This week was a salad. Nothing fancy with purple cabbage or chicken strips, just your basic tossed salad. So going basic, we'll start with the lettuce. Lettuce is the base, it fills out the salad, holds onto the dressing and is basically the most necessary ingredient. In fact, Im pretty sure my brother Barak thinks that lettuce is called salad. My lettuce is living in Israel- without which none of the weird things that happen to me would make sense.
Next were going to throw in some carrots. Carrots annoy me because they take a really long time to chew. Over the years I have acquired the patience to actually chew my carrots, but when I was younger I used to just bite off small pieces and swallow them. So our carrots represent my patience. Which was really put to the test this week as I waited for buses to take me to and from Rehovot each day. As I sat around on my base waiting for someone to give me something to do. As I sat in army offices waiting hours for a piece of paper. And as I waited each painfully long day for the army to release me from my mind-numbing boredom.
Tomatoes- Tomatoes are one of those things that I have always eaten, but only started to really like a few months ago when I ate an absolutely amazing one at the Skversky's. I also like tomatoes because even though you know its coming, I still get excited when I bite into one and get that big juicy sploosh in my mouth. This week books were my tomatoes. The analogy is not perfect, because I have always liked reading, but this week I found myself picking up old classics (they fit perfectly into my uniform pockets) and even though I knew I had liked reading it the first time, I still enjoyed the big juicy sploosh that is quality writing (or in the case of the Harry Potter books, just fun stories). These books were my saving grace this week as I spent most of my days sitting in an army warehouse with nothing to do. Of the three days of work I had this week, I think I did a total of two hours of work. Not that I am lazy, they just had nothing for us to do after we folded all the flags and organized the silverware.
Avocado- Avocado is always the most exciting part of the salad for me and I go out of my way to pick them out. Now, I didnt go out of my way to pick these out, but there were a few exciting events that happened to me this week. The first may not seem so exciting to you, but at the time helped me retain my sanity. On our first day in the warehouse (they kicked us out of the armory because they were having inspections), our commander would give us about 10 min worth of work and then leave us there for 2.5 hours. So pretty much, we were bored out of our minds. We played catch with a tassel, found a lighter and after almost setting a box of flags on fire decided that was a bad thing to play with, attempted to sleep on a shipping crate, and then WE FOUND A BOX OF DOMINOES! Im telling you, it was really exciting!
Okay, my next story is a little better. As I was coming home on Wednesday the whole "soldiers know how to handle crises" thing was put to the test when a young yeshiva boy passed out on my bus busting his head open on the way down. Luckily there were other concerned citizens to do things like call the ambulance and talk to the kid, but I ended up being the one pressing the freshly bought dinner napkins donated by a nice old lady to the guys forehead because he had blood running down his face. He was still on the floor of the bus, so I sat next to him applying pressure trying to transfer all of the medical stuff I had learned about bullet wounds to this situation and eventually giving up and going for the "put something on the bleeding part" technique. I did this until some self-righteous woman suggested that this religious boy might be more comfortable with a man holding napkins to his head, because clearly, when semi-conscious and bleeding from the forehead having a woman apply pressure to your wound might lead you to improper thoughts. But I gracefully passed my duty onto another religious man and sood after got off the bus.
And the last, and most important part of the salad, is of course, the dressing. The dressing permeates every part of your salad, making it so much more exciting than a pile of vegetables. Well this week's dressing was Thanksgiving. Now, as I said last week, I was very upset to miss the madness that is my home on Thanksgiving, but apparently I am not the only American in Israel missing the taste of home (aka turkey and stuffing). But just as Jews in America celebrate two days of chag (holiday) due to an uncertainty born of a seven hour time difference, Americans here seemed a little unsure when to celebrate Thanksgiving. So they just did it all week long. On Tuesday night I went to a Sheva Brachot (post-wedding party) and had turkey and stuffing. On Wednesday I was invited to a party in Nachlaot and had, turkey and stuffing (and really good cran-apple stuff). On Thursday, my slightly less-confused roommate hosted Thanksgiving dinner and I had more turkey and stuffing (and made a really good pumpkin pie!) and I just found out that the people that are hosting me for dinner tonight are serving, bum bum bum, turkey and stuffing. So if I missed out on quality Covel time this Thanksgiving, I definitely made up for it in quantity.
Anyway, Shabbat is fast approaching and I must go prepare. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoy your long weekend! Ill be rising at the crack of dawn on Sunday and heading to training in Haifa. Oh, how I miss Sundays.
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