One year

A few days ago marked one year in Ha'aretz, the Land, Israel.  One year since being home in America, or one year since I've come home to Israel.  It hasn't yet been a year in the army, but I'm coming up on that milestone in a few weeks' time.  What's it like to realize that it has been 365 days since being in the States?  That twelve months have passed by and I'm still out here on my magnificent, glorious, incredible adventure?  That it will still be some more time before I can return to my family, friends and life away/free from the army?

I noticed this first when I studied in Europe for a semester and have often experienced a similar feeling here.  It comes from not being in the most comfortably or familiar setting, from being elsewhere, far away from what I know and love.  It's a feeling of restriction, not of what is and is not possible, but rather a physical tightness in my chest as I mentally grasp for order and understanding in my new world.  It's like being hyped up on too much caffeine: my mind rushes as I try to complete menial simple tasks that never seem to end, and always take three or four times as long to accomplish.  The language barrier doesn't help, also.

While my Hebrew is certainly infinitely better than when I first arrived last November, while I can do pretty much any normal task in this foreign language, while Israelis often think I am one of them (not gonna lie, the uniform doesn't hurt), for me life in a foreign language is still fuzzy.  I feel most comfortable flexing my Hebrew muscles in the army; outside of it, I often stumble over my words or phrases, lose my confidence, or simply forget simple conjugations and sayings (but then I've found a cure for that: the more I drink, the better my Hebrew becomes, just ask every taxi driver who's driven me somewhere on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening).  Still, I am yet to feel completely grounded.

My physical tightness comes from an unexplainable sense of suffocation.  I feel like I need to come up for air from the world that surrounds me, drowning me in its foreign-ness.  I felt this in Europe and have often experienced it here.  Back home, "Israel" was as much an idea of a foreign land as it was about a new life, the home of my people, and a dynamic country.  It may as well have been in a different world.  These thoughts and feelings surprised me because I had been here twice before on  programs.  But somehow, when I slept on the flight from Newark to Tel Aviv, who's to say we didn't travel to a different dimension or some strange new world?  Can we breathe there?  I stepped out of the plane and everything looked normal, just on the exact opposite side of the world, eight time zones ahead of Chicago.  It's November, why is it so sunny and warm?  Those characters on the wall?  Surely they were only reserved for biblical scripts of an ancient language.  Hebrew is a holy language, to be found in the Torah and other religious scriptures.  The Semitic characters make no sense to me, I can't find any reason in the block print.  Even to this day, I am woefully unable to pick up any advertisement or newspaper headline and immediately understand what is written.  I have to sit for a few seconds and translate.  Without even realizing it until recently, I am more than capable of opening a book,  immediately begin reading and understand the story.  Give me ten years for Hebrew.

When away from family and familiarity for so long, you start to realize what is important from your "past" life.  It says something when your Gmail inbox is filled with correspondence with family.  I still receive mail from college organizations, newspaper, magazines and other websites I've subscribed to over the years.  But once openened and confirmed that they are of no significance, the letter is deleted.  What I am left with are emails with family.  They range from simply discussing what times everyone is available to iChat, Skype or talk on the phone, to more serious issues of money or passport, to the weekly Friday letter I would write giving a brief synopsis of my week.  Of one hundred emails still in my in box, well over ninety would be from family.

But it's been a hell of a growing and learning experience to be here for a year.  David, Amy and the girls have been an incredible support system; I've popped into their apartment countless times for even a quick things, to say hello, grab something to eat or a coffee, the English version of the Jerusalem Post, or stay the night.  They've never said they can't have me for even a few hours or an evening.  I'm truly lucky and blessed to have family here.

I was at Shchem this weekend doing guard duty at my base (again, sorry, more to come about life there in my next post).  But I have another week of ulpan, learning Hebrew, at the Bach in the south.  I left my base at six in the morning, go to Tel Aviv around eight, and popped in for an hour to say hello and be a part of their lives for a little.  Time to go catch a train to Kiryat Gat and a week of easy life learning Hebrew.

Time marches on, and we march with it.