Wonder why I haven’t blogged in 10+ days!?!?!?! That’s because I haven’t stopped for one minute. Although work is fun and allows me to travel and to meet a variety of locals and tourists, it gives me no time for MOI! Now that may be slightly overwhelming when I am on a journey of self discovery.
Weekends? They don’t really exist in Israel or better yet with this specific job. I am pretty much on call 24 hours for 7 days a week. I enjoy the unconventional job since I am one to hate routine but 2 weeks in and I (the insomniac that I am) am totally exhausted. Now remember, although I am a born Israeli I am new to the country so I rely a lot on my new friend Mr. Dave the GPS. He is the first person I talk to on most morning and have the pleasure of spending all my drives with. Although he gets me to where I need to go, he and I have discovered A LOT together. We fight A LOT especially when he ignores me, when he doesn’t let me ask for directions or when he recalculates his directions on a regular basis; BUT at the end of every night we kiss and make up and start fresh the next day. Just to give you an idea of what I went though these last couple of days. About 4-5 days ago, I had a medical emergency with one of my groups which had me going to my first local hospital. After spending over 6 hours at the hospital, and having my participant get tested for pretty much everything with stops on every floor of the hospital I decided to make friends with a nurse. Selfishly in hopes of speeding up the process and because he was oddly cute and male attention is never a bad thing; especially when most of my male attention these last couple of days came from Mr. Dave the GPS. So here I was chatting up Mr. Nurse who I must embarrassedly admit looks like he chose the wrong profession. He’s tall, buff, hairless with a Russian twist; you would have thought he was a porn star or something… The chatting helped; we got all sorts of pain killers, quick medical exams and after a number of hours we left to go back to the group (around midnight). You would assume that was the end of my night and I had the luxury of going back home to take a nice shower, enjoy a warm supper and sleep comfortably in my bed. You assume wrong!!! The drive back to the group was over 2 hours at which point I simply decided to spend the night with the group in the hotel. The next day wake-up was at the crack of dawn, I drove down to the Dead Sea to meet the group to return sick boy and make sure all was flowing smoothly from there on out. That was obviously wishful thinking as upon our arrival to the group, right there as I was getting ready to say goodbye and take the road back home another participant slipped and feel smack on their arm with fear that it was broken. Tired and dressed in the same clothes as the day before I now had another medical issue on my hands. I was now heading from the Dead Sea to Beer Sheva to discover yet another new hospital. The wait wasn’t as long as the night before which was good considering no male nurses/doctors were on call that day. After 3-4 hours we were out FINALLY! So, after 40+ hours of driving around the south of Israel I finally made my way back home. The 2+ hours drive although long was fairly enjoyable as I blasted some good jams and sang at the top of my lungs. I must say, music does make everything better! You can always manage to find music to sooth every type of mood. My music choice for that drive was a mix of U2, some glee soundtracks and Janet which was a perfect combination to get me to zone out and regroup.
All this to say, I haven’t really had a moment to take in the fact that I am in Israel. I am an Israeli citizen. The Hebrew cursing, wild driving, non stop eating has been easily acclimated but still… look forward to the days/nights were I can relax, take a stroll on the beach, have supper and wine on my balcony and simply breathe in where I am!
searching4moi 