Sometimes, it's the little differences that count.

Living in a foreign country is funny. It's so different and yet it's so much like home. All the details are different: different plugs, different language, different food; and yet the sketch of life is just the same. Work, home, friends, food, love, stress, life.

One of the differences I've been meaning to talk about is the street. I think, because there is so much room to expand in the States, there isn't much street life there anymore. There doesn't have to be. It's easy (and often necessary) to live out of your car. I pretty much did it when I was living in the Midwest: I commuted to my job, to my grocery store, to my bar, to my gym. But here, because it's such an abbreviated, dense, contested country, it's nearly impossible to use your car in the same, natural way you use it in the States. There is hardly enough real estate to park a car in this country, much less live life from it. And when you can drive the entire coastline in less than four hours, what's the need?

Hence the intense, almost claustrophobic street life. It seems like everyone in Tel Aviv walks or rides the bus. It's probably true in Jerusalem and Haifa as well. As I write, I'm listening to some kids practicing their ollies and exchanging insults a couple floors down, just outside my window. An hour ago some toddlers were yelling to their parents. This being such a hot country (or at least a hot town), where electricity (and gasoline) is relatively expensive, there is a very thin separation between public street and private home, both physically and socially. Physically, you're provided with wide plastic blinds with single-pane glass partitions to keep out the winter "cold," just like I have in my apartment. But when it's 90F outside for three-quarters of the year, who wants to shut their apartment off from any cool breeze?? It's easier just to open up all your windows and blinds (fortunately, there are next to no bugs that live here), and let the sea breeze cool your apartment down naturally, and leave your laundry out to dry on your balcony. Because who cares if the whole world knows all about your dirty underwear? Socially, it's expected that everyone knows their neighbors and their neighbors know them. (I think that's why I'm eyed so much by the kids who run the kiosk downstairs: I'm the new, foreign kid in town, who is obviously a little awkward and who comes home at odd times in the afternoon.)

I've come to expect that when I walk down a neighborhood street at any time of the day or night, I'll hear kids yelling "Imaaaaaaa!" ("Mommmmy!") or "Abbaaaaaaahhhh!" ("Daadddd!"); or hear someone practicing their piano lessons; or to be forced to eavesdrop on domestic disputes, TV shows, or, if it's very late, some giggly argument at a streetside cafe. It's a strangely wonderful experience for a whole city to be out there on display, just like their clothes always are on the clotheslines: out there, unashamedly in public.

In some ways, it's a privilege to be witness to all this public life. It's novel to see pedestrian details so obviously displayed. But at the same time it's uncomfortable. Just as I get to eavesdrop on my neighbors, it means I'm stared at as I walk down the street because I'm new. Ben and I both get the sensation that we are stared at (by everyone) a little too long, and a little too openly. Maybe it's because we're not dressed right. Or maybe it's because no one has seen us before. It's certainly a departure from the privacy of the car and the passivity of the American grocery store checkout line.

Even so, we're beginning to become regular faces. People stare at us less than when we first arrived, when we were loud and inept (we've learned to talk quietly on the street). All the grocery store ladies know me and my poor language comprehension, but are still encouraging when I come in knowing a few more words every week (they also know only just enough, as most of them are Russian olót hadashót). Ben knows all the guards at the checkpoints at TAU, and can communicate happily with the lunch-room staff.

But I suppose that's how it is for all new, awkward immigrants: on the surface we're strange, but our goals are so much like everyone else's. We're trying hard to make a living in a funny, strange place, but what we're really struggling with are the same things everyone cares about: work, home, friends, food, love, stress, life.