First days

I decided to revive in Israel the blog that was my bread and butter (rice and soy sauce?) in Taiwan. I'm also 2010-in' it with a brand new twitter to tweet: http://twitter.com/uptowntox

So here goes:

On my first day, I couldn't find the office. After wandering around a bit, and after walking into several banks and asking where the human rights association was, I eventually emailed my boss from a frozen yogurt shop down the street. When I finally walked in, she said, "so of course we're working on the Gaza flotilla incident." To which I responded by staring blankly, having not read the news since I woke-up that morning (is that so unreasonable?). Suffice it to say, starting work at an Israeli civil rights organization the same day as the Gaza flotilla "massacre" (as it has been called by Palestinian PM Abbas) was eventful.
(to see my org's response, click here and here)

When I first touched down here in Israel, I got to practice my Hebrew with an old Israeli man who told me that Arabs have "nine lives, like cats" (maybe my Hebrew's a bit rusty?). It reminded me of a conversation I had with a Tunisian cabbie in NYC on the way out here, in which he told me that American movies lie because "they make it seem like some cabdrivers are white."

Now that I'm here, work is good, and my co-workers are interesting. One, whose last day was yesterday, is half-Rwandan and half-German, and speaks openly about her family being victims of genocide on one side (Tutsi) and perpetrators on the other. I have at least two co-workers who believe that the Jewish state should not exist. One is Israeli.

I live two blocks from the beach. The falafel is great.