Well friends, we haven't spoken in two weeks, and a whole lot has happened since then! (I'm sure with you all too - I'd love to hear about it!)
We started with a four day nature/hiking trip. This was a very new experience for me - four days of walking about 10 km (6 miles) each day, not showering, sleeping outside in sleeping bags, etc. It was very different but fun as well - one night was great in particular, as I helped make about 200 kebabs (tasty meatballs) and a musician came and sang to us and gave us life advice. Also that night we were split into two main groups, aleph (A) and bet (B). I'm in bet, and I really like the people and our two designated counselors.
We returned to the Mechina on Wednesday night, and spent all of Thursday cleaning and making the place as spotless as it can be (which is still quite "spotty" when you are living with 51 other people). I, for example, helped clean a kitchen, some floors, and washed 500+ dishes so we could all eat! At the end of the day, within aleph and bet we were divided into two apartments - I'm in Gimmel (G though it's the third letter in the alphabet). In my personal room there are two other girls, Tal and Anat, and though they are both very different than me they are wonderful and we get along really well. In general I love the people in my apartment!
We've been very busy since then, though our totally regular schedule won't start until late October. Every day certain people are in charge of cooking dinner for everyone, or washing dishes (the chore I end up doing more often than not). On Friday night we welcomed Shabbat with an alternative service that dealt with making a home. I've gone to the beach several times, to a bar in Southern Tel Aviv with friends, to a cafe with my apartment's counselor for a meeting about life and the Mechina that we'll do every three weeks. One day we took a tour of Jaffa "in the footsteps of Herzl," with all kinds of questions about Zionism and how it can be witnessed (or not) in Jaffa. We went through the old city, a new very sterile and not so nice neighborhood for Jews only called Andromeda, and through the famous and very poor Arab neighborhood Ajami. Another day we did a navigation exercise, where we split up into teams of six and had to go to certain landmarks around Jaffa, asking natives questions. My group went to the police station, a modern dance studio, a cafe that doubles as an Arabic bookstore, the site of the old Mechina buildings (where the students lived in earlier years), a famous bakery called Piece of Cake that made our mouths water, and the French Embassy in the very southern tip of Ajami and thus Jaffa. We talked to people at every stop and learned a lot about the beautiful yet complicated city that is hosting us. We've also had a lot of really cool guest lecturers come, such as the leader of the Reform Judaism movement in Israel, and the head of the current boycott against Tenuva (a very large Israeli dairy company - think Kraft), and the head of the association of Jaffa that aims to improve the lives of the residents, and our future economy teacher who came to talk to us about social justice - all of the youth of Israel demanded social justice through protests and demonstrations this summer, and she wanted us to start thinking why that was so. We chose rules for the Mechina, such as which rooms keep kosher (only one of the apartments and the main kitchen), and which keep Shabbat (none, though we decided that no one should cook or work on the Sabbath if it can be helped to preserve it as a day of rest), and if visitors are allowed to come (they are and they do). We divided ourselves into committees -- I'm on the committee called Jaffa and the Community, and within it we are going to help educate the Mechina and ourselves on Jaffa, and then do volunteer work and other activities that engage ourselves and help those around us. One morning we woke up early and did an alternative service through poetry. Another two mornings we woke up and went to the beach to exercise with an army trainer.
Though I was very homesick the first two weeks, two events made me realize this world is too small for anyone to be allowed to be homesick. One was that my friend Michal was on the phone with a friend, who figured out that his friend in HIS volunteer work program was from Indianapolis. I was handed the phone, and she told me her name was also Maya, and there is going to be a reunion for all of the Hoosiers in Israel sometime this year! Who'd have thought it?! The second thing happened when I was walking through the old city - a couple asked in English to slip by our group, and one of the Mechinistim asked them where they were from. When they said "Indiana," I was shoved forward, and we found out we were both from Bloomington, though they live currently in Nashville! We hugged and talked a bit about Beth Shalom before everyone had to set on their way.
Every day brings something new: new friendships, new knowledge, new reasons to love the city, and I'm excited to see what the next two weeks will bring! Tomorrow morning we return, and on Monday we are headed to a Kibbutz in the north for a seminar on group-building, followed by a Jewish ritual called Slichot (asking forgiveness) in Safed (Tzfat). Then we'll return, and come home a bit earlier than usual because the Jewish New Year will begin in a week and a half - another new beginning.
PS - I'm attaching a few photos of Jaffa. Soon hopefully I'll have photos of my room, but it's not finished yet - we still have some decorating to do!
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