48 hours in Israel

Follow that MONK!!!


Station 5, Via Dolorosa.
BE A MENORAH CHELSEA!!!


REPPIN maccabi Tel aviveets a raace!!!

Wow, I can't even begin to recount how nuts and exciting and adventure-packed the past 48 hours have been. But I will try.

Thursday Eve: Where our tale begins. Becky decided to let us come along to an arts performance, for 29 shekels (woop! the equivalent of around 7-8 dollars). From what we had seen online, it was a dance-ish group. Weeelll, I think that title may have been a bit misleading. This was one of the more out-there arts performances that I have seen in a looooong time, well, maybe ever. The opening scene was stark sexual imagery, glitter included, one of the middle scenes included a man and a woman across the table from each other slapping each other in the face, HARD, and then hugging and old man in a teddy bear costume, and another scene included nose-flute playing and a fabulous 'single ladies' dance, which I'll attach the link to. It was an overall interesting experience to say the least--one of those things that I'm glad I went to but nevertheless was like uhhhh, what just happened??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1JvphQbZfw

After the show, we cabbed it over to Alice, a new club where WUJS was throwing us a party. It was quite fun, and the bar was on the 16th floor, so it had great views ofthe city. Becky and I planned on going to Jerusalem that night on the free bus back with all the WUJSers from jerusalem, however, this is the ONE TIME that something in Israel actually happened on time and we had a "walk out the door at 1am and see the bus pulling away from the curb and shout NOOOOOOOOOOO" moment. But really, what actually leaves on time??? Oy. So that was frustrating, but we decided we werent going to be thwarted in our plans for Jerusalem, so we did a J-ru take 2 plan, which involved waking up at 8 am and getting our butts in gear. So we did: 8am, rise and shine, and trekked it over to the central bus station and hopped a bus for J-town. We were armed with water, a compass, and a rather dinky map of jerusalem: these were our only luxuries. We both had already done all the touristy-stuff with Birthright, so we wanted to do a more "lets point our finger on the map and explore". The first place we decided to explore was the "big green patch to the left of the old city--OOH LETS GO THERE!!"...which, incidentally, just happened to be the Supreme court and Knesset area. Shweeeeet. After being sort of lostfor 4.5 seconds becuase there are like 4 central bus stations on that darned map (prompting becky and I to ask "eyfo the F anachnu" (translated: where the F are we??), we headed out for the grassy knole. Slash official government buildings. You know, whatevs. It was fun to wander: we got judicious pictures in front of the courthouse, helicopter pictures on the helopad (becky being the helicopter, of course) and menorah pictures in front of the Knesset. It was a fun explorey day so far, and then we decided to begin our epic spiritual journey.

let me explain: this spiritual journey was going to be all over the place. It was going to start with an orphanage, one that Becky's family donates money to and to which she got a mandate to visit. Using our deductive skills, the "greater Diskin Orphanage" would probably be on diskin street, right? After playing where's waldo with street names on a map, we finally found diskin and practically climbed a mountain to get there (sigh I'm such a flatlander). Diskin=an old person home street. No orphanage. Never fail, we hopped in a cab, and he knew the address. Taking one look at us (me with my elbows showing and becky in shorts), he was like "uhhhh, i think this is a really religious neighborhood. We'll see. If it is, you cant go in like that". We knew this, but didnt expect our beloved spiritual quest-ness to end or to be somewhere like that, so we trudged (cabbed) forward. Um, OY. Probablythe worst idea we've ever had. Thanks, Becky's grandpa. Haha, just kidding. Sort of. So, the gist of the story is we show up and its a beautiful building and we go through the gate and start taking pictures and then hear ANGRYYELLING in hebrew which I got the gist of: no orphanage was to be found here. This was an ultraorthodox yeshiva. oops. like, BIG OOPS. We attempted to hi-tail it out of there, but had to make our way back through the neighborhood first--Becky was like 'I feel like everyone is staring at my knees' and I said "ITS CUZ THEY ARE". It was a pretty scary experience, after hearing stories of people getting stoned in neighborhoods like that, we were practically running out. WHoof.

After that not-so-fun spiritualquestpart1, we decided to head to the old city, which had plenty of spirit. WOOOP. haha, anyways....we decided to give in and buy pashminas to cover up with--becky saronged hers, and I draped mine over my elbows-ish-area. Sigh, it sucked becuase it was HOT out too. Darned elbows. At least I got the man down down down on the scarves, paying about 25 shekels for them (about 6-7 dollars). I win.

Fresh off my monetary savvy, we stopped for lunch. Woah, did we get shammed. At that point, there was nothing we could do, but goshdarnpeople--I AM NOT AN AMERICAN TOURIST. I AM NOT ON BIRTHRIGHT. DO NOT THINK YOU CAN SCAM ME BECUASE I KNOW WHATS GOING ON. now, at least. It wasnt too bad but we got scamalamed, SIGH. We put up a fight and ended up getting money back, but that makes me SO ANGRY GRRRR. Oh well, live and learn. At least it was a good lunch.

After lunch, we had read about a special event on Fridays at 3, so to continue our spiritualquestpart2 (which may just have been a spirit other than ours: its still cool), we decided to walk the Via Dolorosa with Franciscan Monks and 8 bajillion people that come from around the world to walk it with them. Apparently the Via Dolorosa is the path of jesus's last walk, and they have about 14 stations along the way with various significance. Its also really interesting becuase the path starts in the middle of the Muslim quarter, which becky and I were instructed on birthright NEVER TOENTER BECUASE WE WERE AMERICAN JEWISH WOMEN TOURISTS. So, we chatted up a few policemen in the old city, told them what we wanted to do, and asked if it was safe today to go in. They assured us that it was, so complete with pashmina accoutrements, we trekked it into the muslim quarter. Gulp. Not so scary, but we got a bit lost along the path and saw a monk running and declared a national "FOLLOW THAT MONK!" movement, and ran after him. And then we met a nice australian man lookingfor the start of the tour too, so we found it together. Shwang. He was doing something really cool--reading through the bible and going like everywhere it went--he had already spent 2 months in Syria and 2 in Jordan I think--darned cool! So we followed the monks for a bit, listening to the stations in like 7 different languages and generally processing with a giant crowd through the old city. After the fourth stop, we decided to branch off, and 3 minutes later we were at the Kotel (western wall). I have some slight fundamental issues with that place, especially the layout and the seperation and how it is a blatant show of how women are second-class citizens there, but we went anyways. I'm telling you--what a fabulous place to people watch. After the Kotel we decided to wander the Jewish quarter for awhile, and found our way back to the Jaffa gate to head home. Whoof what a day!! I had read (smartly) beforehand that you can take a sheirut (shared taxi) back to tel aviv from Jerusalem at a place called Zion square, so we found it on a map and walked there (we were dead tired at this point because we had been walking for like 8 straight hours and it seemed entirely uphill and woosh.) I think the square was under construction, becuase it was all funky and there were NO sheiruts to be found, only a cab. Knowing that the sheirut was 30 shekels, we asked the first person we saw (just happened to be a cabbie) if he knew where the sheiruts were. A heated discussion ensued, as the cabbie tried to persuade us to get in his cab for 250 shekels ("um, the sheirut is 30 shekels. there is no way im paying 250 shekels for a 30 shekel ride." him:"but I have small car! 230 shekels for you!" me: (after already being scammed once today) "um, that still isnt 30 shekels.") For some reason his mathematical logic was not so hot that day, but fortunately a nice man stepped in and told us that becuase of the construction the sheiruts were around the corner. We couldnt take the bus back, I forgot to mention, becuase they stop running 1 hour before shabbat. All over the country. Talk about inconvenient!!!

So we found a sheirut and hopped it back home, just in time to make Shabbat dinner with everyone and enjoy it on our roof. Shabbat was spent lounging around and cooking, and then we decided to be super awesome and go to a Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer game!! it was apparently a big rivalry with Hapoel Ramat Gan, a neighboring town, and they won 3-1!! Im gonna have to post some video/pictures on here becuase it was NUTS. And, we also got slightly scammed becuase we learned afterwards that women can buy kids tickets (becuase so little women go). The game was AWESOME, and was just what I needed to pump me up (can you IMAGINE israelis watching soccer?? It was HILARIOUS!). That night was also the Nike 10K Night Run Tel Aviv, so we decided to go cheer on our 4 friends that were in the race. Not really knowing where the race ended, we went to the start and followed our noses (slash helpful local advice) to the end, basically walking a 6k while we were at it, lol. The way there was hilarous--we were still wearing our maccabi tel aviv garb, and got stopped on the street probably 44 times with people wanting to know what the outcome of the game was and what the score was. It was awesome! We also accidentally found our runners in a sea of Red Shirts--we were so convinced we werent going to find them after the finish line, but we did!!! it was so cool to see them and all of the runners, and was a great ending to a great night. And a jam-packed 48 hours.

The fun doesnt stop there though: Tonight we have a concert in Jerusalem (Idan Reichel--hes a very popular singer both here and in the states), tuesday is a field trip to a buncha embassies, and OH YEAH ITS MY BIRTHDAY ON TUESDAY WOOOOOOP! Im stoked. And, we are having a halloween party. We are gnna have to get pretty crafty since people here dont do halloween, but I think we can make it work. Wowww.

Ok ya'll, I'm out! Best wishes from the motherland!!!


HWOTD: lenamnem. To nap. A favorite activity of mine, but also we call it the 'cookie monster' word becuase if you say it fast it sounds like nom nom nom nom nom. hahahahah.