Mike High Does The Kibbutz: Page 2

The People

On the program we have ten Americans, fifteen Russians, two
Hungarians, four Canadians, a handful of South Americans, a handful of
Europeans and two Japanese kids (I heard they are from some strange
Christian sect that adores the Jews but I can't speak enough Hebrew to really talk to them and they speak no English).

On an average classday I hear English, Hebrew, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish. I'm used to hearing people speak other languages in San Diego but it is wild to hear someone stop speaking English, start speaking German, switch to Russian and then back to English. There are so many multilingual people here that I constantly feel like an idiot but lucky most of them are eighteen so when they speak English they show so much immature inanity that I feel better.

All of us are housed two or three to a room, in three barrack style buildings, and it impossible to be alone here. In my room there is a seventeen year old German kid who knows nothing about women or anything else. Also there is an eighteen year old cokehead from Jersey who I get along with perfectly except that he brings out the mean shit talker in me so I am already known as the loud, asshole American (a distinction I bear with pride).

I am having serious privacy issues: it's hard to study, hard to think,
impossible to masturbate (except in the shower, so you can image how
clean I am). I spend so much of my time telling people to f-off I'm
sure the Russians (who speak very little English and all dress like
sixty year old midwestern men) think that is my name. The coolest
people here are the Hungarians and the Brazilians, with the Canadians
running a close third. The Russians are a cold people, but as I learn
more about them individually, and the poverty they came here to escape, I start to understand.

Half the people in the program are new immigrants (unlike myself) and they are here for two reasons:  naive, unrealistic dreams about the military and government subsidized housing, education, and jobs, and the other half are just trying to get away from the hell hole countries they came from. The naive ones have three years of maltreatment in the Israeli military to look forward to and disabuse them of there delusions and the other half will probably find life here slightly better than where they came from.

next page---> The Country, My Job, Hebrew
Page 4---> Drugs, Alcohol & Racism
<--- Page 1:  The Ulpan, The Kibbutz

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