1. Either way, I was amused. One of the things I love about my Che earrings (besides the fact that they cost 5 shekels and come from Tel Aviv) is the conversations they provoke. I am quite left-wing, but of course, do not condone the violence of Che's actions, which wound up killing the very people he was fighting for - one of the many ironies of the ways Communism has played out throughout history.
2. One of the things I love about Jerusalem is the variety of languages on hears on a daily basis: Today I practied my Spanish comprehension on a bus, and recognized that it was South American Spanish but not Argentinean - which I know would make my mom proud.* (I also have a Mexican folk song about a witch stuck in my head now.) I listened to French while waiting for the bus, and am babysitting for Ethiopian-French girls - and take pleasure in the fact that I, a white girl, am working for girls with darker colored skin who are of African descent, and love how we are all religious Jews despite our different appearances. I also love seeing various people pray - a religious Muslim with prayer-beads at one bus stop, a religious Jewish girl praying at another.
3. Thank God, I am starting to feel more settled. I took a new attitude: You do your best, God will do the rest. I beleive in that with all my heart, and think that our society is too results-oriented instead of being process-oriented. (Yes, I am a hippy - a religious, poetry-writing, feminist hippy - deal with it, or move over so I can lie down on the grass and eat some tofu.)
* While watching a soccer game featuring the Argentinian national team, and discussing the players' bodies, my mom turns to me and says, "Never date an Argentinean. They're all malandros malditos". Three seconds later she apologized profusely for using such bad language. If you're wondering why I love my mom - its for moments like these - and because she's, you know, my mother. The people on my bus turned out to be from Uruguay.
Hear, hear to hippies! :)
ReplyDeleteIn Berkeley it's really not trivial to get hippie cred...it's pretty tough to even match the hippies around you. That was much easier in Boston, I've gotta say ;)
On a possibly lesser level than your Spanish dialect distinction ability, I recall once being on a train in Boston and hearing someone speaking to his daughter. After about ten minutes, it struck me that his accent, though it didn't faze me for a second, was actually out of place for a train in Boston - it was a southern accent. About a minute later, I was pretty convinced it was not just southern; it was definitively *Texan.* (Yup, there is indeed a distinction.)
ReplyDeleteI asked the guy where he was from out of the blue . (This, of course, would probably be a weird thing to do to a northeasterner, but remember, I know he's a southerner here.) Turned out not only was he Texan, but he was from within 20 miles of my home :)