And this is the truth. Although I have an amazing first week, and now into my second week of school, I cannot forget (even for a second) that I am living in Israel. There is not much so much to tell you about school. I am loving my classes and I look forward to getting up in the morning and going to school. I am excited to be studying everything I want to learn. I enjoy the people that are in my class, who are just as motivated, but who struggle just as much as I do in our different subjects. Last week, every night, I decided to go out for dinner with various people. I thought that since it was the first week of school I would not have much work and should take advantage of the free nights, not so much homework, by socializing a bit. By Shabbat, I was done. I felt the overtiredness of my body and noticed that David and I, between his work, my school, and my socializing, had not spent but an hour together every day and I was missing him. By Thursday night, although I had many plans to go out, I decided that it was time for “me” night, or “us” (David and I, as you could have guessed) night. The night started off very relaxing and wonderful. However, then David and I were brought back to the reality, that we were living in Israel.

To not scare or worry anyone (like Mom, Dad, Nana, or Zayda) we are completely okay and everything is safe here. However, we were frightened late Thursday night by a loud sound in the distance. As David and I have learned from living in Israel, Israelis love their fireworks. Not being a big fan of loud sounds anyway, you could guess that the popularity of utilizing fireworks almost every night, if not several times a night, does not thrill me. I have found that most of the Americans in our program just cannot comprehend why Israelis are allowed to put on fireworks. With the violence that has occurred here before and the awful sound that fireworks make, you would think that the use of fireworks would be forbidden in this country. But, oh no! David and I have gotten used to them occurring almost every night and we have a wonderful view of most of them from our kitchen windows. However, the sound we heard last Thursday night was a much louder, scarier, and different boom. We have learned through our safety briefings at HUC, that if there is an act of terror in Jerusalem there will be police and ambulance sirens that follow immediately after, obviously to rush to help. David and I, as we sat together on the couch, listened and listened, and prayed and hoped that there were no sirens. Meanwhile, we had the TV on to the news channel, and the www.haaretzdaily.com website up that updates its viewers every four minutes or so. It was completely frightening. We were very relieved when there were no sirens and discovered that the sound we had heard was policemen, or security guards, who found a suspicious bag or package and “blew it up.”

Going to bed that night, I was surprisingly happy and proud. I thought it would be hard to go to bed and that I would be scared. However, I am living in a very safe area and I am going to okay. I was proud of the defense mechanisms that Israelis have in place in Jerusalem. There is no way that a suspicious anything could get past security in this country. The Israeli army, security, police force, firemen, etc. are taught how to think and act defensively. Hence the name of the Israeli army, the Israel Defense Force. As I closed my eyes a couple of nights ago I began to realize what an amazing opportunity we have to live in this country for the year. It is sad that we have to keep our eyes and ears open for peculiar sounds and situations, but don’t we have to do this in every place in the world now? It is also true that I am not in love with this country. I could never see myself living here permanently, in fact it is hard to imagine that we still have eight more months still to go. However, I can admit that I am proud to be here right now. I am learning a lot about how to handle certain situations, about seeing the larger picture in life, and how to create a safe and comfortable life with David in a country that is not our home.