Morning in Jerusalem

Morning in Jerusalem

It’s 4:16 in the morning here in the West Bank city of Ma’aleh Adumim, where I spent this past Shabbat. Today I have 63 actual days (eight weeks-ish), 45 work days until I’m a civilian again…it can’t come soon enough. It’s not that I don’t love the army – I still do – but after three incredibly intense years I need a major lifestyle change, different scenery and to be my own man again.

I have something around 900+ emails in my in-box…the fact that there aren’t villagers with pitchforks surrounding my place of abode is astounding. My biggest problem is that I’m not allowed to bring a civilian computer into my office and our army computers – quite wisely – aren’t connected to the outside world…by the time I get home (if I get home…) I’m too exhausted to take off my boots, let alone turn on my laptop and write anything more than “hi” before I crash.

For those of you who want a quick catch up:

  • I’ve moved to the Soldiers Hostel in Jerusalem for the remainder of my service…in retrospect, I should have done this sooner even though it makes my daily commute 3.5 hours in total (without traffic).
  • I’ve been accepted into graduate school (yay!). I’ll be studying at the Open University of Israel in Ranana (through distance education) from New York. My M.A. is in Cultural Studies focusing on Middle Eastern culture and literature…expect a lot of posts about this once I’m a civilian again…posts filled with Hebrew, Arabic and lots of pictures and music…ahh things I’m allowed to blog about without having to worry about the Intelligence Corps throwing a fit.
  • I’m waiting to hear back on a few jobs I’ve applied for in New York. One of them is to be a project manager for a construction firm. I figure if I’ve just spent three years executing missions around the world on behalf of the IDF than I can certainly transfer those skills to project managing construction plans, approvals, certificates, variances and projects instead of international permissions, agreements, contracts, visas and flight itineraries.
  • I’m heading back to New York for a couple of years to work on my M.A. while holding down a full time job and trying to save as much cash as I can…sadly, I am not independently wealthy and travel requires money.
  • The return to the U.S. in no way should be considered permanent…I just can’t work in any of my chosen professions until I complete my M.A. (at a minimum) and – ideally – my Ph.D.
  • Within my first year on Long Island I also hope to finish the four additional teaching addenda to my teaching certification so I can get that out of the way.
  • I’m chomping at the bit to register for classes…that’ll happen two or three days after I’m done with the IDF.
  • I really need to go shopping in the Old City of Jerusalem, this will also happen a day or two after I’m done registering for courses.
  • My travelogue is five pages away from being completed and sent off – I think it’ll happen before the Passover Seder, but no promises.
  • I really, really want a vegetarian Margie Meal.
  • I’ve been approved to be a soldier on a Taglit-Birthright Israel bus :-D
  • I now have a folding camping shovel which makes me incredibly happy…I also have a poop shovel with ruler on the side (to measure the depth of the cat-hole you need to dig), but I’ve had that for awhile so it’s not nearly as exciting.

And now it’s 04:40 so I’m going to ‘get up’, get shaved and get dressed…63 days…63 days…

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