Day Eight of the War
The fact that students spend every break talking about how normal everything is here in Jerusalem is probably a sign at how abnormal it is just to live in a country at war. It is the classic sign that they "doth protest too much, methinks."
Every once in a while something will break through each person's individually created protective shield of obliviousness to fear and threat.
For one friend, it was a power outage that caused him to fret. During our Ulpan class today, the power went out for approximately three minutes. We continued class. Though curious as to what had caused the power outage, most of us spent only a moment thinking about the blackout. For one friend, it was terrifying. He had never ever, in his whole entire life, been in a power outage. It totally freaked him out.
For Matt, it was a dinner decision. We were with a few friends and we had narrowed down our choices for dinner to two restaurants on the same street. One was overflowing with people and the yummy taste of the food was well known. The other restaurant had a guard outside. In any other town, in a country not at war, one would most likely go to the restaurant that was known for its good food. However, Matt and the rest of us realized that there was no choice - we must go only to restaurants with guards. (Lucky for us, the food turned out to be scrumptious!)
For me, my shell of normalcy was broken by a piercing siren. I was attempting to take a short nap today when I was awoken by a noise loud enough to be my alarm clock in my ear. The sound pulsed, like a London ambulance. Briefly, I remembered that my Ulpan teacher had said that air sirens sounded kind of like a British ambulance. Was my first thought to duck under the table? No, because I'm obviously an idiot. I went out onto my balcony to see if anyone else was freaking out about the siren. After a few moments, I discovered that the heinously loud noise was the automatic beeping-sound of a large truck backing up in my street.
I'm still dealing with my untrained and stupid reaction to the noise. If I even slightly considered the noise to be an air raid siren, certainly I should have dived under the table.
There are other, more subtle ways one can tell we are living in a country at war. For one, students' adherence to the yeshiva's dress code has gone considerably downhill. For women, we are supposed to cover our shoulders and not wear short shorts. However, in the beginning of school, many women, including myself, only wore long skirts. Now people come to class in shorts and tank tops - sometimes not even clean ones.
Classes don't start on time anymore also. Our Ulpan class used to start at exactly 9 o'clock. Now, we are lucky if we start at 9:15 or so. Each day it gets more difficult to pull away from the online news, emails from friends, and phone calls to family. War has a tendency to change one's priorities.
Although everything is "normal" here in Jerusalem, it is also very abnormal.
Every once in a while something will break through each person's individually created protective shield of obliviousness to fear and threat.
For one friend, it was a power outage that caused him to fret. During our Ulpan class today, the power went out for approximately three minutes. We continued class. Though curious as to what had caused the power outage, most of us spent only a moment thinking about the blackout. For one friend, it was terrifying. He had never ever, in his whole entire life, been in a power outage. It totally freaked him out.
For Matt, it was a dinner decision. We were with a few friends and we had narrowed down our choices for dinner to two restaurants on the same street. One was overflowing with people and the yummy taste of the food was well known. The other restaurant had a guard outside. In any other town, in a country not at war, one would most likely go to the restaurant that was known for its good food. However, Matt and the rest of us realized that there was no choice - we must go only to restaurants with guards. (Lucky for us, the food turned out to be scrumptious!)
For me, my shell of normalcy was broken by a piercing siren. I was attempting to take a short nap today when I was awoken by a noise loud enough to be my alarm clock in my ear. The sound pulsed, like a London ambulance. Briefly, I remembered that my Ulpan teacher had said that air sirens sounded kind of like a British ambulance. Was my first thought to duck under the table? No, because I'm obviously an idiot. I went out onto my balcony to see if anyone else was freaking out about the siren. After a few moments, I discovered that the heinously loud noise was the automatic beeping-sound of a large truck backing up in my street.
I'm still dealing with my untrained and stupid reaction to the noise. If I even slightly considered the noise to be an air raid siren, certainly I should have dived under the table.
There are other, more subtle ways one can tell we are living in a country at war. For one, students' adherence to the yeshiva's dress code has gone considerably downhill. For women, we are supposed to cover our shoulders and not wear short shorts. However, in the beginning of school, many women, including myself, only wore long skirts. Now people come to class in shorts and tank tops - sometimes not even clean ones.
Classes don't start on time anymore also. Our Ulpan class used to start at exactly 9 o'clock. Now, we are lucky if we start at 9:15 or so. Each day it gets more difficult to pull away from the online news, emails from friends, and phone calls to family. War has a tendency to change one's priorities.
Although everything is "normal" here in Jerusalem, it is also very abnormal.
posted by Jen | 4:18 AM
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