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Local News<br />
23<br />
Zack Bodner<br />
Guatemala Ain't So Bad<br />
To many, we're just "those second<br />
semester students that have to<br />
take the bus every day." In fact,<br />
we are the proud few who commute<br />
from Kiryat HaYovel forty-five minutes<br />
- just to sit through another<br />
day of Hebrew. We’re a tight-nit<br />
group that can be seen barbecuing<br />
late at night in the dorm rooms,<br />
drinking and eating together over<br />
large communal Shabbat dinners,<br />
and keeping In touch via "telephone<br />
lines" between buildings, which are<br />
actually strings with bells on the<br />
end.<br />
Hebrew U plopped us in a location<br />
that most people think "stinks" due<br />
to the distance from Scopus. But,<br />
in fact, we have our own little<br />
square, complete with restaurants,<br />
falafel stands, a laundromat, a<br />
Supersol, a barber, a coffee shop, a<br />
liquor store, a convenience market,<br />
and a grassy park right in the<br />
middle. We are only a five minute<br />
bus ride away from the Canion (rumored<br />
to be the largest shopping<br />
mall in the Middle East), and five<br />
minutes from Teddy Kollek Stadium<br />
- where B etar Yerushalayim<br />
plays every other Saturday. We<br />
are also a two hundred yard walk<br />
away from the monster slide park,<br />
complete with basketball courts, a<br />
miniature golf course, and the Jerusalem<br />
Zoo. In fact, those first<br />
semester students and the few<br />
weasels who migrated from Guatemala<br />
to Resnlk, all agree that if<br />
Mt. Scopus could be moved to<br />
Kiryat HaYovel, It would be in the<br />
perfect location. But, as all of us<br />
know, never-never-land Isn’t just a<br />
step through the looking glass, so<br />
you calculate for yourself what<br />
time we wake up for 8:15 Hebrew<br />
on Thursdays.<br />
It’s under these circumstances<br />
and with uncanny chemistry that<br />
permitted the second semester kids<br />
to jell so closely and become such<br />
good friends. Some people laugh<br />
mockingly at the large groups from<br />
the Yovel when they’re seen trying<br />
to pull five or six tables together at<br />
Glasnost on Tuesday nights. Outsiders<br />
point at us, proclaiming<br />
,Freshman Syndrome" all over<br />
again. Even those of us who came<br />
only In January expected the biggroup-thing<br />
to dissolve within several<br />
weeks; but we were pleasantly<br />
surprised to see that the weekends<br />
to Dahab had nearly half of Bus<br />
#444 filled with Hebrew U<br />
students.<br />
Our nights, like our weekends,<br />
involve a little extra patience and<br />
planning to coordinate the large<br />
numbers of participants, but it’s<br />
always easier to find a group of<br />
people to share a cab back to the<br />
city of Jubilee. And once we’re<br />
home, it's not uncommon for a halfdozen<br />
people or more to crawl Into<br />
a single bedroom and lounge lazily<br />
around a tobacco filled houka till<br />
the early hours of the morning.<br />
It's easy to wake up in our neighbors’<br />
room to the jingle of a homemade<br />
telephone line in order to<br />
make It to class in time the next<br />
day.<br />
None of the Guatemala students<br />
resent living there - anymore.<br />
We’ve come together and bonded<br />
over our apparent unfortunate<br />
situation. And like the rest of the<br />
OYP students at Hebrew University,<br />
we’ll miss each other when we<br />
leave in June. But well keep In<br />
touch next year through that modern<br />
technological miracle that no<br />
one is a stranger to: e-mail.
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