Tips and Tricks for Israeli Grocery Shopping, by Angel Eads

Alright folks, all the holidays are behind us, vacations are done and final exams are looming, which means very little time to blog and not many interesting things to blog about, so today I will be writing about adventures in errand running!

Kind of the same but different: that describes life in Israel.  Life here looks mostly the same, but it takes some adaptation to accomplish basic tasks.  For example:  in Israel this is a mop:

Yes, I know.  It looks like a squeegee.   That’s because it is a squeegee.  (By the by: if, like me, you are confused about how to mop your floor with a squeegee, fear not!  You can google it.)

I could fill a month of blog posts with the little things that seem familiar, but are just a little bit foreign.   However, today, I will be focusing specifically on a task essential to daily living.   So without further delay, I present:

Tips and Tricks for Israeli Grocery Shopping

In order to successfully acquire food in Israel you will need to embrace a few cultural realities, which are as follows:

1.      Grocery shopping is not a routine errand; it’s a full contact sport.  No pads, no referees and no rules.  Keep your elbows out and remember: your cart can be used as a weapon AND a shield.

2.      Tiv Taam is your source for all things imported, Eden Teva is your source for all things organic and SuperSol is your source for all the things that you wouldn’t usually find at a grocery store: bath towels, throw pillows, lawn furniture, small porcupines, because why not?

3.      Grocery shopping is exhausting and you are going to need energy to carry you through.  I recommend picking up an Ice Café on your way to the store.  (Sidenote: You’re going to have a lot of life changing experiences here.  One of the more important ones will be discovering Ice Cafes.  It is a popular beverage here.  Imagine that a Frappuccinno and a Slurpee had a beautiful, caffeinated, calorie-laden baby. “Isn’t that kind of what a Frappuccino already is?”  you ask.  Yes, but this is so, so much better. )

4.      If it can be covered in sesame seeds, it will be covered in sesame seeds.  Just go with it, and don’t stand still too long.  Someone might mistake you for an inanimate object in need of a sesame coating.

5.      Get an old lady shopping cart, it’ll change your life.

6.      Fruits and vegetables can be acquired at the grocery store but are generally much cheaper when purchased at one of the many kiosks around the city.   These magnificent oases of unbelievably cheap, fresh produce are your reward for surviving the supermarkets.

7.      Fruits and vegetables can also be acquired at the shuk. If you’re not sure what that is, just imagine a really large, really dirty farmers market.  Pro tip: Wear closed toed shoes.

8.      You now like cottage cheese.  It doesn’t matter what your past feelings towards that particular dairy product were.  It is completely different here and it is amazing.

9.      No matter how much food you buy or how often you shop, you will need to allocate several hours to each supermarket trip.  “Oh,” you think, “I only need to grab a couple of things. It won’t take that long.”  Think again my friend.  Bring a book.  Be prepared to stand in line for a solid 45 minutes (remember: elbows out!) and spend another 15 explaining to the cashier that you don’t want to sign up for the stores club card because you don’t come here that often.  You generally avoid shopping at this store since, every time you do, they spend 15 minutes trying to convince you that you need a club card.

10.  You may want to sign up for a club card.  They’re actually a pretty good deal.

11.  Congratulations! You have acquired food, braved the checkout line, loaded all your food into your old lady cart and made it home.  You are now too tired to cook, but don’t worry!   That is what the falafel and shawarma stands are for.  - blogger of the month, Angel Eads

Holocaust Remembrance Day, by blogger Rebecca Lapham

This is a picture of me on a camel in Jordan. I include this photo for two reasons. (1) All blog posts should have photos. (2) It was a lifelong dream of mine to ride a camel. One of the best things about MSIH is being able to cross things off your bucket list.

I’m so excited to be writing for this blog! I remember reading it last year as I prepared for medical school, wondering what it would be like to live in Israel. While it can be wonderful, adjusting to life in a foreign country is difficult. There’s a new language to learn, a new culture to comprehend, a new..everything. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why grocery shopping in Beer Sheva is a contact sport, or why the bus schedule is always wrong over the holidays, or why the corner store near my apartment seems to close at a different time every day. Sometimes, living in Israel is endlessly frustrating.

Yet other days, I get to be a part of something that exists nowhere else in the world. This past week, Israel celebrated Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day. In this small country of around 7.5 million people, almost everyone knows someone who was affected by the Holocaust. There are memorial services hosted by various institutions. There is also a siren throughout the country. Check out this youtube video of the country’s response to the siren- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeozUSWdoQA. I was very moved by the experience. It was so incredible to see people of all ages and backgrounds come together and give respect to those who suffered such unbelievable tragedy.

Two days later, I was part of a group of first years who interviewed Holocaust survivors as part of our Clinical Medicine course. We’ve been practicing taking medical interviews for the past few months, and the last few weeks we’ve been learning about geriatrics. Holocaust survivors make up a significant proportion of the elderly in Israel, and have unique health issues. I was fascinated by the stories I was privileged enough to hear. One woman described her year in a concentration camp at the tender age of eight with chilling accuracy, and went on to casually mention learning French and German in less than a year after being taken in by a Swiss family after the war. It made my struggles with Hebrew seem ridiculous. I look forward to further geriatric care while I’m in Israel. I love listening to the stories that can only come from a long life. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up wanting to do a residency in geriatrics.   - blogger of the month, Rebecca Lapham

Petra for Pesach, by blogger of the month Angel Eads

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the beginning of April and that our second semester is drawing to a close.   My classmates and I are returning to school today after a ten day break thanks to Pesach.  We have 2 more weeks of classes, another virology quiz and then a month of final exams. 

I spent part of my Pesach vacation catching up on studies (ask me anything about a parasite, I won’t know the answer, but I will shudder involuntarily) and taking care of other pesky chores like taxes and filing my FAFSA for next year.  However I also had the opportunity, along with 3 MSIH friends, to travel to Petra and Wadi Rum in Jordan.  

I don’t want to spend my entire stint as MSIH first year blogger forcing strangers to look at my vacation pictures.  However, when considering blog topics, travelling to another country seemed much more interesting than tales of flipping through Microbiology cards and falling asleep on my Pharmacology textbook (in the middle of the day, while sitting at my desk, because it’s just that fascinating).*

These travel stories also represent to me one of the most unique things about MSIH.   When I decided to go back to school I asked a friend for advice.  She had just completed a particularly demanding MFA program and suggested that I choose the years of my life that I didn’t want to be there for and devote those to graduate school.

My friend was joking, but when considering medical schools, I spent a lot of time wrestling with her humorous advice.  I knew I wanted to pursue international health, work with the underserved and see as much of the world as possible, and the idea of putting my life on hold for four years while I acquired necessary skills seemed wholly unpalatable.    It also didn’t make sense, from an educational standpoint, to spend four years learning the art of healing in a setting completely divorced from the context in which I wanted to practice it.  

In one sense, going to medical school here is a lot like going to medical school anywhere else.  Classes and studying take up most of our time, and most of our lectures aren’t related to global health.  They are the same classes you get at medical schools in the states.  This education is obviously necessary and hugely important.  It teaches us what we need to know so that we can become the doctors we want to be.  However, I have sometimes wondered why I moved halfway around the world, far away from family and friends, to sit at a desk and read the same textbooks I would be reading in the US.     

Our curriculum does provide global health opportunities.  Global health modules let us focus on particular topics we are interested in and clinical days bring us into contact with a diverse group of people, ranging from children at a cross cultural elementary school, to Holocaust survivors, to the local Bedouin population. 

However, in my experience, our curriculum is not really what defines our global health education. The real education happens in the spaces in between medical studies.  Whether we are teaching English in a Bedouin village, volunteering at the refugee clinics in Tel Aviv, experiencing the helplessness that comes with learning a new language and culture, or simply taking some time to travel and explore the corner of the world that we have found ourselves in, we have many opportunities to experience new things, meet new people and do life (the literal translation of the Hebrew phrase ose chaim, which means “have fun”).

During our Pesach trip, my classmates and I spent a day and a half exploring the spectacular ruins of Petra.  We went on an afternoon tour of the nature preserve of Wadi Rum, rode camels through the desert and ate a meal under the stars that was cooked in sand.    We had fun, did life and came back to Israel refreshed, ready to tackle classes and final exams.

Living here is not always perfect.   In fact, there are times when it can be downright awful.   The process of cultural adjustment, paired with the extreme pressure of medical education, can be difficult and discouraging.  I miss family, friends and the comfortable, familiar life that I had in the states.   But I also get to learn medicine, see some amazing places and have a pretty great time in the process.  

Besides, if you have to learn about larvae that live in your eyeball (Your.  Eyeball. People.  You can apparently feel them crawling around in there.), the place to do it is on the balcony of a Wadi Musa hotel after a day hiking around one of the seven new wonders of a world that’s basically filled with wonderful things.  - blogger of the month, Angel Eads

* Pharmacology really is interesting.  I promise.  My falling asleep has more to do with my being narcoleptic.**

**I’m not actually narcoleptic, at least not in the diagnosed, medical disease sense of the word.   I just really like to sleep.