Transformations, Transitions, and Transfusions

So since I’ve been back I went to community college for a year and built up some credit hours so I could apply as a transfer student to University of Georgia. Now I’m here and seriously can’t believe how time has gone by so fast and that it’s already the end of first semester!! A lot has happened since I transferred here to UGA. I’ve found a new passion in my life and I’ve taken a turn in direction in what I want to do after college. Coming into Georgia I had no doubt that I wanted to pursue a pharmacy career and just loved the idea of me learning all about pharmacy etc. Well, little did I know that I didn’t find myself enjoying what I was learning and couldn’t exactly see myself enjoying what was going to come like, cellular biology, and two organic chemistry classes, and another microbiology class, the list goes on and on. So I thought maybe pharmacy wasn’t quite the fit for me and got on the computer and picked out a few of the many majors UGA has to offer that I thought would interested me. I then took a couple personality tests and narrowed the list down to what matched my personality. In the end, I chose to stick with Public Relations.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I know just as well as you do that those two career fields are on the complete opposite ends of the spectrum and have nothing to do with each other at all! BUT I have found a way that they could relate to each other and still having a little interest in pharmacy, I thought of a way that I could potentially get the best of both worlds! And that was to potentially work for a public relations firm that works with pharmaceutical companies so that I could still pursue my interest in pharmaceuticals while also pursuing my interest for public relations. Now I’m not narrowing my options of what I want to do once I graduate to just and only that. That would just be my ideal job but I’m honestly open to anything the world challenges me with and ready to take whatever that may be on!

Now as for this blog…I couldn’t quite figure out how to keep the layout and title of this blog but also have a tab for my new everyday blog that I’d like to keep updated with things that interest me and to just keep working on my writing skills. Which unfortunately, I’m sad to say that I’ll have to retire “My Desert Adventures” and give my blog a little make over and transform it into “[insert punny PR title here]” blog :). It’s a bittersweet transformation because “My Desert Adventures” was the equivalent of my first child! I guess I now know what my parents felt like when they sent my older sister, Nicole, off to college (only 35 minutes away from our house) but in the back of their heads I know they were thinking that the transition would be beneficial to her later on down the road. Just as my new blog will be beneficial to me and my future PR aspirations!

So sadly, yet very excitingly, this will be my last post with the whole “My Desert Adventures” layout and next time I post I hope to ‘wow’ you with the new look ;)!

Shenanigans In Jeru and Tel Aviv

As I said in my last post, I wouldn’t leave my readers hanging about the rest of my amazing experience living abroad in Israel for 9 months so I’m going to try and sum up the rest of my time in Israel in short.

After I conquered Marva, we packed up our stuff and moved onto the next place where we would consider home for the next 3 months, Jerusalem. Our living conditions were much different then what we were used to and anything with a normal bed and a roof over our heads was considered luxury. Now, I am going to try my best to describe what we thought was luxury and I’ll let you guys base your opinions on whether or not you would consider our living quarters to be anything close to luxury. There were 3 buildings that kind of resembled smaller versions of dormitories that had apartment style “dorm rooms” inside of them. Each building was maybe within about a 10 foot radius from each other so if a person in one apartment sneezed, the people in the next building was bound to catch their cold within seconds.  One building had an apartment on the main floor in the front called “Tut Bottom Front”, and another on the main floor in the back, “Tut Bottom Back”. Then there was “Tut Middle Right” and “Tut Middle Left” on the second floor of the building and “Tut Upper” on the third floor. Then, directly across from the “Tut” building there was what we liked to consider the “sorority” of the little campus we lived on which consisted of one big apartment of 18 girls and was called, “Oren Middle”. Ten feet across from Oren Middle was what we considered the “fraternity”, “Alon Bottom” which consisted of eighteen boys. Then last but not least, the very out of place, most defective unit of them all, “Alon Upper”, or what I like to call it, Alon Fuppah. I was fortunate enough to not be placed in this apartment but unfortunate enough to be placed in the “sorority”. No, I’m just kidding. It actually wasn’t all that bad and definitely not what you would imagine it to be. There was one kitchen with two refrigerators, two pantries, two toilets, 4 showers, a living/dining room, screened in porch, two balconies, and 5 bedrooms. Two rooms of 5 girls, two rooms of 3 girls, and one room of 2 girls. I shared a room with my two friends, Ayelet and Lily. During our time in Jerusalem we took classes that taught us about the different religions in Israel, the history of the land of Israel, how to be a successful advocate for Israel on our college campuses when we returned to America, and much much more. We also took Hebrew classes, or also known as, Ulpan, where we were able to learn the language and be able to converse with other Israelis when we were out on our own. These three months in Jerusalem were probably the coldest months of the year to be in Jerusalem, it even flurried one Shabbat! The last couple weeks of March were spent packing up our stuff and crossing off the last few things we had on our to do lists for our time in Jerusalem, and then it was off to Bat Yam!

We arrived in Bat Yam early evening and after we were all settled into our apartments, we were greeted by a ceremony put on by the Israeli scouts that were soon to be the new addition to our section. In Bat Yam, each of our apartments came with an Israeli scout. Someone who could teach us the ropes of Bat Yam and a native to Israel that we could connect with and live with in the apartment. Instead of it being so cold outside that we didn’t want to go to class, we had to deal with the struggle of living walking distance to the beach and deciding on whether or not to go to class. Unlike in Jerusalem, we only had two mandatory classes (Ulpan and a class that taught us about the history of Tel Aviv and Israel) that we had to go to and some of us had the option of attending an Israeli film class where we watched movies that were Israeli made and got to explore the different types of cinematography. Along with having the responsibility of going to class, we each got placed into different volunteering placements and had to attend daily. Some of the different volunteering options that were offered were to work in schools with children, work in a soup kitchen, volunteer with an organization called save a child’s heart where you were able to meet with kids from different countries who have come to Israel for a surgery of some type and just comfort them through the process, work on an agricultural farm, and many other options. I was lucky enough to work on Bat Yams agricultural farm where we learned how to harvest and plant tons of cool things!

Each of us were equipped with a bus pass called a Rav Kav that had unlimited rides so we were able to get on and explore the city of Tel Aviv. Bat Yam is a suburb of Tel Aviv so we were only about a 15 minute bus ride away from the heart of Tel Aviv where we went and explored the night life, beaches, shops, and restaurants VERY often.

I think this pretty much sums up my amazing, unforgettable time in Israel and I’m going to continue this blog as a good writing source to pursue my aspiring Public Relations degree. I recently saw a list of good tips on how to be successful with your PR career and one of the tips was to always be writing and keeping up with whats new in the media and keep a blog. In lieu of writing about my time in Israel, I thought I would wrap up that chapter in my life on my blog and move on to writing about things that are going on in the media and just start practicing my writing get used to the fact by my blog.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading about “My Desert Adventures” and look forward to and enjoy reading my “[insert punny PR title here]” blog! (which will of course be on the same website but I think there is a way to link my new blog topic to this blog. I’ll figure it out soon but in the meantime, just sit tight and youll be seeing a post or two from me soon enough!

Thanks and enjoy!

Ariela, our Madricha, Ortal, and I at a free concert in Tel Aviv.

Ilana, Becca, Natalie, Melanie, Alice, and I on our field trip to the Temple Mount.

A cow that was a little too up close and personal with us on one of our hikes up North.

Lexi and I with our hair wraps that we got on our trip to Eilat.

Our tickets to Avicii!!

Ariela, Noa and I taking a candid on our hike on the Scouts trip.

Tara, Noa, and I in the dead sea.

My group of girlfriends at the closing ceremonies :(.

Bram, Nat, Ilana, Ayelet, Heather, and I on the bus in Jeruslam on our way to a night out on Ben Yehuda Street.

Lexi, our apartment’s Israeli scout, Nadine, Becca, Nat, and I getting ready to go home from a field trip up north. (these were my roommates in my apartment in Bat Yam)

Some of my friends and I with one of the mefakedets from Marva at a Masa Event in Jerusalem.

Me spending passover with some of my family in Israel.

Ayelet, Lily, and I at the Masa event in Jerusalem.

Noam, one of the Israeli scouts, and I at a free concert in Tel Aviv.

Noa and I celebrating Yom Yerushalayim at the Western Wall.

Evan, Ariela, and I spending the day at the beach.

Ayelet and I on the bus coming home from a field trip.

Becca and I on a field trip in Jerusalem in the Christian Quarter in the Old City.

Noam and I at a winery.

Chen, Ariela, and I walking down the street on a field trip and stumbled into these two.

My roommate Lexi making dinner.

Ariela, Chen, Ayelet, Heather and I getting ready for a night out in Tel Aviv.

Me trying to stay awake to watch the Superbowl all the way in Jerusalem.

Edu, Evan, and I at the winery.

Friends roasting marshmellows at a bonfire during a Jewish holiday where it is customary to make bonfires and celebrate with family and friends outdoors.

Epidemics In Jeru

Sooo I’m going to start off by saying that I TOTALLY messed up on the order of the weeks in the last post! So the REAL order up to now should be Intiation, Shetach, NORTH, then navigation. I’ll update you about North week and then in my next post I’ll catch you up to the next two weeks which were Combat and Sports week.

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I decided to start this thing back up again and decided it wasn’t nice of me to leave my oh so many followers and readers hanging about my life living in Israel, two years ago. This was a draft that was left unfinished from February 2012 and I decided not to erase it or change the title because 1) I’ll be a trooper and sum up the rest of my year in Israel, starting from where I left off on this post, for those who care and 2) I liked the title of the post although I can’t remember specifically which epidemic I was referring to. I’m assuming it could’ve been about the many lice breakouts, pink eye infections, or the inherited alcoholism epidemic from our newfound privilege of being of age, or any combination of the three. (DISCLAIMER: this does not mean Jerusalem is a dirty city swarming with lice infestations and little surprises laying around that usually one would associate with conjunctivitis infections.) I’m not sure I can go into as much detail as I did while I was blogging in Israel because quite honestly, this was two years ago and as of recently I’ve been experiencing some signs of short term memory loss so I’ll try my best….

THE REAL WEEK FOUR: North Week

During North week we travelled up North to Tiberius where we stayed in a hostel right next to the Sea of Galilee, where we would consider this our base for the week. While we were there, we visited a very well known kibbutz called Kfar Bloom where we had a sports training session and an oh so tasty bagged lunch. Other renown sites that were on the agenda this week included an air force museum and a base belonging to a very high ranking unit in the army called Golani. Visiting these places and learning about the history that took place was eye opening and to think that we were standing on land where soldiers once stood on to fight for their country was really something else.

Week Five: Combat Week

Combat week was dedicated to learning about all the different types of machinery and techniques used in combat. We  learned about the many guns that are used in combat and how to take apart an M-16, clean it, and put it back together. Also on the agenda for this week was to learn how to break someone’s neck with one simple move, or also commonly known as the self defense system, Krav Maga. Now, we didn’t actually learn how to break someone’s neck with one simple move, that would be a stunt I would be surprised to see only from Jackie Chan, but we did learn other techniques like how to defend yourself if you were getting attacked from behind. We learned some other cool techniques that I can’t recall right now and would do me absolutely no good if I were ever in a dangerous situation (gd forbid!)

Week Six: The REAL Sports Week

Week Seven: Jerusalem Week

This week was dedicated to learning about the history of Israel and visiting the holy city in Jerusalem and the Western Wall. Our base for this week was a hostel right across the street from the Mamilla Mall. We walked around Jerusalem in our “Aleph” uniform (the nicer uniform that we had) and had our guns with us at all times. While we were exploring different sites in the old city, tourists would stop us and ask if we would mind taking a picture with them, thinking that we were real soldiers. This week was full of learning and a quick change of pace from our usual freezing in our dinky tents and terrible dinners to actually having a roof over our head, central heating, and what we thought to be gourmet dinners.

Week Eight: Graduation!

This week was the final week of Marva, a week which I had thought I would never see. Through all the punishments I had faced and bland tasting lunches and dinners and countless amounts of choco bsakit (chocolate milk in a bag), I thought this day would never come. This week meant the ‘distance’ between the commanders and the chanichim (us) would be broken, we would be giving back our newfound significant others (also known as our “guns”), and we would no longer be trapped in our newly adapted militaristic way of life. The night the Segal (Hebrew for the whole group of commanders) broke the distance with us was probably the best night of my whole Marva experience. This night was when we would realize that the people who had made our lives miserable for the past couple months were actually completely normal people who had names and emotion. The day of that night we had woken up at 4 AM, got dressed with all of our gear, including our army vests, two full canteens, and of course, our guns, and headed a little more south of our base to Masada. The Segal had managed to give every single chanich (us) a tikniut (a punishment for a uniform malfunction) that day no matter if they really did have a uniform malfunction or not. Later on that night, everyone was instructed to take showers and get ready for mizdar tikniut, where we would find out what our punishment would be for the earlier uniform malfunction. The whole plugah (Hebrew for everyone in marva) met on the basketball courts with the whole Segal standing infront of us, when usually only one person would be in charge of mizdar tikniut. We all stood in our normal ‘Chet’ formation eager to find out what the Segal had in store for us that night. As we stood there the Segal started yelling at us but not because we had done something wrong and not in a way to punish us but this time, they were making fun of us for the things we had done throughout Marva that they had sneakily been taking note of when we least expected it. They had plotted a way to get us to think the whole plugah was in trouble for “uniform malfunctions” but in reality they just wanted to get us all together to break the distance. After their witty performance they all sat on the ground and yelled out, “come meet your Segal Marva!!” and at that point everyone broke free of the formation and ran towards the Segal like a bunch of zebras in a stampede in the jungle. At this point everyone huddled around the Segal to hear them confess their name, age, and where they lived in Israel. The next few days we had left was spent getting to know them better and practicing for the golden day everyone was waiting for, graduation.

After Marva was over we managed to keep in touch with our commanders and grew close to them as our friends. At this time, I had finally come to realize what the true meaning of a love/hate relationship really was.

I think thats enough straining of my memory for one blog post, ill be sure to update you guys (speaking as if I have a whole dedicated fan base) on the second half of my experience living in Israel in the next post.

Thanks for reading!

Taking pictures at a rest stop up North.

My friends and I on the top of Masada.

My friends and I during the hike up Masada with all of our gear.

My friends and I on the top of Masada.

Me holding the Marva flag on the top of Masada.

Ariela and I posing with the welcome sign to our base, Sde Boker.

Arielle and I during the hike up Masada with all of our gear.

Arielle and I after the hike up Masada.

Sam, Ariela, and I at an air force museum up North.

My friend Rotem thought he was clever.

Tourists taking pictures with whom they thought was a real soldier.

My friends and I at the Western Wall during Jerusalem Week.

Tourists taking pictures of us in Jerusalem because they thought we were real soldiers.

Our plugah hiking up Masada during sunrise.

Me at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Ariela, Lily, our commander, Stav, and I on the last day of Marva.

Chen and I getting ready to hike up Masada.

Me making faces during our graduation ceremony.

Rotem, Ariela, Joseph, Gabe, and one of the commanders, Ori after graduation.

Me at the Theodor Hertzel gravesite in Jerusalem.

Me on the top of Masada so relieved to be done with the hike.

Arielle, Jodie, Chen, Ariela, Heather, and I inside The Great Synagogue in the Old City.

Noa, Arielle, Heather, Ariela, and I on the top of Masada waving the Israeli flag and the Marva flag.

My two friends Kash and Romy sitting around with the Segal getting to know more about them after the distance was broken.

Going through the process of giving our uniforms back once Marva was over.

Everyone that was in my Tzevet (group) during Marva.

My commander, Stav, playing guitar for us once we broke the distance. (and me in the background)

Ariela with one of the commanders, Ori, after graduation.

Me giving a speech about the Holocaust at the Holocaust Museum.

Rotem, Ariela, and I right before graduation.

My tzevet (group), including our commander, Stav, after graduation.

A candid shot of me smiling during the graduation ceremony.

Me waving the Israeli flag on top of Masada.

My tzevet (group) right outside of the Old City in Jerusalem.

All the Year Coursers who participated in Marva and all the Year Coursers who came to support the ones who graduated Marva.

Me and a group of my friends from Marva in front of the Western Wall.

Me with my gun right before graduation.

My commander, Stav, and I after graduation.

The whole plugah (everyone who participated in Marva) during the hike up Masada.

Packing up our stuff and ready to leave what we called home for a couple months to our new homes in Jerusalem!

Eating our bagged lunches after doing our sports activity in Kfar Bloom.

Me performing a gun routine during our graduation ceremony.

Sam and I at an air force Museum up North.