While I wonder they ask....

While I wonder what's inside the building where the music is mingling with the playful sound of children's movement, he stands on the pillar and looks in the open window. While I wonder where to go to change my address in the big mess of lines, three people ask and go. While I wonder what's in or how to or where to or why, people here just ask. No hesitation. No apparent smidgen of caution that there will be anything other than a response. And that's what happens here. People answer you. They give directions, they give advise, and they give information. Freely. You don't have to choose your words carefully or wait for the just the right moment or space and person. Here people are not afraid to talk to each other. Maybe there is irony is that.

For me the flow of exchange in Tel Aviv is almost mesmerizing. It a complete unraveling of the buttoned up New England distance. Every time I go outside with Hollow someone asks me about her boots.... they don't wonder, they ask me.  There is an ease in connection here that is really different and wonderful.  The smallness and intensity makes it natural and vital.  Here the space and connections between people is so close two big guys stood up in from of me at an Israeli league basketball game. One had a wedgy and I thought, Oh, pick that out of your butt..  and the other gut picked his own butt. One has, the other pulls. Maybe you had to be here to feel the humor, but to me it was as if the one guys butt to my thought to the other guy's hand was one smidgen. Here the Israeli league basketball game is like going to a high school game, but the guys are big and the game is real.

Bodies are out, hearts are open, families are apparent and expression of life is so palpable here it beats right into you.
I've been touched more, hugged more, thrown on the back of scooters, fed, checked on, invited in and kissed more in 2 months than in all my years in New England. And my immune system is reeling from it. I've been sick for 2 months. Is it the bugs, the water, the tiring revolution of my life...or it is just getting accustomed to being with, really with other people?

It's small here, but deep.

My ulpan class is amazing. It's right in the middle of Tel Aviv and there are people from France, Germany, Bulgaria, Australia, Korea, Brazil, England, New York, California, Tailand, Italy...really in my little Hebrew class...it makes for much fun! Jews, boyfriends of Jews, girlfriends of Jews, people here on work, people here for work, an amazing combination of people eager to learn, bumbling through a new and crazy language and unable to express their normal personality in the small beginner language of aleph plus Hebrew....and it makes for good fun in the classroom....

Some funny endearing plays with learning the language.....

In English, for laughter we  say, "Ha, ha, ha..."  In Hebrew they say "Cha Cha Cha..."

We learned the word for "to ride" and were giving examples...a bicycle, horse,  a camel, an elephant..and elephant? It doesn't come from my mind, but right, she's from Tailand....

and we say "to be on cloud 9"... in Hebrew they say "On the clouds", in Bulgaria they say "cloud 9", in France and Germany they say "Cloud 7."  Who knew.

In Hebrew they have very distinct words for moment to moment joyful happiness and happiness as a state of being, and everyone uses the distinction

We say "Pay Attention", here they their phrase includes the word for heart. Here they pay attention with their hearts.

When you want to ask someone something the phrase includes the word for face to face.

The entire verb structure is built around the relationship between you and yourself or you and others....

and there is no verb for "is". There is "was" and "will be" but no "is".... because only G-d can "is, was, and will be."

Everything here flips your perspective.... even before and after pictures go the other way... because the language goes from right to left....

With each moment I am feeling more like myself, I think as I was meant to be.... but still I am shedding off the many awkward lives along the way...and the ways my body and mind adapted and maladapted to feeling out of sorts. I love it here. And it for sure, will strip you down to your core...