...I was the only girl in a room full of older men...

As some of you know, a couple of weeks ago I took a "height course" for people who work about six meters.  Because I need to go up in a cherry-picker/lift thing one day a year (maybe twice) to collect feathers from nests, I am considered a heights worker.  The course was mostly for roofers, electricians, builders, speed-camera fixers, and the like.  There was also an engineer who was there with his team, and me.

The view from our cherry picker

Before the class even started, I had a struggle finding the place.  I took a few buses to get to Petach Tikva and then took a bit of a walk.  All of my planning skills were good, and I got to the little road that the building was on, but I couldn't seem to find the street number I needed.  As I was walking around, I saw two older men (most of the people on the street were students) looking a bit lost, and after a bit of investigation, I noticed that they were carrying the piece of paper from the training company.  I asked them if they knew where we were going and after a few questions (WAIT--You're taking this course??  Why do you need this course?  What are you doing here?), we found our destination.

Upon arriving, I was asked a few more times what the heck I was doing in the course, and each time I explained that I was a student from the university and for my research I had to go up to nests to collect feathers.  In order to do that, I needed a certification, and that was why I was here.

My research partner up in the sky!

The class was supposed to start at 8:30.  It was so Israeli when, at 8:35, one of the guys started fighting with the instructor (younger than all of the "students" except me) about why we had to be here and how it was a huge waste, regardless of the law.  Basically the course must be retaken every two years, and for everyone in the room except me this was a refresher, but the course was the same as the first time.  There wasn't an expedited version, and this seemed to be cause for complaint.  The fight was still going on at 8:55 when the instructor left to go track down some instant coffee (so Israeli).  Every meeting, interview, visit, etc. includes coffee in this country, so it was only fitting.  A bit after 9:00, we finally started, but people were coming in and out with phone calls and we were still missing a few people, so at 9:10 we took a ten minute break.  It seemed like I woke up early for nothing.

I drove this!

From 9:20 until 11:40 we had some slides, some questions, and a harness tutorial.  Before that, though, we had to introduce ourselves, and I had to explain YET AGAIN why I was there.   Before the course began, I talked to the instructor and told him my first language wasn't Hebrew.  He was nice enough and said that he would help me out if there were things I didn't understand.  Throughout the morning, though, I was pretty much okay.  Never did I imagine that I would understand so many technical terms.  The only hard part were the words relating harness.  I don't even know what they are in English.  But the engineer (who was thrilled that I was American once he put it together around 11:30 and promptly began showing off his English) helped me out and I was harnessed and ready to go...for a lunch break.

After lunch, the fun stuff started.  We got to go up in a platform lift, drive it back and forth, and then come back down.  I was the only person who had never done this, so while the majority of the people's "tests" involved moving forward and back about two centimeters and up and down even less, the instructor made me really go for a drive.  I went up with another student, and older builder who was a pro.  He guided me through the lurch-y process and then passed his test on principle of helping me--he didn't even have to take a turn driving.

After the driving test was the ladders part of the course.  We climbed a few feet, imagined we were tens of meters about the ground, leaned back, and then climbed back down.  It was kind of cool!

Up in the sky...without gear

Last we had a test.  In Hebrew.  I understood all of the questions, and got all of the ones we discussed in class right.  There were a few from slides that we skipped over that I couldn't answer, and when I asked the instructor to explain them (pretending it was a language problem), he told me that we hadn't discussed them and then gave me the answers (so Israeli).  After the test, we discussed/corrected our own papers. Basically everyone passed.  We finished the day with a photo shoot (head shots on the instructor's iphone) and then headed out around 3.  The class was supposed to be seven hours plus a break for lunch, but I'm not complaining.

I had a little over two hours before my bus back to Jerusalem so I headed to a local brewery in the area that I had been dying to go to ever since the Beer Festival last year in Jerusalem.  The beer didn't disappoint, and it ended up being happy hour, so I got two for one.  I left a bit tipsy, made it to the bus stop, and then spent the majority of the ride needing to pee.

All in all it was worth it though because two weeks later, I was in the Golan, in a lift, collecting feathers.  As the day went on, though, I could see that the training might not have been so necessary.  It was so Israeli when at the last nest, the cherry-picker operator rushed us along, telling us we didn't need harnesses and helmets to go up.  It was all pretty lax.  And then when I got back to Jerusalem from our day in the field, my Heights Worker ID was waiting for me on my desk.  About twelve hours late and after I broke all of the rules!