Internationals

There is a Japanese girl in my Hebrew class named Keiko. She invited me to her house on Saturday night for a "Japanese party" where she fed us all this japanese food. She hand-made sushi for us, and nodles, and all sorts of other Japanese things (granted you really can't get good Unagi in this country). There were about 20 people there, probably 6 Israelis, 3 brazilians, 4 germans, one swiss, one pole, two americans and two koreans. I got to talking to the koreans, who were by far the most interesting people of the group. One has been in Israel for 12 years, studying semitic languages, the other is a diamond buyer at the Israeli Diamond exchange.
The diamond buyer, Tony as he calls himself, just got to Israel 5 months ago and signed a 10 year contract. He doesn't speak Hebrew at all, except "How Much" (kama?). He speaks minimal English, and was telling me how it was really interesting being in Israel, but also very hard (even though he spend 3 months of the year back in Seoul). He told me that there are only 200 koreans in the entire country!! That's it! He said about 50 of them live/work/study in Tel Aviv and the other 150 are mostly women who are married to Israeli businessmen who do business in Korea, met somebody there, and brought them back to the Holy Land.

Imagine being one of only 50 in an entire city. That's like when Jacob, Ben, and I were 3 of the only 50 Jews in Maastricht when we studied in the Netherlands together, or like Joanna in Forever 21.