A Home Away From Home

No more living out of suitcases for this girl! I am now happily residing in my first Israeli apartment. Appropriately enough, everyone in our group has apartments in the Mirkaz Klita Ye'elim. This building is where anyone who wishes to make Aliyah, to become an Israeli citizen, gets free subsidized housing and many other social service programs to help their transition. These new citizens take Hebrew classes called Ulpan in the morning and families are hooked up with a counselor to help them find jobs and get integrated with the community. Continued...

What is amazing is that we are doing the same things right beside them. Every morning we go to Ulpan and hang out with new Jewish families from India, Argentina, France, Peru, and tons more all over the world.

It is very strange to actually be living in Israel. Last week I was in Jerusalem with everything I owned in a bag on the floor. Now I have set up an apartment with three other roommates and go about my day to day life in Be’er Sheva.

I totally lucked out on my living situation. Since we have a very few amount of boys in our group, there had to be a co-ed apartment. I volunteered to live in that one, so instead of having five roommates, I only have three – plus an extra room! Way less drama, more fridge space, and the extra room became the social hang out so there are always lots of fun people around the apartment.

Going grocery shopping for the first time was crazy. We were bused to this discount grocery (think the WinCo of Israel) and let loose. Only problem was everything was in Hebrew. We were totally confused! Things are set up really oddly too. Israelis have ventured much further than Americans in the bulk food department. Check out the frozen food section.

Cool thing was though, (not literally – there’s no air conditioning/ice in this city) everything here is super cheap. We got all you could need for a new apartment – cleaning supplies, food, cooking stuff, and many fans, for less than 50 bucks each! Whoa!

And now we spend our days here. A block away is a little market where we can get fresh fruits and veggies and falafel everyday – they are amazing! We do our laundry and hang it to dry, we make dinner together, and study, study, study the Hebrew!