14 June

So this evening I had a class and decided to skip it...(points to me for not letting the group know. I got a call 10 minutes after it was scheduled to start. Sometimes I forget that unlike many places at home, life does not automatically go on without me, if I'm to be there). I went shopping instead. I don't often go shopping. Most of the things I need I can purchase in the building I work in. After some nearly nine months of being by and large content with a very limited selection, I'm deciding I should branch out a little bit. I've often wondered why we have a little grocery store just for Baha'is at all. We also have vouchers for a huge local grocery store and are free to get reimbursement for purchases made at other food stores. I suppose it is just a matter of convenience, to make it easy to buy our staple foods. Anyway, I spent most of the evening traipsing around the top of Mount Carmel and realizing my sense of direction in this city is finally pretty good. I saw a building I've seen many times before but never been curious about, and decided to look it up. It's a cultural events complex that includes a cinematheque - I looked that up and found to my surprise and happiness that it shows international movies. That means it shows movies in English, which is good, and movies in Spanish, which is also good. Most movies are in French - that's good too, as long as they have English subtitles. I think I'll take my Spanish class to one of the Spanish movies one of these days....

I think among all the staff here there is a constant feeling of tension between developing your knowledge and understanding of the faith, and devoting time to your hobbies and personal interests. I think I have a reasonable balance between these, though I probably spend more time on the latter - I should be keeping in mind that I have opportunities to pursue the former here that I do not have at home (and vice versa, for that matter). Though ultimately I probably let too much time slip by. For me at least there is also a tension between wanting to know Israelis and not having many proper opportunities. When I first came I got a bad impression of Israeli culture as almost belligerent. I'm starting to warm up to it as I realize that it's not a single culture, but many cultures as it's a nation of immigrants. You meet all kinds of. Also I find that people are not so much aggressive as simply direct and they tend to compensate for their brashness by being willing to do almost anything to help you if they sense you need it. So I'm keeping my eyes out for more opportunities.

13 June

Today I was chatting with a friend who will be leaving the Baha'i World Centre in August. I asked her if she is prepared to leave, and she considered the question and said, "Well, mentally yes. It was a shock to see my replacement come last week, because it made it finally feel real that I am really leaving. But now I'm over that. I want to be back in the real world...nowhere else in the world do you live the same way you do here. There's no anonymity. I feel that when I'm back home I'll be able to kind of let my hair down." It was a big relief to hear her say this because I've been feeling similarly and presuming it's unhealthy, which I reflected on a bit in my last post. Now I realize that like almost everything, anonymity can be healthy in moderation. Seeing the same people day in and day out will wear on anyone.

Her statement "nowhere else in the world do you live the same way" got me thinking about the culture here. There is, for example, a huge culture of learning. Everyone is always learning something or working on some skill or making some artistic product. To cite a trivial example, and the one I'm actually going to dwell on, everyone, everyone here drinks tea. It's very interesting how ingrained it is into the culture, especially among the great majority of 20 somethings on the scene, among which age group tea consumption is not a common worldwide practice. The 15 minute breaks we take from work in the mornings and afternoons are generally called "tea breaks". Half an aisle in our tiny bare-necessities store is devoted to different tea varieties. Recently I've been told of a World Centre wide youth ritual called the Tim Tam slam. A Tim Tam is an excessively sweet chocolate cookie. The objective, as I understand it, is to hold the cookie between your teeth as you dip the other end in a cup of tea and then try to slurp the whole thing before it melts away. Fascinating, no? I think only here could a ritual so ridiculous be developed around a cup of tea.

There are many more, um, dignified things I've learned about tea drinking here. Although Persians prefer British tea, they refuse to drink it with milk added because it ruins the scent. They will only add sugar. (I continue to drink my tea with milk anyway. I've never given a second thought to smelling my tea.) Tea for large groups here is often prepared in a samovar, a device of Russian/Persian stock, and it is made to be very very concentrated. Strong tea is poured and hot water is added, rather that what I think would be the also perfectly logical route of making a more dilute tea.

I've actually all but given up coffee here because I've been exposed to enough teas that I can gauge their strengths and choose one that's just strong enough to keep me going as needed. I think I've mentioned this before but I save almost every outer sleeve of almost every tea bag I've used to make myself a cup because for me this is a small but very extrinsic symbol of the peculiarities of life here. It's actually kind of comforting to collect the sleeves and think about assembling them into some sort of statement that proclaims to the world "look at this parallel universe!" It makes me think I'm not so bad at adjusting, I just really live in a very weird place.

5 June

It's interesting that I'm getting a lot of the same two questions lately from prospective visitors: Should I come to Haifa? and Should I go to Turkey? Some are really very worried about the aftermath of the Gaza-bound flotilla, which is by far the most "interesting" thing to occur, politically speaking, since I arrived in September (unless you count Iran in general). Others are not. The U.S. State Department has officially encouraged postponing or cancelling any travel to Israel. I have to say that seems extreme to me. Though I'm not one to say where the situation will go.

Just yesterday I dreamed that Amanda and Jeff were flying, presumably, to Mexico, but "started to sense that something was unusual when we layed over in Pittsburgh" and ended up in Israel for their wedding. Immediately after I woke up I asked myself seriously why I shouldn't go. I decided against it for myriad obvious logistical reasons. I haven't always thought this way but I am now thinking that if only it were more practical, and something I reconsidered much further in advance, I would go.

I went back to the book lab in the conservation office on Friday. I didn't make any major mistakes this time and progressed as far as finishing the text block of the four books I'm working on. I learned that in older books those fabric bits visible above and below the spine served a purpose, and they live on in newer books but tend to be only decorative. Really a lot goes into bookbinding that is either invisible to the reader, or visible but misleading. So I believe next time I'll work on making the cover - which seems to me to be the most exciting and glamorous part.

Today I went on the first hiking trip I've been on that I wouldn't do again. I went to Yehudia national park in the Golan Heights, which was part of Syria before the 6 day war. It was something like walking through the Grand Canyon. The hiking was, for me, very intense (even involving some swimming in over-your-head deep water) but the beauty of the place was worth it. Now, however, I'm paying the price as the lower half of my body seems to have ceased functioning for a little while. Strangely, though I must have used my arms and especially my wrists almost as much as my legs for support and hoisting myself up and over large rocks, and guarding against falling when I scaled down surfaces, they don't hurt as much. Yet.

Outside of the pursuits I've found to entertain myself outside of work, I'm having sort of mixed feelings about my job. I don't see myself as someone who can hardly sit down and function at the same time. I've met many such people here (regrettably for them I've seen some within my office) and I'm not among them. At the same time I don't want to restrict myself to life completely behind a desk. I'd like for my work to occasionally call for something a little different. I can feel the toll that a somewhat stressful desk job is taking on my body. I know that a big part of the stress comes from allowing myself to be stressed because sometimes I choose not to try to deal with it effectively. I just get caught up in it. Anyway, aside from feeling some stress, which I can improve, I'm feeling some boredom, too, which I'm not sure I can improve. I've felt for a little bit of time now, maybe a month, that I'm ready to move on with my life. Professionally I think I'm (emphasis on) approaching the time that I am ready for that.

But if I remember that I came here to develop spiritually I know that I'm not ready to leave here. What I'm feeling is probably a readiness to give up on that, which is, of course, against the whole point. I have friends here and overall it's not very hard to feel comfortable among the people here, but can't really help feeling like a misfit some of the time. The vast majority of staff here are second-generation Baha'is and some of them at least talk like they've never doubted or questioned for one moment what they believe. How could I develop spiritually if the most visible route to "development" is unquestioning faith? One of the most fundamental principles of the Baha'i faith is independent investigation of truth and meaning, though it seems that everyone (perhaps naturally) has their own unique understanding of what it means. Some think it is only the obligation of those who are not yet Baha'is. Needless to say, that doesn't help me. Of course, there is always the possibility that what I guess I'm perceiving as some degree of close-mindedness is just some sort of failure to communicate. I have found that I've been wrong about people once I've gotten to know them and their depth of thought and understanding and consideration of the faith is much deeper than it seemed at first.

When I imagine myself going home tomorrow I see me losing myself in cafes working on bad poetry and probably smoking. And picking up a prayer book or a book of the Baha'i writings once in a while. I kind of appreciated the anonymity I had in college though I don't suppose it helped me to grow. At least I didn't start smoking then (I really don't see that happening - here it seems to just represent a slump in trying to uphold my values because I really think it's disgusting). I've talked about wanting to feel not so disconnected from my community, and here I have an opportunity to experiment with that, in my strange, challenging little community where people are constantly coming and going. Though it all basically makes sense in my head, I doubt I'm expressing a coherent train of thought. Oh, well - I figure I have a while to keep trying.