The speaker that Wednesday night turned out to be excellent. Although at first he droned on about his own experiences in the army and his own history, when we neared the end he took questions about Gilad Shalit, and his answers really changed my opinion on the situation. Basically, Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, abducted him and demands the release of 1100 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom are very infamous terrorists. I have always had a problem with doing this, because it is not only an unfair trade (what other nation would give 1100 people for 1? this just reflects the minimal amount of value Hamas puts on the lives of its people), but also can be interpreted as a sign of weakness by Hamas. Furthermore, who knows if the people we release are going to return to wreak havoc and perpetuate more acts of terrorism? Of course, there are also the families of the people who many of these prisoners have killed, who feel that it is an injustice to release them. But the speaker at Ulpan brought up some important points: not releasing these people isn't going to bring the dead protester's relatives back to life, 16% of released prisoners return to terrorism, and Hamas and other militant organizations already know that we value our soldiers much more than they value their people, indeed, they are trying to kidnap Israelis all the time because they know that we will do everything within our power to bring them back. This is why I know think it's worth trading the prisoners back: if we can have at least one Israeli soldier return home safe from the entire ordeal, isn't it worth it? It's better than hearing of his death in a couple of months, or getting him back dead later for an equally exorbitant amount of prisoners (as is what happened with Goldwasser and Regev). It's worth getting Gilad back alive and healthy, both for the moral of the nation and just for his own life.
In any case, Wednesday night nothing too special happened--I went over to Cari's apartment to watch Religilous with some people, but we all got tired of it and had volunteering in the morning, so we gave it up and I came home and went to bed.
Thursday, I went to volunteering late in the morning (my alarms did not go off properly), and then came back home before Ulpan to clean up the apartment a bit. At Ulpan, we had an oral presentation, so Nathan and I did a scene where I was his uncle in Israel calling him to invite him to come over sometime and asking him why he hadn't called me since he's been in Israel for so long (a conversation that many Year Coursers have had with their relatives, no doubt). After Ulpan, I went into Tel Aviv with the Garin Tzedek leaders and we met up with Yossein, who gave us ice cream and a hearty dinner of some version of cow haggis (intestines), which was delicious. We then went to the family center, where we met some Darfuri adults who were learning English (and actually knew it VERY well, they were working on the perfect tenses, something many Americans have trouble with). We also discussed the possibility of setting up a kindergarten in the center with Yossein, we're returning on Tuesday to pick out a room and renovate it. The whole thing made me feel very optimistic, although it's still somewhat strange--while we were eating dinner at Yossein's, Cera was convinced the meat was pig, until I found out it was cow intestines. Yossein and the other Darfuris speak primarily Arabic, and whenever we're at any of their houses Al Jazeera or another Arabic channel plays on their television. It's very strange, yet also eye-opening.
We went straight from our meeting to the "first and biggest party of year course," after we got some vodka and roamed around trying to find the place for an hour. The party ended up being the worst night I've had for several reasons that really aren't worth talking about. I didn't end up getting any sleep that night, because my cousin Gil came at 6 AM to pick me up to go visit my cousin Dror's navy base up north. It was pretty interesting, we got to go on the ship and find out about its different rooms. I would have taken pictures, but they confiscated almost everything we had on us before we entered the base. Afterwards, I and that portion of my family went out to lunch at a nice Chinese place in Haifa, which was delicious.
When I came back to Bat Yam that afternoon, I napped a bit and then went over to Eli Cohen 24 (previously known as Simon's/Ohad's/Scott's/Nathan's/BenJirik's/Aaron's apartment) for Shabbat dinner, which consisted of a hearty amount of pasta with meatballs--it was fairly satisfying. Later that night, Liat Ferman from Midwest met up with me and took me to a bar in Rishon Lezion, where she lives. The age to get in was 21, but she was friends with the bouncer. :P It was refreshing to talk to someone older than me outside of Year Course for the first time in a while. She and I had some good conversation, and decided that we need to hang out together with Tom Sela as soon as possible. I am beyond excited about this--hanging out with Mishalachat members from camp should be awesome.
When I got back from Rishon, I went over to Lior's apartment and ended up sleeping there. On Shabbat, I woke up late and we all went down to the beach for a few hours. We once again went to Arlekino's (I have got to stop going there, it is unhealthy. Here is a picture (finally) from the time before that):
Later that night, Scott got back, and we went into Tel Aviv to go to a club called Tel Aviva. We got fairly lost but then some Israeli girl on the bus helped us get there. Once we arrived, we found out they were only letting in people over 20 (according to some of our scout friends who were trying to get in). However, I just spoke English quickly to the bouncer and he handed my and my friends' IDs to some girl who decided to let us in. I don't know why, but they like Americans at their parties here, for the most part--perhaps it's because they expect us to spend a lot of money, or maybe just because they think Americans know how to party.
Anyway, that club was nothing too special. Then came this morning--I woke up at 11:30 or so and went grocery shopping. When I got back, I went to classes, which were pretty good. After classes, I and some others went to 5-shekel falafel for dinner, and shortly afterwards went on our special siyur to the "na laga'at נא לגאת" center to see a performance by blind and deaf actors called "Not on the bread alone." It was a very touching performance, and made me really appreciate my senses of sight and hearing. At one point, one of the girls in the play who could hear only a little bit wanted to play piano for her deaf friend in the hopes that he would just "feel it." This really made me think, there are some emotions I experience that I believe to be triggered by sight and sounds--does that mean that deaf/blind people have a smaller range of emotions than most? It was just so sad when she was playing a beautiful song on the piano and he was smiling gaily, with such a sense of happy yet subduedly frustrated innocence. To some extent, the actors couldn't have been entirely sure of exactly what was happening on stage, since they were blind--it was all very ironic and somewhat sardonic, and forced me to reflect a good deal on life and the human experience. The whole point of the play, however, was the title--that they don't live only on bread, the simple pleasures, but also have grand dreams and other things. At the end of the play, we got to eat the bread that they made in it. The entire experience was fantastic, and something I doubt I'll forget anytime soon.
Anyway, I should really get to bed. I have to be up in 5 hours for volunteering. Good night, everyone, I hope I get back in the habit of writing more often soon!
(also, I have Hebrew on my computer now, something I'm very excited about. לילה טוב! )
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