have to work on that

-

wednesday we did a walking tour of ramla’s old city, which was really beautiful. we started in a little museum and then walked through the road of the old city (and passed a building where napolean stayed for a night or two!) and then saw the white tower (and climbed all 121 steps up to the top) and the pool of arches, which was awesome.

and then this guy david leichman came for dinner. he’s a friend of jerry kaye’s, i found out, which kind of didn’t surprise me based on the way he talked. he just kind of...rambled about his philosophies on life for like over an hour and seemed very self-important lmao. but it was whatever. everyone else kind of seemed to be hanging on his every word but i was like eh

-

thursday we visited the center where we’ll be tutoring kids in english and also doing our ulpan and pedagogical training. and then thursday night we went to samir’s and i actually got drunk!

before we went to dinner i had a conversation about politics with marleigh and sultana, and ending up revealing that i’m a leftist before revealing that i’m a lesbian lmfao

and then yeah at samir’s they gave us a free shot of lemon vodka so i took it and ended up taking 2 more, and i didn’t even get nauseous! so i was a nice level of drunk but definitely still functional, and everyone seemed to love drunk jami. 

i ended up telling sultana that i’m a lesbian and then also telling madeleine’s gf and then madeleine, which felt good. it was actually a super fun night.

-

friday sultana marleigh and i went to the beach in tel aviv! it was stunning and soooo nice, but i ended up getting pretty badly sunburned even though i put on sunscreen like 4 times. the salt of the mediterranean was a little much and i hate getting sand everywhere but that’s just what it is.

after the beach on the way home we stopped at one of the shuks in tel aviv, and i got a pair of those light airy middle eastern long pants which i’m incredibly excited to wear.

and then for dinner nurit invited us to her apartment! there was SOOOOOOOOOO much food, it was insane.

nurit and her sister had invited some couples as well, and one of the guys is from nigeria, so we were sitting and talking to him about america for a bit. naturally i ended up ranting about income inequality and classism and stuff and they were so surprised when we talked about like, how expensive education is, food deserts, the opportunities denied to poor people and subsequent blame of poor people for their problems, etc.

and at one point i was like “yeah in america rich people hate poor people” and rachel was like “well that’s not true, not every single rich person does” and then i almost jumped off the (beautiful) 16th floor balcony.

dinner was delicious but there was so fucking much food that i ended up feeling nauseous all night. potentially because i ate some spicy fish. it was so good though i couldn’t turn it down lmao. but they just kept bringing out course after course and people kept trying to persuade me to eat more, and i’m proud to say that i held my ground! not that i really had any other choice bc if i had eaten more i genuinely think i would’ve thrown up.

-

it’s saturday morning so i’ll probably wait to write tonight’s entry, but idk what i’m planning on doing today. probably nothing.

i had a vivid dream about cameron last night which really fucking sucks. every so often i’ll have a really sweet and intimate and tender dream about him and i wake up feeling so uncomfortable and confused. in the dream i was literally identifying as a lesbian and was like “hm well maybe not” because of him and it was so awful lol. i hate him and i hate what he did to me and i hate that i still dream about him or think about him even though he’s literally such an awful person. like he wants to join the navy i hate him and if i met him now instead of in high school i would still hate him so @ brain what the fuck are you doing!!!!!!