Municipality Work

     This week was a fairly disappointing week of work at the beach.  On Sunday, only one group went into the water, and I had very little interaction with them.  I took out and set up the single person boats; however, there wasn't any wind so I took out the kayaks.  After all of the kids got their kayaks, I put away all of the sailboats, and by the time I was done with putting these away, it was time to put the kayaks and paddles away.  On Monday we couldn't go out on the water because the waves were too rough, so instead we strolled along the beach.  There was only so much I could do, considering there were 6 madrichim, two teachers, one municipality worker, my boss, and Harold.  I stayed in the back of the group and made sure there weren't too many stragglers.  The perk of this was that I could chat with beach mongers.  I had a really nice conversation with a Finnish woman who was studying at the Betzalel School of Art in Jerusalem, but that was about it.

     However, Wednesday was a completely different story.  Maytal, the logistics woman, asked me to help out the Bat Yam Municipality by delivering paint to some apartments.  I was supposed to meet some guy (Daniel) from the municipality at a street corner at 9:30 in the morning,  but come 9:30, I had no idea what/who exactly to look for.  All of a sudden, a municipality car pulls up, the window rolls down, and the guy said, "Hey you, Young Judaea?" (except this was in Hebrew).  I said yes, and he opens up the door.  So I hopped into the car and we headed over to Rishon (I was also confused, but the drive was great because the guy told me his life story/how he escaped Ethiopia, made it into Sudan, and then found himself in Israel) to meet some guys from Amidar (the national housing corporation).  After some arguing about whether or not the 250 liters of paint and additional supplies would fit into the dilapidated Ford Couriers, we grabbed the goods at a paint shop in Holon, and we were off.

    After doing our first few drop offs, the guy asked me if I was thristy or hungry, I told him I was fine, but he decided to stop anyway.  Forty-five minutes later, I find out that he didn't go to get food or drink, he went to participate in an Ethiopian ceremony for people who have died, but have not yet been buried.  It was really awkward for me there, but eventually the guy remembered about me and we were off to finish our deliveries.  We just managed to finish at 3:35 (I had a class at 3:45, so we had to end), and all in all, it was a very succesful, if not long and inefficient day.

    On Thursday I went to an apartment to do some actual painting with Ben Maas.  The woman was Ethiopian and spoke very little English, so whenever I had to talk to her, I gave Daniel a call, and he was an intermediary for us.  That's about it for me, sorry my life isn't exciting enough.