Life's a Beach, by blogger of the month Aviva Friedman

Last weekend, I woke up on a beach. Despite it being only 6 am and having wind-tangled hair and a mouth full of sand, it was magnificent. It’s a constant struggle to find a balance between fun and learning, to fight the nagging voice telling me to stay cooped up studying while also trying to squeeze in time to get my suntan/burn on while sitting, eating, dancing, swimming (and competitively winning at card games) amongst friends and Israelis at sunset on the Mediterranean. We are living in this beautiful country, after all, and when the opportunity arises to go camping on a beach or diving off a cliff or snorkeling in the Red Sea, we must seize it (YOLO, amiright?). So, we packed our things and headed to Beit Yanai, a beach 30 minutes north of Tel Aviv, and did just that. It was a glorious way to cap off the weekend after an equally satisfying visit to Tel Aviv. 

As part of our first year Global Health course, we have been split up into pairs and assigned various clinical placements that we will visit 4-5 times over the semester. My partner and I have been placed at the refugee health clinic at Tel Aviv’s “new” (emphasis on the quotes…) central bus station, a hub for refugees from Sudan and Eritrea primarily. The clinic is a fascinating place, literally tucked between two bus stops in the center of the crumbling station, a respite for many that sees everything from minor burns and lacerations to pregnancies and rare infectious diseases. On our visit to the ER, we heard at least four different languages being spoken and saw babies and young women and middle-aged men being treated. All had stories to tell or physical markings that told their stories for them, of how they escaped war-torn countries and suffered through excruciating journeys and torture camps in Sinai before finding some sort of temporary respite here. For many of us, moving to a new country and learning a new language and culture has felt impossibly trying, but visiting a place like the clinic managed somehow to put everything into perspective.

Soon, we’ll be paying a visit to Hadassah Hospital, so I guess you could say “next week in Jerusalem”....

-blogger of the month, Aviva Friedman

"Why is this August different from all other Augusts?" by blogger of the month Aviva Friedman

I was going to start this blog post with a pun about rockets, but, when google failed me and that plan imploded (har har), I decided instead to write an ode to the craziness of this past August. A slow start to the school year meant that, while our friends across the ocean were tucking into neatly pressed white coats and embarking on their first few weeks of medical school, we were holed up in classrooms doubling as shelters (not to mention meeting the neighbours in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a towel…), cramming 5 weeks’ worth of Emergency Medicine and Hebrew lessons into 5 days while sirens occasionally blared in the background to remind us of the current state of affairs. It also meant an ensuing scramble to set up apartments and phone lines as things began to settle, exposing us to the balagan of Israeli culture, starting at the grocery store, where we stood in something that sort of resembled a line, wondering whether we were actually buying yogurt or sour cream and if we would make it to the bank in time before it closed at 1:30 for a four-hour long mid-day siesta. 

But despite the war-time hoopla, we finished orientation. Most of us moved in to new apartments, began kindling friendships, and spent our first gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free shabbat together as a first-year family. We made friends with the local cats and danced salsa (taught by Israelis?!). We conversed in broken Hebrew to our cab drivers and landlords, and experienced a night out a dance club where we were the only ones dancing. We explored Be’er Sheva’s Little India and ate “authentic Chinese food” in the middle of the desert. We sat through our first week of Histology and Immunology, Biochemistry and Global Health (oh my!), then built bridges over pizza with our Israeli equivalents in the Hebrew medical school. And of course, who could forget Hebrew, where we served each other falafels in the Beginner class and, if somehow like me, you ended up in the Advanced class, we were already having discussions (IN HEBREW!) about AIDS and overmedicating our children and the ethical implications of posthumously utilizing someone’s gametes to produce a grandchild. In Hebrew. Yep.

Medical school in Be’er Sheva is anything but traditional. We are adjusting to a new language, a loud - but exciting! - culture, and life in what is essentially a convection oven. Thankfully, the sirens have ceased to blare, replaced instead by the shrill voices of Israelis on their cellphones and the cries of stray cats trapped within the halls of our school. Our fears have now shifted from dodging rocket fire to the seemingly impossible task of juggling nine classes and finishing up our homework before a dynamite (see what I did there?) camping trip this weekend in Tel Aviv, because as any Israeli would tell you, life carries on…. 

Updates to come!

- Aviva Friedman, blogger of the month