Good to know it's not just me.

I've been a bit behind on my updates. I have a return date to the States, July 18th, so my life has become a little surreal, as life here comes to a close and my life-to-be in the US grows larger and larger.

Anyway, until I have something more substantial to write about, I'm cross-posting again from my friend Derrik's blog. His recent entry talks about one of the things I hate about Israel, and that I'm not even that keen about when I'm in the States: talking on the phone to strangers.

You don't know me, and I don't know you. So you don't know that I don't always pronounce or annunciate my words so well. Nor do you know that the better you do know me, the easier it is to understand whatever's tittering out of my mouth. So you're not prepped for R's that sound like a mouthful of potato and my general bewilderment concerning upon which syllable the accent falls. We should go for beers sometime.

And I can't see you, so I have no idea how you're responding to my faulty pronunciation and lack of annunciation. If only you knew how much sweat was involved on my end of the exchange. Or how I still dart out of the party when it comes time to order a pizza and everyone is in need of entertainment and knows the gringo needs practice.

Calling you on my own and setting up my service all by myself, big-boy style, was something that needed to be done. And I think we sailed through it pretty smoothly, given the conditions.

The rest of Derrik's post is at his blog, ¡derrik está aqui! ¡todo sobre tijuana!.