Filling the Gap

Damn...more than a week since i've written. Maybe that means I'm finally getting a life.

Since a lot of time has gone by since i've blahged, I won't detail what i am doing, rather how i am doing, because when people back home ask, "How's Aliza doing?", it's insufficient to answer with, "She made three cylinders on the wheel yesterday. She ate pasta." You would rather answer with something like this:

"Aliza has finally occupied her niche at Bezalel. True, in class she is labeled as the American student who, during lectures in hebrew, maintains an expression of complete confusion and pathetic apathy, but she is totally immersed and engaged in her art. Her teachers are impressed by her skills as a student at pre-beginner level. She loves the thrill of tackling a challenge and in the process, making something that is all her own.

Her father wishes she would go to synagogue services more often, but Aliza reassures him that the art she is doing resonates with something more powerful than flipping through pages of a siddur.

Despite popular belief, Israel has not made Aliza fat. She weighed herself (in kilos) and has lost about 3 pounds since she has arrived. (Thanks to an overpriced gym membership and no Honey Bunches of Oats in her cabinet.)

Aliza misses her family, not the life at home. She misses subtle nuances of Woodbridge sometimes: her mother's cooking, Target, downtown New Haven, Shabbat, sleeping with her dog (she found a dog hair on her coat yesterday and got incredibly nostalgic), diners, car rides with the Ganses, Saturday mornings, get-togethers with her gals, and seasons. She has spent enough time with Israelis (and Arabs) that she knows she does not want to make Aliyah (maybe if she learned perfect hebrew she would retire in Haifa). Her perceptions of Israel have changed. She once romanticized it. Now the country is more real to her. She has a hard time trusting it.

Aliza is still indecisive about next semester. She would love a change, but is not sure if she wants to risk her art for picking grapefruits in a kibbutz field. While her experiences at Bezalel have not given her a clear direction of where she wants to focus her career (which is why she took a gap year in the first place), she has had time to stew over who she is, what she wants, and what is important to her.