A short time to reflect

Strange as it may sound, but being in Jerusalem has already made me feel so, well, removed.

Honestly, I have no idea what Haifa, outside of the university, has been like since last Thursday night. I've been locked away in a little hyper-community, moving between buildings, shelter rooms, picnic tables, and the synagogue. Even on the drive down, we were herded onto buses, driven two and a half ours, and then herded back off, waiting over an hour to get our rooms settled, then another hour just to find out when to meet this morning.

But then, we were released.

I went into the city last night with Steve, Rachel, Joshua, Chaim, Robert (Livnot 158!), and Melanie (pics will come at some undisclosed point later, I assure). We ended up at Rimon Cafe, sitting down at a quarter to midnight (a perfectly reasonable time to eat in Jerusalem, as far as I can tell), and having a meal. I still felt so unsettled, though; my emotions were still locked up in our apartment's shelter room up in Haifa, but my body was free to roam Jerusalem as I pleased. And yes, we certainly heard people talking about what was going on, but their tone was so very removed from the situation; I felt so charged up about whatever was happening, and here were folks happening upon news when they could, but otherwise living their lives normally. I was so used to the thread of terror dictating the way I experienced my time, it was hard to return to "free time," to have time that no one, not rockets or Hezbollah or the University, could tell me what I had to do with it.

Looking back, I totally felt imprisoned; for a short while, our freedoms were mostly erased, and normalcy became a relative term. We spent hours locked into a metal room, making tasteless jokes about Katsyusha rockets attacking our backgammon game, if only to try to keep a humorous sense of perspective. We moved to and fro as if our regiment was programmed, not by rocket attacks, but by some all-seeing authority. I can only begin to imagine what cultural reintegration must feel like for soldiers, prisoners; to have your time dicated by something so foreign to most of the people around you, it draws you closer to those who shared the experience with you, pulls you away from the carelessness of day-to-day living, and in a sense, makes you miss the experience.

We all crave a sense of normalcy, and for a little while, I readjusted what my sense of normal was. I mentally prepared to live in-and-out of shelters for a month or two, not at all emotionally prepared to actually abandon the university campus. With a home, I could emotionally make due; now, feeling relatively homeless, I need to figure out where my place is, yet again.

Anyway, here's what you do with a camera when you're going crazy in a shelter room.





What's behind door #1?





Oh, it's an even bigger 4" thick iron door!





My roommate Lenny using the famous "duck and cover" technique using an air raid.





Hahahaha, false alarm!