Am I cursed?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just in case anybody does not know this:

I was supposed to be in Israel for one year before college.
The year has now been over for over three months.
I am now still in Israel.
It is not by choice.

See, I'm in Hachshara, I thought it was a miserable program, nice people, but a miserable program, and so I left. Went to a yeshiva, which was not much better. My time at yeshiva is coming to an end, T-2 weeks, I'm ready to go, I'm getting packed and ready to go, when I went to my aunt's house for a visit. "Hey Michael, did you hear the news?"

"What news?"

"About the fires in Jacksonville?"

"Really, there's a fire?"

"Yeah, it's supposed to be really bad. Lack of rain from El ni�o."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. From what I understand, people can't breathe, the smoke is really thick and horrible."

"So, what does this mean?"

"Well, you may have to spend another year here."

"Yeah right."

There was this girl, Julie, she had her junior year abroad here last year. Her parents were close to my grandparents, (Melanie's parents) who visited Melanie every once in a while during the course of that year. We got along fairly well, but the point is, she was on the year program at Ben Gurion University. Before Julie went back home at the end of the year, she told Melanie that the Ben Gurion program for the next year would have a freshman program as well. It was suggested that I look into it.

I didn't believe it was that bad. I checked the paper. Sure enough, there are these awful fires in Jacksonville, and people can't breathe. Fellow asthamatics (and I think roughly 97% of Jacksonville is asthmatic) were said to be having trouble. ^Fabulous.^ "Well, have you talked to your parents?"

Commercial break:

OK, we now return...

"^Yeah, right.^" At this point I had called home a grand total of seven times during my stay in Israel.

"Well, they suggest you wait two months before you come back."

"Uhm, that is after college starts."

"Well, they're working hard trying to get you accepted into Ben Gurion."

"I see....Are you sure this isn't just a trick to keep me in this country."

"Ha! And you thought you were going to leave, Michael. You're NEVER going to leave! You will remain in permanent exile! This is your punishment!"

My aunt has a strange sense of humor.

See, I didn't put my little ^s, marks of sarcasm, around her quote for a reason. She did say it jokingly, but deep down I think she, and I, believe it.

First I experienced ^the sheer joy that was Hachshara.^ Then the ^freethinking of the yeshiva.^ And now, my unrequested extension for this vacation has been expanded. Perhaps in a past life I worked for B'nei Akiva, and this is my punishment. As Tali, one of my friends from Hachshara put it, "It's hard to believe that of all of us on the program, you were the one that stayed." Quite.

Well, I suppose it's not that bad, it's only a semester, not that big a deal... So, to iron out a few details, I called my mom. (Eighth phone call home over the course of the year.)

"Oh, Michael I didn't know what you wanted, you hadn't told me, so I paid for the entire year."

OK...do you have dreams where, like, God's a character in it, ordering you to just do X, and it goes on to present all sorts of problems? I've been having this recurring dream where I go talk to God, and he just keeps laughing at me.

No, I suppose it's not anywhere near that bad...Israel is hardly the worst place in the world to be, and with the university, I'd be in a secular part of the country, something I really hadn't seen to much of, till then.

Just please tell me I'll be home for the sophomore year. Please. Please? Can I just this in writing?
�

Get me outa here!!!

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Michael Kadish

"Some programs have been theatrical masterpieces, but all we're seeing is the negative side of nuclear war." -- Barry Goldwater
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