Kyle's POV
I really like our new house. It's solar powered and has skylights in nearly every room. What I wasn't expecting was to see so many stray cats around here, but I guess that's no big deal. Sure is nice to have a day without hearing some anti Semitic remark. But one thing I wasn't counting on was this strange conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. Even though we have some Arabs living right across the street from us, they seem pretty nice. I'm just unpacking the last box in my room.
Jerusalem isn't what I thought it would be, I thought it would just be some ancient relic city, it's got its ancient old side, but then there's the hip modern side I live closest to. It's just weird to see people walking around in tight hipster clothes with ipods and cell phones in the city i've been taught about in sunday school is some great sacred holy place. It didn't really bother me, it was just a paradox almost.
"Alright Kyle, have a good first day of school, and try speaking Hebrew to the kids, you get more practice that way." said my mother as I was about to board the school bus. I spot a seat in the back that's available. I sit next to some olive skinned boy with brown curly hair, he kinda looks like me without the hat on all the time and like he spends more time in the sun (well no duh).
"Uhh, Shalom, Ani Kyle." I said with what hebrew I've managed to pick up the last two months since we moved here.
"Ani Chaim." he said. His name meant "life". "Are you new here?" he asked in english, "Yeah...how'd you know?"
"Your accent. It's alright. Lots of anglo-olim have an accent when they speak hebrew." he says sympathetically. Dang.
"Yeah, i'm trying to get into the accent, it's hard." I say.
"Yeah, practice is all you need, you'll do fine. When'd you move here? And why?" he asks.
"My dad got a job here." I said, "How do you know english?"
"My mom's american and she made aliyah so she could marry my dad, he was still serving in the army at the time. We speak english and hebrew around the house, but they teach us it in school very early on." he says. He didn't have an accent when he spoke english, it was pretty good.
"So where did you move from?" he asks,
"South Park, Colorado." I said. He gives me a weird look. "Never heard of it." he says. "I've visited my relatives in new york many times before, it's really nice there.", "Well there's more to america then just new york. Trust me. I come from a REALLY strange small town.".
He gives me a look like he wants to know more, so I start telling him everything, about my friends back home, all the weird things that happen in south park, and of course about the fatass. As I talked about Cartman he shuddered at what I said about him killing Scott Tenorman's parents and grinding them into chili, among the other things, he was also disgusted at how I talked about how big an anti semite he was.
"Why did you put up with a kid like that?! I would have kicked his ass a long time ago!" he says. "Trust me, I have. I don't really know. It's a small town and you just kinda wind up attaching yourself to people, y'know?"
The bus finally stops at our school, it doesn't look that much different from the one in south park except most of the signs and stuff are in hebrew, some stuff in arabic, and a lot of russian, and some english.