Northern Blogs

The following excerpts are taken from israelnorthblog, a compilation of blogs of Russian-speaking residents of northern Israel, translated into English. Ordinarily describing their daily lives as immigrants in the peaceful North, the bloggers now describe the fears and hopes, anxieties and aspirations, dangers and absurdities of life under the ongoing barrage of Hizbullah rockets.

 We recommend a selective daily reading of these blogs in the classroom (the site is updated on a daily basis). Use discretion: the English is far from perfect and not all entries are suitable for all ages, but all in all ? these blogs provide an authentic, firsthand account of the lives of ordinary people turned upside down by the war.

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06 August 2006 @ 11:11 pm

olgabrook

I lost count which day of war it is. For the last three weeks my family is not at home, and I am carrying all my belongings on myself at all times, like a snail, because it's a rare morning when I know where I will spend the next night. Actually, usually it's the hospital - whether I am on duty or not. My family is already beyond despair, but there is no choice - getting back home now would be a stupid move. Irene [my daughter] took the war in stride, to my surprise - she sees and hears everything, but she is not afraid. She just says that the alarm was too loud. And she keeps asking why we are being bombed. And she asks to be taken home - to her own crib, to her toys, to her day care center...

Sasha [my husband] is a hero, there is nothing else I can say here.

I realized just now, during my last shift, that I am working at a military hospital in the fighting army. Yeah, I know, I am slow. It's just that before every wounded was a special event, and now it is just a routine job. Every minute, without a warning, a helicopter may arrive with 5-12 wounded. And, alas, they do come. I can only hope that it is not someone I know and they do not have any "interesting" wounds...

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05 August 2006 @ 05:00 pm

Kiryat Bialik

jimmka

I'm Back

Finally we have Internet and electricity back. Today I was very lucky - the missile fell 50 meters from our house, onto the roof of the nearby industrial building? We were ok, except for frightened (me specially) and our windows have holes now. The siren started when we were asleep. Tolik didn't even wake up, while I was lying on my bed and thinking whether I should go to the corridor or not, because I wanted to sleep. So the siren howled for a minute and a half or so... and then it banged terribly nearby... I cried out. Tolik woke up and pressed to the bed in case I had a stupid idea to stand up and run... Then there were three or four more explosions very close, and the sound of broken glass. It was very frightening.

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03 August 2006 @ 12:41 pm

Haifa

blackqueen

As it turned out, an absence of sirens can exhaust more than hourly running to the bomb-shelter. Everything goes on in a strange, unusual way. They kind of don't fire, but the war goes on. It is not clear, how to live and what to do. Should we live in commission, being ready to rush and hide ourselves at once, concealing ourselves and gathering ourselves up? Or should we straighten our shoulders, say ourselves ? ok, all things come to an end at last, and go enjoy ourselves somewhere, for example to the seaside? By the way, from there one can see a missile flying? Yesterday we tried to show our faces outside ? we decided not to order food on the Internet, but to go to buy ourselves. We didn't dare to go to the shop in Tel-Khannan, where we used to do our shopping, it's rather far from us, and both the roads there were bombed last week. A man , while he was driving there, was killed by a missile fragment?

We went closer, to the Grand-Canyon, where they have parking and the shops are on the basement floor; if anything happens, we won't need to run far.

A lot of the shops were closed, but caf頡nd snackbars were opened, and there were almost were no free tables. In the shop quiet and careful people were walking, they kind of faint-heartedly put their packages into the baskets. It seemed, one must rush, take everything he needs, shoot ahead and run home, but people savored an unexpected respite, the possibility to walk easy, to choose calmly, to relax a little.

 No, we shall not change our habits. We'll go for a walk with Mishka in twilight as we used to do, we shall not move his bed out of his room, we'll put our clothes and slippers near our bed for jump out of bed and to run to the bomb-shelter, if anything happens.

For all blog entries see - http://israelnorthblog.livejournal.com/