I'm Outta There!

You know, I was going to give this whole long post about how I got out of school last week and all the things I did and how I completely WHUPPED everyone in history in the Imperial Age simulation game, even though I only got a measly 10 points to spend per turn. But you know, I really don't feel in the mood any longer.

What's important is this: I'm out. In a few weeks I leave the country, not for the original three months but FIVE WHOLE MONTHS--I'll be spending an additional two in Israel after the school program ends. Right now, I'm hoping to get a volunteer job with Magen David Adom (the Israeli Red Cross). They train you in emergency response and everything. You're part of this ambulance "on call" team. I'm a little scared by the thought of that responsibility, but these are really skills you can use in life. Besides, I'm thinking of going into ROTC when I go to college, and a little First Aid knowledge probably wouldn't hurt in the army.

("ROTC you say?" I'll explain another time...this thing is important enough to me that I want my thoughts to be coherent when I get it down on paper.)

Tomorrow is prom. I'm going as a bellydancer. Here, I'll make a confession: I love the spotlight. I'm always trying to get people to pay attention--well, not all the time, sometimes I can be pretty shy, but you get the idea. And I want to stand out, hence the bellydance outfit.

My friend Peter is coming down as my date, even though he has school. Peter is a real sweet guy. He made me this duct tape shirt, it was really something...sometime I'll post a picture. But it was this amazing thing, you'd never believe it was decorated with duct tape. But more than that, he's easy to talk to, and not just on a small range of things. A lot of times, I find myself able to talk to people on a small range of things, but not with Peter. I really like him.

There's also this stupid Poland orientation thing they're making us attend at school. Now: you're about to go overseas, you're going to an orientation, what do you expect to hear? Discussions about what to pack, what to expect from the locals, how to behave in the culture. For example, my friend Michael was telling us the other day about the instructions he and the rest of his group recieved when they went to work in this Arab Israeli village--stay covered, greet everyone (EVERYONE!!) on the street, and reject invitations inside unless the person repeatedly invites you. So going to an orientation, you'd expect something like that, right?

Wrong. Instead we get a lecture about the Holocaust.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad. I've sat through a LOT of lectures on the Holocaust, it's been a part of my life since I was very little. I don't mean to creep out you non-Jews out there, but this is a fact: the Holocaust is a part of your life if you grow up with any strong connection to Jewish culture. Not that anyone sits you down or anything, you just can't ignore it.

But the woman in question just really put my back against the wall. I don't know why, but from the start of her speech, I just tensed up and got real grumpy. And then when I started to respond, I was always responding very rudely. She even pointed it out, and I apologized, saying I'd been very sick lately. I couldn't just say something like, "You make me very tense and unhappy from the way you talk." But we kept banging our heads against each other, especially as she began making statements that I took issue with. For example, when she said that Jewish Emancipation began in th 1700s. NO! NO NO NO! I couldn't take it anymore and burst out, "That's wrong. Emancipation began in the 1800s." She gave me this Look and started to explain, as if to a toddler, how it began in 1750. I shot back, "No, the ENLIGHTENMENT began in the 1700s. Only at the very end of the century in 1791 did you even begin to see the beginning of emancipation." And so on and so forth. That really set the tone. I was getting more and more upset, but that ingrained respect you give to teachers (hey! don't snicker!) just kept choking me up. You learn from a very young age, "Don't go against the teacher in class, don't interrupt her, etc." And I just wasn't thinking very straight. I was being very rude to her, undeservedly so, and I should apologize. But how? I just can't stand the woman, I don't know why. Just going to talk to her again would get me all tense again.

Also, that statement she made about the Roma during the Holocaust, that they were just a roadbump in Hitler's Grand Extermination Plan--that is extraordinarily offensive. Look. I don't know if the Nazis put as much effort into hunting down Gypsies as they did for the Jews. I do know that the Jews were number one on their hitlist. But saying something like that I just find abhorrent. How dare you downplay someone else's suffering like that, especially when it's the sort that came from the Holocaust?! Go tell that to a Roma survivor, why don't you?!