The Miss Universe contestants, dressed in their native costumes, were greeted today by Mayor Beame at City Hall. Declaring today “Miss Universe Day,” the Mayor presented a proclamation to Rina Messinger, last year’s Miss Universe from Israel. Among the 49 contestants, who are enroute to the Dominican Republic where the Miss Universe Pageant will take place July 16, was the slim and attractive Zahava Vardy, 21 years old, who is Miss Israel. Ms. Vardy is from Kiryat Byalik, a city near Haifa with a population of some 15,000.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, while sitting in a bus enroute to City Hall, Ms. Vardy, who is currently living and studying in Haifa, said she plans to teach children between the ages of five to seven when she graduates in two years. Speaking English clearly and distinctly, Ms. Vardy said she was quite familiar with young children as she has a six-year-old brother and a 17-year-old sister. Her father, who is from Morocco, is a police officer and her mother, from Rumania, works in a bank.
For two years Ms. Vardy was a secretary for the armed forces in Jerusalem, an experience she said she enjoyed a great deal. Although she has travelled within Israel, this is her first trip outside of her country.
IMPRESSED BY THE ‘BIG APPLE’
As she looked out of the bus window, Ms. Vardy said that she could not believe how tall the buildings were and wondered how people could actually live here. Although she was particularly impressed by the way the streets were laid out, she said she preferred the trees of Kiryat Byalik. As the bus passed through Chinatown, Ms. Vardy mentioned that she had seen the movie “Chinatown” but does not like Chinese food.
When asked about the new Israeli government, Ms. Vardy said it was “very good; we are a democratic country,” and the government is “what the people wanted.”
A relatively serious and down to earth young woman, the brown-haired and brown-eyed contestant said she was not nervous about the Miss Universe Pageant. Depending on what she wears, her eyes are sometimes tinged with green and yellow, she said. In today’s dress, which M. Vardy said was not really a native costume, her eyes did indeed have flecks of green and yellow.
Shortly before the bus arrived at City Hall, she introduced the JTA reporter to Miss Lebanon, without being asked to do so. Miss Lebanon, who sat across the aisle from Miss Israel, occasionally spoke French with some of the other contestants but was quiet during most of the bus trip.
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