Hi. My name is Aliza Gans. I am a Masa Israel Experience student. I am a victim of Bezalel's course registration.
The only problem with this program is that I hardly feel like I am on a program. There is very little foresight in what chaos lies ahead. The madrichim are helpful when it comes to crisis, but I often find logistical errors could be avoided if we were just told things in advance.
I spent a month in Tel Aviv, and had no expectations as of what we were going to be doing at Bezalel. I just kind of dove in. I am often clueless, but when it comes to dealing with other clueless people, I lose my patience.
Last week, at our initial orientation, they told us we were not allowed to take classes outside of the Fine Arts department. Then, yesterday, a couple of my friends visited the main offices and demanded equal opportunity to experience the different branches (Visual Communications, Ceramics and Glass Blowing, Jewelry and Fashion, Architecture, Photography, etc.). They eventually acquiesced. The only reason our initial available courses were so limited is because "they didn't want to get our hopes up" in letting us think we could explore all of Bezalel's various departments only to find that the classes are full.
So our group shows up in this conference room, where this oldish, smoker, department head of Fine Arts barely reads the courses that are available to us. Our classes are listed on one sheet of paper...basically the name of the course and the teacher. There is no paragraph describing what the course is. There is no comprehensive, online or print catalogue of what's available. Only this excel spreadsheet of obscure names of courses like "Meeting Point" and "Space Maneuvers"...what do those even mean?!!!!
After a sort of unhelpful meeting, we are told to disperse and scramble to all the different floors of Bezalel to sign up for the classes we wanted in their respective departments. I immediately went to the 8th floor, ceramics, because I knew I wanted to secure my spot in a class I was truly interested in. The hallways were filled with international students all on the same mission as I was. I got lost and ended up asking a maintenance worker where the office was.
There is a line at the door. I sit and wait. I notice that each student inside the office is taking about 15 minutes each. I end up waiting for 1.5 hours. Just to sign up for one class. The woman at the desk, after asking me what my name is, where I live, what I'm studying, my entire personal history (so that's what took so long for everyone else!), finally tells me that there are only 2 classes available for me in the Ceramics department...pottery wheel, and hand building clay. There is no glass blowing! And she says I should meet with my teacher early before class to introduce myself and inquire what type of clay I should buy for class (I have to buy my own clay?! Clay is basically dirt! Can't they provide that for me?)
I end up signing up for pottery wheel on monday morning. It will be beautiful starting the week off by moulding a shapeless mound of dirt (I'm thinking of that scene in Dirty Dancing when Patrick Swayze makes pots with Baby at sunrise.)
So, I end up going through this process 4 more times until I sign up for all 5 of my classes. My brain was on information overload. Fizzed out like warm coke.
I do have an awesome schedule. It turns out, I have Tuesdays off (which I will probably use as a day to volunteer at Hadassah Hospital to teach art to sick children....yes, I'm such a humanitarian, I know). But a couple of my days are really packed because I finish class at 5, then have to go to be at ulpan by 5:30 and don't get home until 9 PM.
Here is my schedule:
Sunday
12:00-15:00 The History of Spiritual Consciousness with Rabbi Jeremy Kagan
Monday
10:00-13:00 Pottery Wheel with Jaquaranda Kori
14:00-17:00 The Empty Space with Michal Hofman (an installation/sculpture/video class)
Tuesdays
Free
Wednesday
14:00-17:00 Painting (in English) with Talia Israeli
Thursday
10:00-13:00 Street Photography
14:00-17:00 Drawing with Pesach Slavosky
Friday and Saturday
Shabbat
So, although there is still much that is left up in the air...I came home this afternoon with a smile. Next year I will probably appreciate all the babying of college with advisors, R.A.s, campuses with signs pointing where we have to go, and meal plans, and everything in English, and not having to deal with Israeli public transportation. I have a lot to look forward to.
But I didn't look forward to going to ulpan this evening. I spent 20 minutes going over what "zeh" and "zot" mean until my buddy, Yiscah, and I decided we were going to go to the office to see if we could move into the next level.
This woman at the ulpan reception desk reminds me of Winifred, that slightly mentally-disabled girl who used to bag us at the Stop&Shop checkout. She was no help. So Israeli Larry David comes and calls the head of the institute and describes our situation, and ends up telling us that there is no space in Aleph Plus and also our evaluation tests (which we took the week we arrived in Israel, and we have improved immensely since then) indicate that we are not in Aleph Plus level. Yiscah got really worked up and I tried and remain cool (because you can't get anywhere when you meet a hard-headed Israeli with a frustration and anger.) We ended up walking out and stopping by Maya's for a glass of wine. That calmed me down a bit. I'm fine now. I'll talk to Shoshana to straighten things out soon.
Oh! I completely forgot to mention that I met up with a couple of my Bronfman buddies last night on Emek Rafaim. We ate at Kafit (a cafe that serves expensive food) and I was the only one who hadn't eaten since that morning, so I ordered an overpriced salad. The conversation was a little bit awkward because once we caught up with what each of us was doing, we didn't have much else to talk about. But it was very nice to see familiar faces, and we planned a night to visit Shimon, our Bronfman rabbi and program coordinator, to be introduced to other Bronfman alumni currently residing in Israel. Gotta love Jewish networking.
Tomorrow begins a giant art festival in Tel Aviv (I love that just when we leave the city, there are actually serious artistic things happening). A couple of friends and I are meeting with my prospective painting teacher, Talia, who's going to show us around galleries and such.
And now's the time when my Mad Men episode has just finished loading online, and the kettle is singing, ready for mint tea. My mind deserves a break.
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