Awkward & Awesome: Randomness

It’s hot again. I mean, it’s hot every day around here, but today is EXCEPTIONALLY hot. Sizzling. I’m sitting in the livingroom while writing this and enjoying the air conditioning and a cup of chai tea. I know, weird to drink a hot beverage (tea of all of them!) on a hot day, but scroll down to see why tea…

Awkward:

• I was supposed to take the dog to the vet at the pound to be neutered on Wednesday, but since his allergic reaction episode on Tuesday I decided to give him another week. So I called the vet to cancel the appointment and the guy who answered said: “Well I don’t have an appointment for today at 11am, so whatever.” I’m glad I didn’t go over.
• Being so exhausted from the heat. We all are.
• I’ve caught and released 5 mice so far. Is that normal? Well it’s gross at least.
• I quit drinking coffee for the reminder 42 days of my stay here in Israel. I’m trying to compensate the lack of caffeine with tea and occasionally soda. Hey, I’ve stayed strong for 8 hours already! Wohoo!
• I’ve become Israeli. But I haven’t decided yet if I like the lipstick so bright red. Thoughts?

Awesome:

• I bought two pairs of new shoes today! I also had an amazing turkey wrap for lunch. Yums!
• Being treated by a movie night by two Israeli friends yesterday. We saw The Avengers, which wasn’t actually all that bad.
• Two free days in a row. Feels like vacation!
• Sleep. Much needed!
• Amazing red sunsets and sunrises. Only in the desert! (Okay, in a couple other place too!)
• This being the beginning of the end of my trip. Sad to go but happy to leave! If that makes sense.

Wow, I think I’ll go crash now. I need another nap Happy weekend to all!

 

looking forward to easier times

It’s been a rough couple days. I’ve been working a lot of morning shifts, and honestly speaking, they’ve taken the energy out of me. But it’s not only the lack of sleep that’s exhausting me here. Sleeping less means that my body is tired, but working more means that I’m mentally pooped. I haven’t written too much about work here on my blog, mainly because professional confidentiality applies to volunteers as well. If you only knew some of the stories I have to tell!

Sorry, didn’t mean to tease.

Yesterday morning I went to the dentist with six friends and five other guides. Mind you, even I don’t really enjoy going to the dentist, so I can somehow relate to the friends’ unwillingness. The trip there and back took a lot of effort from all the guides, and by the time we got back at noon, even our muscles were sore. In the evening I went back to work, and the only thing that went through my mind was: “Here again.”

I think the hardest part of this work is the strain that autism puts on all of the guides’ patience. The house I work in is low function and high autism, meaning that we concentrate more on the disability than we actually get to enjoy the work with friends. In Tatiana’s house they actually get to do therapeutic chores and spend time with the friends. In my house we mainly clean and keep order.

It’s hard to try to keep your love for these people even in those moments when you have to pin someone down and hope not to be punched or slapped or kicked or screamed at. There are times when the guides (including me) go home with headaches, scratches, bruises and tears.  And the most painful of them all are the tears.

I have 44 days left here in Israel and I want to remember the friends as they are during the good days. Their sometimes so comical personalities and the hilarious moments I’ve had with them and the guides. I want to remember what a rewarding trip this was for me, instead of this being merely a six month mental strain. I will definitely look back on this trip as a groundbreaking period in my life, and I hope time will gold all memories, even the hard ones.

 

Awkward & Awesome: Dog Edition

I swear this has turned into a dog blog now with Oscar in my life. I promise I have a life! I think. Oh well.

It’s been a while since I took part in this Thursday activity, so I’ll jump back on the wagon again! Enjoy!

Awkward:

• Baking in the afternoon heat. Takes some of the fun out of it.
• Oscar chasing all the street cats he sees. And since there are about 20 cats just after the first corner, you can imagine what walking him for two blocks is like!
• The EU regulations for dogs. Not awkward, but rather ridiculous!
• Taking a two hour nap after coming back from the morning shift today. I’m all mixed up now.
• Some Jewish holiday that involves a lot of bonfires. The smoke from THREE bonfires just outside our building came into our apartment and gave me a headache.
• The amount of milk, bread and eggs three girls can put away. We need a cow and some hens as our pets.

Awesome:

• Slowly figuring out what Oscar needs to get out of Israel. In your face, EU!
• Brownies. Um, obviously.
• 4 new shirts for 150 shekels. Winning!
• Skyping with people, and hearing from friends! Miss you all!
• Fun moments at work. Trust me, they make a HUGE difference when it comes to the place I work in.
• 50 days until hello Seattle!!!
• NAPS. I heart sleeping.
• Ice cold Coke when it’s +35 degrees outside.
• Tan lines. Hey, you’d appreciate them too if you were a palefaced Finn!

Have a sunny, cheerful week!

Open doors

It’s getting hot in here. The three of us go to sleep with the fan on, window open and barely have a blanket on the whole night, and still we wake up sweating. And after having breakfast we decide it’s too hot to do anything reasonable or productive, so we just go back to sleep. Sieastas make a whole lot of sense in hot countries, trust me! It’s after 6pm that there’s any point in going out and living a life. Even Oscar will barely stick his nose outside the cool, air-conditioned apartment before the day has passed its hottest hour. Thank God for a smart dog!

He really is a reasonable puppy, though. I’ve been observing him rather closely these past days that I’ve had him, and he’s surprisingly humanlike even in all of his dog-ness. The first couple days when I took him out for a walk, he’d refuse to get out of our apartment, and once we came back from our walk he’d refuse to go back inside our the building. He’s very much afraid of entering open, unfamiliar doors. He doesn’t know what’ll wait for him inside, and he’s still not absolutely sure if he trusts me enough to follow me through all ways in life.

Whenever faced with these open doors he’ll sit down and refuse to move. He’ll fold his ears back and take a good look around his surroundings to decided whether it’s safe to enter or not. With a little encouragement and coaxing he’ll get up slowly and walk with careful steps inside. The first time when we came back from the pound I had to carry him all four flights of stairs because he was SOOOooo afraid. And it’s not like he’s a little chihuahua you can just pick up with one hand and carry upstairs without effort. I got a little workout that day …

But aren’t we all a little afraid of open, unknown doors in our lives? I have no idea what life will bring me the next few months or so. I’m facing a whole lot of responsibility getting this puppy out of the country. And I have no idea what’ll face me when I get back to Finland. I need an apartment, I need a job, I need to get back on track with my studies. There are big gaps everywhere in my life, and I need to plunge into them with a whole lot of energy to figure things out.

And yet those open doors somehow always seem to turn out good. Today I Skyped with my mom, and she informed me about an apartment that might be available right after I get back from the US. And I also have a vet appointment for Wednesday to see what documents Oscar needs to do a little traveling (boy is he going to be a cosmopolitan pup!).

As I’ve found out this far: Life always wins (in matters of all size).

Reality check.

My life has been completely invaded by the puppy, and it seems like the past 48hours were merely a second. We’ve all learned so many things about the dog already: all it’s quirks and likes, but still it’s a lot of “getting used to” at the moment.  I’m pretty sure he’d say the same about the situation if he could talk! He looooves to be petted and he absolutely refuses to go through doors, which is especially annoying when you’re in a hurry to get back home before work starts… He’s also in his chewing stage at the moment, which means that we’ve rescued (almost) all of our shoes from the floor (I left a pair of ugly rubber crocs lying around. I really won’t miss them if he gets to destroying them).

I’m really enjoying all the exercise I’m getting by taking Oscar out, though. During midday it’s horrible with all the heat, and he doesn’t really seem to enjoy those moments either. But in the morning and later on in the evening the weather is nice and enjoyable around here, and I could spend hours and hours with him in a nice park (too bad there really aren’t any parks here in the desert!).  However, getting up at 5am just to walk him before my morning shift is not my favorite chore in the whole world. But of course I knew this was coming.

Meanwhile during all the fun sides of adopting a dog, I’m also stressing about how to get it out of the country. I’m trying to figure out if it has to be in quarantee for awhile before exiting Israel, but I seem to bump into deadends where ever I check. At the pound I was told to call the ministry of agriculture, where surely they’d know everything about how to get a dog out of Israel. I called, but first of all it was a Hebrew speaking operator, so I needed a little help from somebody I know at work to actually figure out is it 1,2,3 or 4 that I have to press in order to get the right line. When we finally got somebody at the other end of the line, she merely told us that she has no clue what the process involves and said to contact a vet who’d know everything about the process (funny, wasn’t it a vet at the pound who told me otherwise??).

Sigh.

Well… then there’s the airlines… I called one airline, and the person who I spoke to told me that yes, I can take the dog, but I have to contact the airline of the connection flight about their policies (before landing in Seattle I have a layover in Frankfurt). So I sent an email (didn’t want to pay to call to Germany..) and the answer was yes, I can take the dog but I need to contact the airline of the first flight to figure out about their policies.

Sigh.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had someone who’d automatically give ALL the answers to all the questions and worries in your life?

Sigh. I guess I’ll just brood over it until Shabbat ends when I can actually start the whole process again.

Just call me Oscar.

Welcome to the Wiley family, buddy!

Of Mice and Pups

For the past few days we’ve been dealing with the issue of pets here on Radak Street. Well, if you can call cockroaches, pigeons and lately mice, too, pets. Last week our Hebrew lesson was abruptly interrupted by a little mouse running around between our two sofas, and after that Tatiana and I could not concentrate on verbs anymore. I got some mouse traps and set them up before leaving to Arad for a couple of days. When I got back to Beersheva on Friday, I caught two mice in a row during the same day with the trap. The trap is a mouse friendly trap, and it doesn’t kill them: it just traps them inside, and afterwards you can release them outside. Since it’s warming up outside, the cockroaches are also multiplying and finding their way inside our apartment. No bueno. I like animals, just not the unwanted ones, and especially inside the apartment I live in!

But seriously, we have been thinking about real pets also. When I first got here, I was told that we’re allowed to have pets in the apartment, and that the previous Finnish volunteers here had two cats. But I forgot about pets and fun things for a while, when the sirens and crap in life hit me during February and March. It’s been a hard spring. But the other day Tatiana and I were talking about how lonely it is here, and somehow the idea of a dog came up. And just to let you know, the thought of getting a dog has REALLY been in my mind for … the past two decades or so? I’ve never had the privilege of having my own dog . So, Tatiana asked around and her boyfriend here directed us to the local pound, which we visited today.

A BIG mistake. Now I want a dog. I mean, just look at them!:

I have no idea what I’d have to do to take a dog from Israel to the US and from there to Finland (and I can’t say how glad my relatives would be to hear that I’d be traveling over with a puppy. Aunt C?). All the paperwork, vets, payments etc. And I have absolutely no earthly idea why this crazy thought of adopting a dog has hit me this bad right now. Who puts these thoughts in my head anyway? It’s a totally harebrained idea, and you all agree with me, right? Why am I still thinking about it then?

But this I do know: this little 6 month old sweetheart stole my heart:

Out of all the cute 3 month old puppies (some which Tatiana really fell for), all the cute Golden Retriever and Boxer pups, the mix breed little bear cub looking cuties, it was this that caught my eye.

Sigh. Being in love sucks. I mean, who can seriously resist this face?

A trip to the oasis

I’ve been rather busy lechayiming these past couple days! On Wednesday I took the bus to Arad, a smaller city only some kilometers away from the Dead Sea, and spent two nights in a Bedouin tent sleeping right next to a herd of camels (the word’s a herd for camels too, right?).  I was picked up from Arad, and taken to our camping location, which is just near to Masada, an ancient Herodian fortress (the big plateau on the right in the picture below).

I spent my days there with 20+ Finnish people. About 8 of us were volunteers from around Israel, and the rest was a group of Finns who flew in for a week to visit Israel and see what it’s like around this part of the world. The first night after our arrival, we had a short lecture about Bedouin life from a real Bedouin. He told us interesting facts … Bedouins usually have three wives and about 15 kids, and they do their grocery shopping in town with a camel (they actually have their own parking spaces for camels!). Afterwards we had a dinner a la Bedouin, i.e. we sat on the floor of a Bedouin tent and ate meat and rice, and aferwards we were served tea and coffee. In the evening we had made a little fire and ate some  birthday cake, since one of the volunteers had her birthday. What a fun place to celebrate it at!

The next morning we woke up early to eat a very big and filling breakfast before we took off on a morning camel ride (the camels had some rather heavy passengers!). I had never been on a camel before, but it was so much fun! The pace of the animal is not as steady as a horse’s, but it’s more realiable in the rocky desert than a horse would be. And camels ARE rather hilarious.

The afternoon was extremely hot, so we postponed our 12 o’clock hike to 3 o’clock, when the sun was already past it’s hottest point. We set our for a 10k hike, which included superb scenery, going down to a canyon and wading in little pools of water. It was rather memorable (as was the whole trip, in fact!). I was even smart and put on some sun screen and dodged all sunburns! Maybe I should do it more often…

Sleeping in the Bedouin tents was fun and exhausting. There wasn’t much sleep involved actually, since the first night it was Israel’s Independence Day, and some locals came to celebrate it down at the Bedouin camps. Israelis are sorta LOUD. The next night the place was invaded by 100+ (yes, the place holds a lot of folks) LOUD AMERICAN TEENAGERS. As I said, I didn’t really sleep that much. We also had some cats coming inside the tent during the night, and one even decided to camp in my lap for the night. It was cosy. And of course, our tent was just next to the camel’s fenced area, and camels can make a lot of interesting sounds too (not to mention the donkeys, that sounded like they were tortured! Check out a donkey voice, if you haven’t heard it.)

The last morning I woke up with three others to watch the sun rise from Jordan. We weren’t sure what time the sun was actually coming up, so we played it safe and set the alarm for 4:45am. We definitely did not miss the sunrise, since it wasn’t until 6:06 that the prettiest moment of the morning was at hand!

Returning to the desert

Basically I’ve never left it, but I’m returning to the untouched. Today I will finally –FINALLY!!– go on the desert trip to ride camels, hike in the sandy landscapes and experience the Bedouin life. I’m so excited!!

I figured that I’m in love with deserts. I have a thing for the magical feeling of the vast spaces and quietness. It’s a rather one-sided love, though, since the harsh conditions seldom care for us weak humans. But they’re excellent places to disappear into. And I’m more than glad to escape masses of people for awhile again, even if it means that I’ll miss the Independence Day celebrations here in Beersheva.

Until Friday, folks! I’ll snap a camel picture or two for ya!

My song for the year.

I’ve been slightly disappointed by the selection of Hebrew songs that I’ve heard here during my stay. Nora and I purchased a small radio on our first week here, since our tv with five Hebrew speaking channels isn’t that interesting, and we just had to have some background noise. However, for a long time I just hadn’t found THAT Israeli song that I could listen to afterwards back in Finland and think “Ah, Israel!”.

But I did find it.

But not on the radio.

And not by anybody famous.

But by someone who’s company I’ve really enjoyed during my stay.

And that makes the biggest difference.

This is sung by a friend who I work with. Alona, you truly have an amazing voice.