It's been far too long since I last blogged. I've moved cities, stumbled into despair and desperation that aliyah just wasnt working, almost ALMOST decided to make a rather big decision concerning the Y word (yeridah, in case there was any uncertainty) but have somehow found my way back to stability and routine. I could never have imagined craving either of those things, when I was 18.

I have a job! Rejoice! Not just any old job, either. A job working alongside lovely, funny people who take their work seriously but who nearly all made aliyah.. we have a connection. Not only this, but my previous job trained me so well for this one that it's almost as if it were pre-ordained. As if it had been decided already, that this is where I was headed.

Oh wait - He IS in charge...

In case I hadn't made it clear previously, eretz Yisrael is by no means an easy or lenient place to live. I'm not throwing in lenient to sound clever (does lenient make anyone sound clever?), but because I mean it. Nobody goes easy on you, nobody gives you a break. If you're religious and keep Shabbat, you spend your one real day off cooking/cleaning/running about like a headless chicken just in preparation for Rest. So much build-up, so much pressure directed towards this one day of the week on which I MUST rest can only result in one thing : a day of unreasonable anxiety. I seem to spend most shabbatot avoiding work-related, "6.15am alarm" thoughts. Oh how I miss Sundays.

I think it's possible that I don't smile as much as I used to, about being here. Things I found endearing when I first arrived, have become irritating. I suspected this may happen over time, I didn't think it would be as quick as a year. Except the other day, when I took a sherut took far in one direction and had no idea where I am. The driver calls his friend driving the sherut on the opposite side, who stopped especially to pick me up. Am unconvinced this would happen in England, theyd open the doors for you and wish you luck.. maybe not even that.

Every day, I walk home through a pedestrian street, closed off to cars. It's a special walk to and fro on Tuesdays, when the street market comes to Nachalat Binyamin.

I walk through as they set up at 7.30 in the morning and later as the weary vendors pack up at 5. I wander past jewellery stalls, glass photo frames, a young guy who sells photos he takes of Israel, an old hippie looking man with a long white beard selling brightly-coloured clocks for children. He sees me every week, I try and smile but he doesn't smile back.

One woman sells pink, fluffy, glittery decorations for girls' bedrooms and there's the guy who sells old movie posters frame by thick, dark paint in vibrant colours. The Nachalat Binyamin cats sit in throngs by open-doored cafes, waiting for scraps. The four elderly Russian ladies squeeze onto one bench, always pausing in converdation to eye not only my outfit, but all the women who walk past them.

It's a scene I love, I feel as if I am actually Hugh Grant at the beginning of Notting Hill, strolling through the market, the noises, the faces, the passing of the seasons. It makes me feel a little bit more alive, walking through that scene once a week.

I emerge from this wonderful windy street, onto the drudgery of Allenby. Open garbage bins, homeless men lie shoeless in the middle of kikar Shenkin, the Chabad chanukiah still taped to the metal pole leading to shuk HaCarmel.

I miss Jerusalem desperately, even when I remind myself how claustrophobic I felt living there. I feel myself being pulled towards frum people I spy on the streets of Tel Aviv. Though I may be wearing jeans, I feel more affinity with their sheitels and skirts, kippot and tzitzit than I do with the rabble and crowds of TA. Now, suddenly, it's the end of December and I have been here 11 months. Sometimes I feel elated and so privileged to be living here, to be independant - compared with so many unfortunate, deprived people living all over the globe. Inevitably, sometimes I cannot help but compare my own life to those of people I know, of my friends and then I WANT. I find things lacking, I find myself wanting, wanting, wanting.

After almost a year of living here, I have started to teach myself patience. Contentment is a long way off but first... patience.

"..and by the way if you you hate to go to school, you may grow up to be a mule.." - Bing Crosby

I didn't particularly enjoy school, but I loved university. Yet, at 25, I am unemployed. I don't feel much like a mule, but I do feel somewhat like a fool.
Had I been working for the past 8 years, instead of earning myself a degree, I would have considerable savings by now and maybe even enough to not - gasp - worry where my next rent cheque is coming from. I cannot believe I am actually at that point. I cannot believe that people younger than me own property and are looking into "buying a second, purely for investment purposes."

I saw a poem today that read :

"The more I worry about my weight, the more I gain, the more I worry about my financial situation, the more I lose."

I wish I didn't worry about - well, I was going to say 'this' but actually both - issues so much or so frequently. My weight is something I can change, I know it. But I like myself. If I'm only doing it to 'meet people' (why must it sound so old-fashioned to say 'find a husband'? thats what i want to do!) then why should I do it at all?
The answer is clear to the world - because nobody wants a fat girlfriend. Oh my friends can roll their eyes, or tell me off, or proclaim in that dramatic way "SO not true!" but I know it. I know it because I've met some lovely, kind boys who have never looked at me in that way, but have considered other friends of mine as potential girlfriend material. My friends are each bright and talented, but I have enough self-value to realise that we are all equal in intelligence and wit, in personality and warmth. The bottom line is physical appearance. Of that I am certain. Men are created animalistic, it is in their nature to be first and foremost on the prowl, on the hunt, to act with natural desire and instinct. Walk into any club or bar and feel those 'prowling' vibes reverberating off the walls. Today, women claim to be capable of being equally predatory - which may be so, but I could argue it is not in their natural makeup. They have to work harder at it, for it to be believable.

This idea was perpetuated many moons ago by Jane Austen, in nearly all of her novels. Examine the attitudes and ideas on gender being flung about in 'Emma', played in the 1996 movie by Gwyneth. The attitude of Mr.Elton in the novel towards Harriet. most clearly manifests the feeling I often feel from men when I am around taller, skinnier friends - not sincerely of disgust, but of almost patronising amusement that I have even come to acknowledge, stepping out the way for the more beautiful girls. Why on earth would you pick Harriet, when Emma is still available? Emma imagines herself maligned by Frank Churchill when he 'chooses' Miss Martin over here. Yet he had been playing Emma for a fool, conducting an affair for many months with Miss Martin and simply leading Emma down the garden path. Even this may have been Emma's own imagination, longing as she is for romantic love.

I have no desire to be made a fool of, nor to be made to feel small and unworthy. I acknowledge that I am not a beautiful girl, and as I am nearing 26 it seems unlikely that one day I will magically blossom into a skinny, tiny, olive-skinned small-boned beauty. But, as I asked a friend the other day - yes, one of the beautiful ones - if what initially attracts a man to you is yours looks, how do I get them to even sit down with me? I have confidence in my personality, my intellect and my ability to make people laugh (providing they're not entirely boring) - but if I can't even get to the Coffee stage, where does a wedding come in?

From the window of my apartment I see the Jerusalem skyline... if I lean out of the window on a funny angle, slightly risking falling out, but the sunsets are worth it. I have moved to Baka, a nice little anglo/israel/frenchi neighbourhood nearer east Jerusalem. I didn't give much thought to post-merkaz klita life as I could never imagine what "real" Israeli living would be like. After just 3 weeks, I have a small taste of just how hard it is. Nobody earns real money - by that i mean, money that makes you feel secure. An amount per month/year that doesn't make you worry. People watch their pennies here. It's not the best way to be living, but the majority are in the same boat and so it seems normal. It has become normal to me. I actually told somebody that 25 shekel/hour is a great wage. Well it is, for Jerusalem... They/I take jobs with low wages, with salaries that cannot possibly compare to what friends in the us and uk are earning - it's laughable. But people continue and live their lives and I am just starting out. I sometimes wonder to myself when I will become employable, when I will be doing the kind of job I could be doing in London right now. Until my Hebrew is much improved and I have a second degree, is the realistic answer. For now, I too will scrimp and save and watch my few pennies and try and focus on living and being here.
Luckily, the last 4 months have not been all about money or lack of, rather I was so focused on friends and relationships and my absorption into Israel that I didn't dwell on what was coming - the end of Ulpan! It ended and it was sad. Not as sad as I had imagined, mainly because I was secure that I knew where all my good friends were going, that we weren't abandoning yet another "family" and set of friends. We're all still in this together. It's true that I can't just pop over to Tel Aviv on a whim and visit my bestest pals who have moved there. It's also true that it's only 45 minutes away and I really can. It's just a shame the sherut is so bumpy and you have to sit so CLOSE to random, religious men who I often think enjoy the bumpiness for that very reason...

Relationships have deepened, over these few months. I rely on my good friends, we call each other to say nothing at all, just to check they're still there, still going through the same things. Setting up a flat has been unsettling, but finally I have roots - somewhere to unpack my books and call 'home'. Now back to England for a month, which will be strange and possibly even more unsettling. Will it be hard to come back here, after all that time? Will people have forgotten me? I leave in the middle of a time when one special relationship seems to be changing, but I cannot be sure. Will he forget me also? Out of sight, out of mind? There's no way to foresee, I put my trust in Him and hope for the best.

I am sick. In Hebrew: "My chest pains me". It's not great fun being sick in Ulpan. You miss your own bed, having your own space, your mother, having access to antibiotics without having to argue your case. Israelis are particularly strange when it comes to taking medication, doctors are irritatingly against handing out drugs. Take all the drugs you can get, say I! I have an infection, it won't cure itself!

I seem to have to argue my case all the time out here. Don't take no for an answer, they told us right at the beginning of our Klita. I've been trying to get my phone fixed for 2 weeks, finally today i get it back and they make me PAY for it, and theres no apology just a typical "ma la'asot?". Frustration. And yet with all the frustrations, you cant stay angry too long. You leave the shop, you fume for a little while and dwell on all the madnesses involved in being here and eventually you look up and see something that makes you smile. I'm constantly finding things to smile about in Israel. In England, it felt as if I was constantly grimacing, or hearing or something awful, another stabbing, another mugging. It happens here too, but somehow the good outweighs the bad, and I never felt that in London.

On Monday I go back, a few days before Pesach. I've never been away from my family for the Pesach chag and I'm so excited to see them all. I'm less excited to actually be in England again. It feels as if I only just escaped! And then onto Italy... *sigh. Cannot wait. Holiday! Head-space. Just my family and random people I dont know. No crazies, no 150 other Olim. Yay!

Chag kasher v'sameach xxx