Not sure how to title this one…

I’m going to start of this blog post with probably the most interesting and scariest thing that’s happened to me so far in Israel. Have you ever seen the Morgan Freeman movie “Lean On Me”?  Well I felt like I relived a scene that could have been in this movie on Monday at school. It was second period and one of the boys in my class was causing trouble from the beginning. We were still in the main classroom because Amanda and I  hadn’t had the chance to take our students out yet. Before we knew it this boy was charging a girl in the classroom, screaming that he wanted to kill her. We didn’t know what was going on but he was not going to stop until he got to lay his hands on her. My teacher told the students to leave the classroom in the hopes that she could calm the boy down. Unfortunately he stormed out of the classroom and ran over to the girl. Despite everyone trying to shield her from him, he managed to punch her right in the face. She immediately began hysterically crying.

My teacher told me to take the students to the English room to her her away from him. I ushered the girls (it ended up being only 7 girls with me) down the hall and into my classroom. I peered down the hallway to see what was going on and I saw the boy running down the hallway heading towards my classroom. I quickly grabbed the keys and closed the door. Like a scene out of a movie, I was in the middle of locking the door when he tried to open it. Luckily I was quicker than him and I locked the door just in time. He then proceeded to kick and punch the door trying to get in. I heard teachers outside trying to calm him down. Everyone was trying to figure out what was said that made him so angry. Soon enough everything calmed down. The girls were drawing on the white board and the one girl had finally stopped crying. But then the door opened. I looked up and say the boy standing there. My first thought was “oh great he must have come with a teacher to apologize. How else would he have gotten into the locker room.” But I soon  realized I was mistaken when I saw a giant key ring that belonged to the secretary in his hands. Turns out he took the secretary’s keys to break into the room. My heart dropped into my stomach when I realized I was alone in the room. He lunged at the girl. She ran to the corner hysterically crying. I stood in front of her barricading her from the boy as he jumped on the table to try and reach her. Luckily his home room teacher came into the room soon after and pulled him away. Eventually she calmed him down. I think I was in a state of shock after as I had never seen anything like the that before let alone be involved in it. Don’t get me wrong this is not a daily occurrence at my school. And even the teachers who had been at this school for a long time at never seen a fight to this scale. Lucky me, right?

Besides the fight earlier this week, my weekend consisted of recovering from my Thanksgiving meal. I was so full that after dinner when I had to walk quickly about 15 minutes to catch a bus to Tel Aviv, I immediately started cramping. But the food was amazing: stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade challah, and yummy salad and vegetables. Sadly we had chicken instead of turkey but it did the trick. And for dessert of course pumpkin pie as well as brownies, apple crumble or something like that, cookies, and fruit salad.

Speaking of food. Family dinner resumed this week. Mona made taco salad and it was incredible. It’s always the best part of my day on Mondays. After my longest day at school and an Ulpan class, it gives me something to look forward to. The salad was amazing, my favorite part was this pineapple salsa Mona made.

Speaking again of food. I finally got to try this new wings restaurant in Tel Aviv. It’s pretty new, I think it just opened up this past summer since its a few blocks away from where my brother used to live but he’d never heard of it nor went to it. It’s called Wings and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a restaurant that serves only wings in various different flavors. I went with Ran last Saturday and it was just as amazing as I’d hoped. I had the Texas Buffalo flavor from Mona’s recommendation. Ran had some Asian orange-y flavor which was pretty good. We also split onion rings and French fries. Sadly they were out of the sweet potato fries which were supposedly very good. The wings are almost as good as ones you’d get in the US because the owner is originally from America. I think he moved to Israel a few years ago. The place is really small because I don’t think he realized how popular it would be. Funny thing is everyone in the place was American and speaking English, I felt like I was back in New York not in the middle of Tel Aviv. It was amazing and I can’t wait to go back and try a new flavor.

My sixth graders finally finished their pen pal letters. We put them in the mail today and I don’t know whose more excited for the return letters: me or my students.

Also, I finished my 5th book that I’ve read while I’ve been here and it was definitely my favorite. It was “Cuckoo’s Calling” by Robert Galbraith (which is a psydonym for J.K. Rowling.) It was such a good book and I definitely recommend it for any Harry Potter fans. It’s not for kids so it’s for the generation that grew up reading Harry Potter. It’s a detective novel but nothing really corny or over dramatic. It was so good and it’s the first in a series. I’ve already started the second and I hope there are just has many of these as there were in the Harry Potter series. Some of the other books I’ve read while here were Gone Girl (which I read in 3 days), Lena Dunham’s autobiography, My Promised Land, and The Dove Keeper. I’ll take any reading suggestions!!

Oh and I got a haircut! My first one in Israel. I went to this guy that my roommate went to. Her was super nice and spoke English really well, but I don’t think he totally understood what I meant when I said long layers. He did a great job and I keep getting compliments even though he cut the front of my hair really short. Probably not noticeably to anyone else, but to me it seems really short. Whatever it looks good and it’ll grow out eventually!

That’s all for now!!

Buffalo Wings!!

I ate all of the onion rings.

Our Thanksgiving feast.

My initial reaction to my haircut.

But it’s growing one me.

Family taco salad night!