Hurry up and wait

Here's the untold half of my day yesterday...

Yesterday I was sitting in the park alternating between studying my Hebrew and reading my Stephen King book. Then I started dwelling on my medical school situation. All I can really do is wait. I'm waiting to hear back about my internship here. I'm just waiting to understand Hebrew. I feel like all i'm doing these days is waiting and I am really sick of it. It feels better to be waiting in Israel than in a Hospital, but it's still frustrating.

As many of you know, I'm not an angry person, but at this point of dwelling I sure felt frustrated. That's why I decided to get up and DO something. I decided to go to Jerusalem. I counted, and my transportation mishaps added up to 5, thus creating a 4 hour trip to Jerusalem from an approximately 1 hour trip. I stayed in Jerusalem for only a couple of hours, most of it was spent trying to find the right bus or trying to find the right street.

It was a good day, but frustrating at the same time. I then sat and thought about these frustrations. Yesterday was a day where so many things went wrong but I had the opportunity to make choices and DO things to keep going on. There were so many times i thought it would be easier to just turn back the way I came, but I forced myself to keep going to Jerusalem even though I knew i wouldn't be able to do much while there (this time).

I decided to DO something by pushing on towards Jerusalem. I didn't notice the personal significance of this until I spoke to my popop today though. I decided to DO something by emailing Temple Med, just to keep in touch. I decided to DO something by talking to my internship coordinator; apparently I'll get a call from the hospital tomorrow (again). In an hour or so I'm going to DO something by going to Krav Maga and learning more martial arts, something I love to do.

maybe this is a life lesson? Maybe it's just more indigestion.

Be cool: Cops. Look old.

Yesterday I went to my internship for the second time. I'm working at a company in Petach Tikvah that translates to "Media Communication." Catchy, right? Media serves as a production company as well as a radio station (they operate the local public radio station 104 FM.) Media also has a small "virtual studio" which they rent out to various productions. It's called this because everything is painted green and a CGI set is chroma-ed over (fancy TV talk for projected). It looks incredibly fake, but at the same time is incredibly awesome.

I had an 8 AM call-time yesterday, because we were going to be doing a remote shoot. My boss didn't give me any details except that I would be doing boom, so I wasn't really looking forward to it. Wasn't I pleasantly surprised, then, when Yaron (my boss), told me upon arrival that I'd be doing camera instead.

The shoot was fairly interesting. We went to the police station to spend the day with some officers. I was about to step into the front of a police car to tape them while driving, but they got a call on the radio about gas-filled balloons (a potential bomb) down the streat. So that was out. Instead, we ended up tagging along with a few volunteer and community police officers. I learned that in Israel, community police are a little bit of a seperate entity. Their job is mantain relationships with local businesses and schools and other similar places. If the owners/teachers/etc. have a problem, they report it to the community officer. I'm not sure what the community police do if there are problems, but I bet it's something nasty.

Although the day was fairly interesting, it could be frustrating at times. I couldn't understand anything; everything was in Hebrew. This made it difficult for me to film since I never knew what I was supposed to be covering or when to start or when to stop. It also prevented me from getting to really talk to the police officers that much, since they were constantly talking to each other in Hebrew and I didn't want to interrupt.

If you live in Israel and are interested, the production I'm working on airs next Wednesday at 7 PM on channel 94. For stateside readers, Yaron told me that Media streams live, but I don't know how to do this and the website (http://www.mtpt.co.il/) is entirely in Hebrew. If anyone wants to watch, I'll work on getting a more specific link. Just know that I have no idea what the show is about or if it's any good so I can't really recommend it whole-heartedly or even half-heartedly.

Ok byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Would you like to learn English?

Oh, what a day yesterday was. I'll spare the world each and every detail as to why it took over 4 hours to get to Jerusalem but luckily it took closer to an hour to get back. Here are some of the highlights.

I was at the mall/bus station in Rehovot waiting finally for my bus to Jerusalem (so in a nutshell, I was going to take a train to Jerusalem, but didn't feel like waiting so then I was gonna take a train to Tel Aviv and then a bus to Jerusalem but thanks to some guy I missed the Tel Aviv stop and ended up in Rehovot). So while I was there, I was approached by some salesman in Hebrew, so in the best English I could muster up I said, “I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.” So he switched over to English and said, “Would you like to take a class to help you practice English?” I stare at him for a second and say, once again in the best English I could manage, “I'm sorry, I don't think I really need to take a class on English.” he says, “You could always try to improve.” I then pause to think about how to respond in English as if it's my first language, “I'm pretty fluent in English, but I could probably use a class on learning Hebrew. Thanks anyway though.”

seriously, this must have been the dumbest salesman ever. I mean, I know I'm not the most eloquent guy in the world, but I clearly know how to speak English, and worst of all I have quite an American accent. He might as well have been trying to sell me a prosthetic hand (which could come in handy).

Then, I'm finally on the last leg of my complicated-although-it-should-have-been-easy journey on a bus to Jerusalem. And what happens? I look up from reading my book and listening to music just as a pickup truck is spinning around in circles on the highway and another car smashes into it. I have no idea how it started spinning, all I know is that it spun and then another car hit it thus blocking both lanes of the highway. After waiting for about a half hour during which time several ambulances, and police cars came by as well as several groups of orthodox Jews the cars were moved out of the way. About 10 guys bounced and then lifted the pickup truck off the hood of the other car and they both drove away.

View from within the bus so you can see how close the accident was. Amazing we stopped in time.

Closer view of the cars blocking the highwayEveryone trying to help including ambulances blocking the other side of the highway (no one was even hurt luckily). In addition, it is a Jews duty to help others if possible, so the Jewish men in black were trying to do just that

I ended up in Jerusalem and had a terrible time finding the bus I needed to get to Ben Yehuda Street as it seemed know one knew where the correct bus was. Eventually I found it and met up with my friend Shira at a Coffee bean for about an hour. I then got some Shawarma, walked around for about 20 minutes and realized how cold it was and then hopped on a single bus back to Ra'anana. It took over 4 hours to get there, hung out for an hour and then I came back. What a day/adventure.

No Touching! Shira and I are at coffee bean catching up.

I can't wait for Krav Maga.