Originally published on Finding Florentine on October 2015 by Rachel Ethridge, WUJS Alumna ’15
My life in Israel has always had an end date.
If you’ve met me since I’ve moved here you know that on February 7th my butt will be seated on a double decker plane headed out of the Middle East towards the city where I left all of my friends, lovers, long sleeve shirts, good sushi, and deep dish pizza.
For a lot of people interning in Israel and doing a Gap year in Israel alongside me, this program is a trial run for their future lives as Israelis. When I touch down in the states, they’ll be making aliyah (moving to Israel with a lot of perks from the government), an act of immigration I have never considered, one they all know the answer to when they hear new friends ask if I would ever make the move.
But this past week made me think.
Photo by Rachel Ethridge
The life I lived. Work I completed. Waterfalls I rappelled down. Food I made (cut up cucumbers and tomatoes). Mouth-dropping meals I bought. The not so tasty ones I tossed down with chilled glasses of riesling. All the boulders I climbed. Trips I planned. And the people I jumped, ate, walked, talked, cooked and sat with, made me rethink everything.
Photo by Rachel Ethridge
Mom don’t worry, I’m still going be booking a flight back to the United States, but last week was the first time I gave this country a chance at showing me all its got. You all know I love the food, the culture I’m being immersed in, the new things I’m learning and the people I’m meeting, but I’ve always proudly defined myself as an American, and nothing else.
I’m all in now.
I’m pulling the Israeli card. I feel a camaraderie with these people as they live under constant threat from their neighbors. The sand and setting sun over the Mediterranean sea are all mine. I’m realizing that every part of this program I thought was a long vacation , is actually my real life.
On Sunday I went to work and left with every intention to mad plan, with my mad planning friend, a weekend up north that would probably never happen (it did). I walked home from her house after googling the life out of my computer for hostels and how to rent a car, stopped at my favorite bread shop on the way and continued my carb-binging diet with a brick-oven cooked calzone and a coffee on the house. That’s right, I drink coffee now, sometimes, once in a while, when it’s free. Full disclosure, I had my first drag of a cigarette in a club a couple weeks ago, I also wear a bra as little as possible these days.
I’m Israeli.
Sunday finished with scrubbing the bathroom, skyping with my people back home, and passing out with Netflix on at a normal hour for the first time in forever.
Monday had the same comforting, smiling on my bus ride home from work, and completely satisfying vibe as the day before. I volunteered at the Israeli Tennis Center in Jaffa that night and played tennis with teenagers for two hours. It was incredible. I’ll be playing with them two nights a week for the rest of my time here and can already tell some of my biggest tears in February will happen on those courts.
Photo by Rachel Ethridge
I get a little nervous when I know my day is over and I don’t have a DVR to turn on, but Monday night changed that. I walked in the door, caught up with my roommates, kept all our doors open, blasted Amy Winehouse, colored on our living room floor and forgot I was in a foreign country.
On Tuesday I went to a museum with my program that lets you experience life as a visually-impaired person for one hour. It was terrifying, beautiful, really hard, so much fun and a life changer. We walked through a market, went on a boat ride, danced, and had a conversation all as blind people and walked back into the light with a new perspective on everything we see every day. Coming off the bus from that field trip a couple of us went to our market while most Israelis were still at work, which is weird, it seems like they’re always eating and enjoying life instead of working, but the shuk (market) was quiet that afternoon and I walked though it sipping on freshly-squeezed lemonade and my mouth full of samples of cheese without being bumped into or stepped on.
Tuesday and Wednesday night looked the same, but were full of different tastes and people.
I ate at the Argentinian restaurant down my street with a new friend, finished planning our trip up north, went to work and left once I had finished everything I needed to get done (sometimes this is at noon, sometimes at four, sometimes I work from home).
Thursday began the coolest weekend of my life. We rented a car and headed up to the Golan Heights. Driving so close to Syria in the pitch black at 10:00PM was not what we had planned, but it lead us to our hostel which housed us the night before we climbed, jumped, rappelled, fell, ate, smelled, and swam for seven hours through Nahal Yehudia. The next day we rode horses through Mount Carmel and I fell in love with an enormous white stallion named Puzzle.
So far Israel has left me with feelings for food and animals.
Photo by Rachel Ethridge
Waiting for the gorgeous, almost done with med school, still has a full head of hair, loves his mom, will move to Chicago, Jewish prince my Nannie had always dreamed for me to marry, to be dropped right in front of my face before I leave.
If you made it through this whole post you’re probably my dad, or you had a little free time before going to Didier farms and taking a hay ride through the pumpkin patches with an apple cider donut in your hand, flannel shirt wrapped around your goose-bump filled body, and crispy, colorful, crunchy leaves falling all around you (please do this for me), then you now know why I would want to move here.
Israel is making me think about things I said absolutely no to two months ago.
Wondering what my thoughts will read like in 100 days.
To read more about Rachel’s life in Israel, check out her blog, Finding Florentine.
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