1. The Drowning. OR - 'The Day I Proved I Didn't Know My Limits and So Nearly Died'
Wednesday - NJ and I decided to go to Ashdod, to meet with her friend, 'R', where we went to the beach. Just before leaving, we'd missed the bus because we were debating for over an hour whether or not we should bring our swimming stuff. We did not, and our first stop in Ashdod was the beach. I went swimming in my dress, which was a fun first.
TPALSS, 1. I don't like swimming in sea water, 2. I thought, 'meh, why not give it a go', 3. I didn't realise how deep it was, and got smacked by several waves, and pulled under by the undercurrent. It was surprisingly very very strong, and on trying to reach the bottom to regain my footing, I realised I couldn't, and started screaming. I don't really remember much else.
Apparantly I scrambled up R (like a CAT!), who is a very good, very frum boy, and he took me back to shore and tried to get as much (non-salt) water down me. In between choking and trying to drink, I was trying to ask what happened and furiously apologising. I felt so sick, crap and embarrassed!!!
Needless to say, I was absolutely exhausted by the experience and so had an early night, although I slept fitfully, waking up either because I had a horrible flashback or nightmare, or needing to go to the loo.
2. Thursday - 'The Hallucination Incident'/'Our Crazy Day of Crazy Crazy Shizzle'
Still knackered from the events of the day before, I took the day off work and rested. At 3pm or thereabouts, NJ woke me up from a very deep sleep to tell me that Boston guy, the ex-mitnadev, had returned to the kibbutz!
Why, I was trying to wonder, would Boston guy do that? He didn't like us, and drove me mad towards the end of his stay, convinced I secretly wanted to sleep with him, and telling everyone this. However, newly arisen from this heavy, salt-watery tasting slumber and uneasy in the heat, I felt really zoned out, and was convinced this was all some kind of strange semi-cheese dream. I told her that was a crap joke, and she shouldn't have woken me up for THAT, but she insisted. I thought maybe I was hallucinating, which i can sometimes do if extremely tired and hungry. I asked, the immortal line,
'So where is this hallucination of ours, then?' and she said, 'right behind you.'
And standing right behind me, only a split second after I'd turned my back on the kibbutz, was Boston.
It couldn't have been real - it was all too quick and perfectly timed, and I'd just woken up...and we'd been alone on the kibbutz together (me and NJ) for over a week. We concluded he was a hallucination, and we didn't see any more of him for two days.Ergo - hallucination.
If he was real, we thought, surely he would've said sthg to us, or we would have seen him around...but no. Then we got a bus to TLV - within 2 minutes of getting to the stop. We always have to wait at least 20 or so minutes. So we concluded that the day before we had most likely both drowned, and now we were in some crazy parallel universe, much like Limbo or somthing, and if Boston was really there it was so we could all ask for each other's mechila before the Yamim Noraim. Or I was still asleep.
He was nowhere to be found when we got back.
And Aussie guy came back to the kibbutz with us!!!! :D
3. The Shabbaton-Beit HaCar Incident / Shakira the Dead Goat
For Shabbat we had 12 ppl or so - NJ's two mates, a London girl who was still on Kibbutz but we hadn't seen much of, me and my mate, Aussie guy and our apparant hallucinated Boston guy, and a few others.
Deciding to show them all the Beit Hacar, on Shabbat we went and I set to proudly showing them around.
All was going swimmingly until the following conversation:
A voice: 'He mehta! He mehta!' [she's dead, she's dead]
Me: 'mi mehta?' [who's dead?]
banot sherut: 'l'eze!!l'eze mehta!' [the goat, the goat's dead]
Me: 'Efo? Efo l'eze?' [Where's the goat?]
banot sherut: 'Shakira! B'Pinot Lituf!' [Shakira, in the petting zoo]
and I turned around. And sure enough, Shakira the goat was slumped into the dog's hole with her tongue lolling to the side, her eyes rolled heavenwards and flies everywhere, apparantly very very dead.
It felt a bit like the 'Dead Parrot' sketch. I felt sick but remained calm.
4. The End of Kibbutz Days / The Airport
TPALSS, I left London in July with a bag which weighed 10kg. Despite not using half of the clothes and stuff I packed, my suitcase had managed to expand somewhat enormously during my stay on kibbutz. I canlt think how. Anyhoo, R from Ashdod came to join us, and bought me a pizza to say goodbye, and then helped me repack my case and even zipped it up for me whole I sat on it, bewildered by this feeling of crazy remorse overtaking me.
J from the P famille took me to the airport, alongside NJ and R. J and I had a quick goodbye, but it was definitely a 'see you soon' rather than a 'goodbye forever' I feel.
After checking in my bag (all done by R, bless!) the three of us headed to the departure gate, towards McDonalds, and I couldn't believe this was happening to me. It could've been the pizza they forced down me, it could've been the general apprehension re: leaving, but I felt incredibly sick, as if I'd swollen a whole load more of salt water just that minute. Then I realised that actually, rather than throwing up, I was about to burst into crazy roaring and screaming tears. I bought a McFlurry - my first!!! - and ate it quickly, before i could start crying. I hate crying in public. It's a shame that my first McFlurry is eaten purely as a distractionary measure, but still.
Then Aussie guy showed up, and we all sat chatting for a bit. My flight was at 7.20pm, and it was 6pm. NJ and R left to go back to kibbutz and Ashdod, and Aussie and I chatted and I tried not to throw up or cry until 7pm, when I needed to go catch the flight to London.
And it was strange. For a minute, I was fully intending to not go to the Boarding Gate. I could easily get my bag back from the plane, and leave the airport, go with Aussie to gte some Power Espresso Vodka and sit drinking it on the miklat, live on the kibbutz for a bit and then get a job outside and gradually earn enough to move, and make Aliya at some point in all this and then -
Aussie, who can (after two months of being with me pretty much the whole time) read my face effortlessly, said something like: 'I know what you're thinking, but you need to go to the gate.' And I couldn't say anything at all to that, but I could feel my face getting red and turning into the resemblance of, what my mother calls 'a constipated muppet', and then I started crying a lot, into his shoulder. Oops.
Then I said goodbye, gathered up my stuff and went through hand luggage security, and arrived at my gate ten minutes later, just on time. I don't see how anyone needs 2 hours to get through all that.
I felt drained. I couldn't believe I was forcing myself onto this plane, I felt so dizzy and sick, and like it wasn't me moving my legs. But I managed to get onto the plane,and switched off my Israeli phone, and sat in my admittedly very comfy and roomy seat, depressed and feeling half-dead as ever.
And as we flew over Israel, and I saw the lights of Tel-Aviv by night, I felt an actual physical, cramp-like pain in my chest, and I had a really bad headache. Then my seat neighbour started talking to me - and although she was lovely - a (non-Jewish) PhD student from Sheffield who'd been in Haifa for a Chemistry conference and we talked for the entire journey, including a point where I tried to explain why that Charedi person didn;t have curly-wurleys, and that one did, but that meanwhile I was also religious but not like them, etc etc, I couldn't help but think, 'How the hell am I going to survive chutz-la'aretz?'
When I got off the plane, and saw my brother hobbling towards me on crutches (he'd broken his ankle), i was quite happy to see him as I'd missed him terribly. However, after hugging me, I was somewhat perturbed by his choice of greeting - 'What the hell's happened to you?!'
And I agree - it must've been quite the shock to see me come back tanned, my hair leonine and cascading down my back with a gingerish-tinge, a nose-piercing, crazy-Aladdin pants and schlepping a drum.
And that was the end of my trip.
For now.
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