never lived like this before...

Unless you're living under a rock, you are probably all aware that Israel is on the brink of another war, on two fronts. Increasing numbers of soldiers have been sent to (and have been engaging in violent activity in) Gaza in the last two weeks or so. A soldier was kidnapped, and various Arab and Palestinian groups are trying to use that as leverage to free Arabs in Israeli jails. And yesterday, the shit hit the fan on the Israel-Lebanon border, when two more Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, and 8 were killed, during some fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas. Since then, Israel has been bombing, shooting, etc. etc. This morning, I opened the news to see that they (the Israeli Air Force) has bombed the Beirut airport as part of the government-approved "severe response" to the Lebanese/Hezbollah attacks.

The less-terrible news is that so far (knock on wood), the violence has been contained to these two areas, and so it's not like I'm living in a war zone or anything. There are a few more police and soldiers in the streets these days, but other than that, life in Jerusalem is about the same as usual, for now. It is just a strange thing, to be living in a country that is basically at war. Yesterday, as I left work to run an errand at the bank, I asked the security guard (there is a security guard in front of every building, even restaurants and stuff) how he was doing. He said, Not good - and that's how I found out about the two kidnapped soldiers up North. I checked in with family and friends who might have been in questionable situations, and all is fine (b"h), but of course I will continue to think about family and friends, and friends and family of family and friends. There is no doubt that this is turning out to be the most interesting time of my life!

In totally unrelated news, I got another job! So now, I have 3 sources of income: my regular job at WUJS (which is going great, by the way), helping this old poet-lady write emails for a couple hours once a week, and now I'm going to do part-time editing as well. It's with this news service that translates news and political and business interviews and whatnot from Hebrew and Arabic into English. So I'll be editing these final articles, which is awesome because a) I'll get to keep up with the news, b) the cash is always nice, and c) they're an expanding international company, and the guy I interviewed with said there is definitely room for movement! I start training today after my regular job. And it's also awesome because my roommate and another friend both already work there as translators, so it's going to be so much fun, and I can work from home, too! You might think that I will be filthy rich from all this work I'm going to be doing, however wages are substantially lower here in Israel. Oh, well.

Starting to think about a visit home...