In Which a Blog is Rediscovered

The carbon dating results have returned from the lab. After careful consideration, we believe the blog to have originated in the early twenty first century. Though it appears to have remained untouched for some time, with appropriate care and gentle coaxing it is now beginning to show promising signs of sensory resuscitation. We remain optimistic that the blog will eventually be able to reach its former level of strength and communicative ability. Please stand by for further updates. Thank you.

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Within the time that has lapsed between this and the last post that I made, months ago, my life has undergone an extraordinary number of changes. Most of you probably would not recognize me at this point without this handy little written guide to the life of Shani, so I consider it a must to fill it with facts and updates about my most recent escapades.

First and foremost, mobility has found me once again! A little like cracking open a pomegranate and finding hundreds of tiny (albeit messy) rubies inside, so did the physical therapist who took a look at my leg (with its bone damage, its misplaced joints, and its torn ATFL ligament) announce that functionality was lurking just below the surface. After five months on crutches, and two months on a cane, not to mention the intense physical therapy undergone towards the end, I am now once again frolicking the streets of Tel Aviv on two fully capable legs... though one is admittedly still more capable than the other. I imagine, though, that with time, The Peg Leg Incident will be nothing but a distant memory.

This is particularly fortunate, as I have since spent much of my ambulatory recovery time packing up all of my belongings and moving them two streets away to a new apartment, half a floor downstairs, where I am living independently and roommate-free for the first time in my entire life. The apartment is one large L-shaped room, big enough for a designated living room space and also a designated bedroom. A doorway leads to a small kitchen, which in turn leads to an even smaller bathroom. Perfect for a solitary, Tel Aviv-frolicking lady who is currently very much enjoying her new-found independence! It is not completely homey yet, as it is missing a few essential elements (such as a closet and a microwave and living room furniture), but these anomalies aside, it is cozy and welcoming and open (always!) to friends and family wishing to come visit, play, frolic, or spend the night. (I am discovering slowly through writing that frolicking is apparently something that was very blatantly missing from my life in my inadvertent seven month hiatus from health. Don't be alarmed if it continues to crop up over the course of this post.)

In addition to the residential shift in my life, other changes have occurred around it that fit in the general "moving" theme and reflect the plethora of new beginnings in my life (as we celebrated a new year's start earlier this week, it seems appropriate that my life should suddenly include new pages as well). Most importantly, while I am still proud to call myself an educator of English as a Foreign Language in Israeli schools, I am now working at an elementary school in Bat Yam teaching first through fifth grade English. This is monumentally different from the work I was doing last year, mostly in very positive ways, though there were also some startling changes -- namely class sizes (3 classes of 38 students, and my smallest class is 25) and sheer NUMBER of classes and therefore students (12 classes -- approximately 400 students altogether whose names I have to remember and whose work I have to keep track of). Aside from these, however, I am very much enjoying the change -- vivent les differences!

First of all, and most significantly, I am no longer a mechanechet as I was for the seventh grade last year (or rather, for the first half of last year). In elementary school this role is much larger even than it is in middle and high school, because the mechanechet spends many more hours in the classroom and teaches a multitude of subjects -- everything, I believe, apart from English, Music, Art and Science. I am therefore relieved to have been excused from this responsibility this year, especially since last year it proved to be beyond my grasp as a cultured-in-the-USA-brand Israeli. Furthermore, teaching this age is of course worlds different from the stress of the bagrut that I dealt with last year, from the hours and disciplinary problems experienced in middle and high school education... instead of trying to coerce bitter and weathered teenagers to read passages upon passages of mock news reports in preparation for a single exam that dictates their entire future, I am singing, drawing pictures, and teaching the letters of the alphabet one by one, while very young, bright-eyed, still-eager-to-learn faces stare up at me with renewed enthusiasm every day, and copy crooked Cc and Bb letters diligently into their notebooks.

Needless to say, this is very much more up my alley than last year's job. :)

This is not to say that there aren't difficulties and discipline problems. Not remotely. There are certain classes, out of my twelve, that cause me a world of frustration and hoarseness... not letting me speak, yelling, whistling, singing, throwing paper, hitting each other, kicking each other under the table... there's brazen lying and accusing and tattling on friends, and constant cries of "SHANI, TELL HIM TO STOP!" or "can I switch seats? She stole my eraser again!"... there's also the more innocent kind of disturbance, the one I can't get too mad at, with every second in the classroom producing a chant of "I DON'T UNDERSTAND!" or "can I wipe the board???" or "Shani, guess what! I learned how to write an A yesterday! I want to show you on the board!" or running up to shove a notebook in my face, "will you make a big V in my work so I can show my mom? Make sure it's red! No, bigger!"

Furthermore, even without raising my voice or getting angry, I still find that my throat suffers a great deal of abuse (even though YES I am a singer and YES I use my diaphragm and NO it doesn't completely help). In a class of 38 first-grade students, for example, one has to maintain a certain volume level in order to be heard at all. While they are not yet at the age where they feel the need to anarchically undermine the system or start a revolution, they are also not yet at the age where they know what they're supposed to do in school... it's enough that a third of them are surreptitiously whispering to their neighbors, and my little coloratura voice is drowned out, to be quickly forgotten by the masses.

Anyway, we are only a few weeks in... so, the adventure continues! Onward and upward! More stories to follow another time. In between frolics. :)

This post could easily go on for another thirty pages or so, as I strive to fill in all the gaps between my bout of dissecting the Israeli school system and the current need to update everyone on my life, but as I have been warned to take it easy on the blog in its first few days of recovery and give it ample time to relax and recuperate from its period of extreme neglect, I will close instead with a delightfully unrelated anecdote.

This is the story of Alon's and my unanticipated adventure in Brechia.

It seems that every new year must begin with a wild an unexpected adventure. Whether it is delivering a baby on the highway, or waving a chicken over my head, or anything else that may have happened in the promised land over the last two years, this year was no exception.

Having finished our Friday night dinner, Alon and I were blithely on our way to an evening of song in honor of the late, brilliant Israeli composer and icon Sasha Argov, whose family (mother, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter) did us the honor of attending. We turned on the waze GPS and drove an hour south to the designated location (a small village, Nir Israel, near Ashkelon). After a fairly simple drive, we came upon a big gate, the entrance to a village, where we waited patiently for it to open. After a few moments our patience proved fruitful, and a car came towards us from inside, leaving the village and causing the door to slide smoothly sideways. We waited until it was big enough for us to drive through, and we cruised inside.

After a few minutes of driving, we felt strangely unsettled. People kept giving us nasty looks, yelling at us as they walked beside us on the street, and in a few extreme cases even pounded on the roof of the car. At first we were mystified, until the penny dropped.

We were the only car on the street.

Everyone we saw was wearing a kippa and walking out of a synagogue.

This was clearly not Nir Israel. 

We were in a religious village, not the one in which we had intended to be at all, driving on a Friday night. And as a result being met with a great deal of resentment and hostility. Waze had decided that the quickest way to get us to Nir Israel was through the village of Brechia. While this was geographically correct, the secular and ignorant Waze did not realize that we were driving on a Friday night and that certain, non-logistic rules had to be taken into account as well.

Feeling very uncomfortable, we steeled ourselves and drove to the other end of the village, where we knew there would be another gate -- a way out. After still more yelling on the part of devout pedestrians, we arrived at the other gate to the village. We stood in front of it, waiting for it to open.

Silence.

Now, the gates are all electric. Someone pushes a button and it slides open. But let me fill in the gap for those who are unfamiliar with religious Jewish custom -- electricity is one of those things that is strictly illegal on the Sabbath. Not only was no one around to push a button, but the phone number listed on the gate "call this number for help with opening the gate" was ringing off the hook, unanswered, every time we tried it. Passers by, when asked for help, either laughed and told us that help was impossible, or simply ignored us, glared at us, and walked on. There was only one pair of kids who tried to be helpful, giving us a very fuzzy and garbled set of directions for driving through occupied Palestinian territory... but we decided that we would not attempt that, as they were unable to give us clear directions for getting out of there, only getting in.

In short -- we were prisoners in Brechia.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Why not drive back to the gate where we came in and exit that way? Well, a few things. First of all, that would have meant driving, once again, through a hostile village of people pounding on our car... but more importantly than that, we realized that our entrance to Brechia the first time was pure fluke. Someone had just been leaving who had the power to open the gate, and in our blissful ignorance, we sailed in.

I called Gadi, the host of the evening to which we were headed, and explained our situation. After a great deal of guffawing and disbelief on the other side of the line ("you're WHAT? I've never heard of that situation before..."), he suggested that we call an ambulance. He said in the event of a true emergency, ambulances have the power to open any gate and extract people in need from inside any village. "It's perfectly normal," he said. "I've done it dozens of times."

So I hung up and called the ambulance switchboard.

Me: "Hello? Sorry to bother you, but I'm stuck in a religious village with my car and can't open the gate to get out. I understand you can help me, I was told that you get this sort of call all the time. I'm in Brechia, near Ashkelon."
Him: "What?"
Me: (explaining the situation again)

(pregnant pause)

Him: "This is an ambulance."
Me: "I'm aware of that... I was wondering if you could help me..."
Him: "You're supposed to call this number when you have a crisis. What are you doing?? Why are you wasting my time??"
Me: "It's not exactly a medical crisis, but we have already been stuck here for half an hour, and at this rate, we'll be here until tomorrow at sunset when the electricity powers on again. And I was told that you do this all the time."
Him: "You were told wrong. We have never opened a gate from afar or sent out people to open it from the spot itself, we simply send out ambulances to save people who have real problems. In future, you should get advice from people who actually know what they're talking about."

(click)

Well, after this very helpful exchange with the Israeli emergency squad, I called Gadi back again and recounted the minutes of my conversation with the ambulance. He was astounded at the response I had received, but then remembered that he knew of someone in Brechia who might answer a phone, despite the Friday night situation. He told me he would call him and that I should sit tight and wait for his phone call.

We waited. The birds were chirping. Other than that, no noise.

We waited some more.

I called Gadi back. "He hasn't contacted you yet?? Let me try him again."

I asked him to give me HIS phone number, so I could do it myself, but it turned out this was a broken telephone-style chain of command... calling someone to call someone else to call us and extract us from Brechia. So that was impossible.

We continued to wait.

I called Gadi once again. "Still nothing??? Ok. Here's what you do. Are residents of Brechia getting upset with you?"
Me: "Yes, they've been glaring and yelling and pounding on our car."
Gadi: "Perfect. Call the police, explain your situation, and tell them you feel threatened."

I hung up with Gadi, and at that moment my phone rang. So I answered it, and Alon, in the meantime, followed Gadi's instructions and called the police.

Me: "Hello?"
Guy: "Yes, hi. I understand you're stuck and I can help you." (Gadi's person had finally woken up and called me.)
Me: "YES. We're at the gate that's nearer to Nir Israel and we're stuck."
Him: "Hang on. I'm coming to the gate to help you. Just wait there. Which gate, again?"
Me: "The gate by Nir Israel."
Him: "Ok. I'm on my way."

Alon by this time had finished with the police as well, who had told him to sit tight and wait for them to check out the situation.

So again we waited.

Phone rings.

Guy: "I'm at the gate. Where are you?"
Me: "What? We're here. There's nobody around."
Guy: "I don't see you..."
Me: "Are we at the same gate?"
Guy: "Oh. No, we're not. Ok, I need you to come to the other gate. Just drive through the village, kind of fast so people can't approach your car, and ignore all the yelling."

So, we did just that and arrived at the other side of the village. No one.

Me: "Are you here??"
Guy: "Yes. Where are you?"
Me: "We are in the car. The ONLY car. Standing in front of the gate."
Guy: "Oh. Yeah. I see you now. Coming."

The guy turned out to be a young man, in his 20s or early 30s, who was very sympathetic to our predicament but apparently did not possess as much ability to help in our situation as we had been led to believe. We chatted for a few minutes and then he said he'd go try and see what he could do.

In the meantime, the police called Alon back for further details. He told them we had moved to the other gate, and were still waiting.

And we waited. Ninety minutes, so far, we had been prisoners in Brechia. And we waited.

Suddenly, there was a creak, and the gate began to slide open. To this day we don't know if it was the police or the young guy who had solved our problem, but at that moment we didn't care. We high-tailed it out of there, me laughing and crying simultaneously from the stress of it all, while the gates of Brechia closed once again, symbolically, behind us.

We arrived in Nir Israel a full hour into the start of the event (we had planned to be there a half hour early), entering Gadi's house to the sound of wild, raucous applause. People ran up to us with glasses of wine, warm embraces, and cleared seats for us to sit down and recover from our traumatic experience. There was not a person in the room, the Argov family included, who had not been made aware of what was now referred to in the police station as "The Brechia Incident."