Just like the Real World in the United States, our producers introduced some new characters.

Gabi and Liza arrived on Aug. 24, while Sara is scheduled to come on Aug. 28.

It was almost as if they were written into a television series to replace characters whose contracts ended. For their first weekend in Ramla, Gabi and Liza took over the roles played by Nomi and Aliza. Our first pair of girls were each out of town for the weekend (Nomi in Amsterdam, Aliza in Jerusalem), and the two new girls stayed in their bedroom. Then, when Nomi and Aliza returned on Aug. 27, Joey and Todd had moved out of the house–20 meters away living with our neighbors behind us, Samir and his wife, Su’ad (or Su’ad and her husband, Samir).

Immediately after Jay actually tried to quit smoking (he and Joey had been talking about slowing down their habit every day of the trip but never actually went through with any plan), Joey found a new partner in Gabi who would help fill his ashtray outside. Gabi is fluent in Hebrew. (Eager to ingratiate herself with her new supersaturated-with-testosterone roommates, she asked on Shabbat morning, “How caught up are you on your dirty Hebrew?”) She is a theater major (so Erez and Hava have been telling everyone she can run an entire program, not just a production, herself) on an accelerated master’s program. A summer graduate of birthright, she is the only other person besides me who has a responsibility to finish school when this program ends.

Gabi almost never made it to Israel. Ever since the rest of us landed at Ben Gurion Airport, Erez said that she was coming and would come soon. The other Oranim five-month program, Wizo, a group of girls north of us who are working in trauma, said that their 11 girls and one boy would be joined by another boy or two. As days continued to pass and Erez continued his circumlocution, we stopped believing him–when he finally gave us a date and time that her plane would land, we had to pinch ourselves when we saw the cab charrioting a balance in our gender ratio. Before the cab drove in front of our house, her plane was overbooked by 30 passengers, and she didn’t know she was on the flight–in business class–until she had.

Gabi’s new roommate, Liza, does stuff and needs to catch up on three weeks of Hebrew.

(Liza is pronounced Lye-za. Our producers liked Ah-lee-za, so they just made up a similar name. To be fair, Nomi was also a hit in the ratings department–when she was on camera–so she was recast with someone whose name similarly has only two syllables and ends in an “ee.”)

Ok, seriously, our brunette-haired 22-year-old girl from Westchester is not, nor does she plan to be, a professional photographer despite bringing three cameras with her. She said, “I want to be bad-ass no matter what I end up doing,” which likely will have something to do with women’s rights.