In Which I am a Five-Year-Old Teenager

Today we had a meitzav, or a statewide test, in math. One of the easier things I've done. I think I got at least a 90, which I like, because normally on math tests I don't get too far over 85 or 90, sometimes less. So that's nice.

And it was my last test here, as a friend of mine took care to inform me afterwards, before I went to buy a bag of chocolate milk (yes, they sell chocolate milk in bag-type things) to rejuvenate my utterly fried brain.

Then, in English class, we were talking about our plans for the summer, specifically so the teacher could correct pronunciation. Obviously she didn't correct mine, but after I finished saying that I was going back to America, seeing my friends, going to some art and writing camp-things, and possibly going to New York, she said that it had been really nice to have me in her class and for everyone to hear an American accent besides hers. She said I'd contributed to the class discussions (which I do think was one of the high points of being here, especially the calling-out part) and that she'd miss me. Then everyone clapped and I just sat there in the back of the class, embarrassed yet elated, tracing the "love" that someone had carved into the desk just for something to do.

Then math class got cancelled, which was brilliant because it chopped an hour and forty-five minutes off my school day and I walked home with some friends, making fun of two of our other buddies who were walking about twenty paces in front of us and couldn't hear a word we were saying. All mockery, and all pretty much that old rhyme, "___ and ___ sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage."

I suppose, deep down, I'm not more than five years old. It's becoming more and more apparent now. Oh well, being five is fun.

Neve Tzedek

Yesterday after school, my mom, my brother, and I took a bus to Neve Tzedek.

Neve Tzedek is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. It's got a kind of small-town feel to it in a way, but the taller buildings are always looming in the background.

We went for lunch at a place called Suzanna, but it was a bit rushed because we had to get to a show (which admittedly was in the building across the street, but still). It was a dance performance called Oyster, which is still going after ten years and is celebrating its anniversary at the Suzanne Dellal Center, which is one of the celebrated dance theaters in the country.

Oyster is unconventional, to say the least. All the dancers wear wigs (I'm still wondering how they didn't fall off) and have their faces painted white. The show is presented kind of like a carnival sideshow event, with one short piece after another. One piece includes dancers with rods connecting their hands and feet, and another has an extra-tall man pushed around by a ballerina with a stool attached to her behind. There's one where a dancer is hanging from a pulley, and one with "armless" men. I thought it was amazing, the way that they folded themselves and fell and stretched. And I suppose the weirdness of it was what made it amazing. It makes you want to do something not-so-normal because you can.

After that we went for gelato and went home. I studied some French. It was brilliant.

Archaic Writings of Moi

I've been reading over my old poems. It's fun and it makes me feel like such a self-centered genius because I think, "oh hey, these are pretty decent!"

I also came across a story that I started in fourth or fifth grade. To be perfectly honest, erm...it's absolutely terrible. It is so very cliché and repetitive in the field of word choice. Not that I've made much improvement in that sense on first drafts, but when I go back and read it I think I might have spent more time choosing the font and formatting than actually writing. Whoops. 

But at the same time it's amazingly okay, because it's not much more than you'd expect from me back then. You kind of look at it and say, wow this is terrible. Makes you think of the fact that you're so much better at word choice, grammar, and just general story-making.

As for showing it to other people...I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. *reads it over again* Yeah, I don't think it will happen...EVER.