A Note Before the Deluge

I haven’t had consistent internet access since I left the States so I just typed everything in Word and  now I’m finally getting a chance to post it.  If you notice tense confusion it’s probably because I went back and edited it later and forgot to use present tense.  Sorry.  Posts that are travel dairies will have the date in italics at the top of the posts.  Those posts are more or less a play by play of what I did that day.  Posts that are things I’ve been thinking about or have observed about the cultures around me have no such date.  So you should be able to browse whatever you’re feeling like reading.

Also, I'm back-dating posts so that they show up on the day about which they were written.  If that proves confusing then let me know and I'll change it.

Shabbat Shalom

Saturday, the 12^th of Feb.

Shabbat, the holy day here, is really good.  Things start to slow down around noon on Friday and by mid-afternoon the street is fairly quiet.  By sundown the streets are virtually deserted, at least compared to the normal bustle.  It stays that way until sundown on Saturday.  It has started me thinking about the way America handles its rest.  We don’t really take a break.  The weekend is just as busy, if not busier.  Everybody just switches what they’re busy with. 

That’s not the case here.  The country comes to a virtual standstill for Shabbat.  In fact, there’s a big mall several blocks away that turns into a big market on Friday with people selling pre-cooked meals so that you can honor Shabbat by not cooking.  It’s probably a lot more honoring to the Lord and a lot more restful than the way we do it.

I walked about 20 minutes to church this morning.  I attended the services of the Adonai Roi Congregation.  Adonai roi means God our shepherd and the full name of the church in Hebrew is the first part of Psalm 23.  The services were in Hebrew with translation through earpieces like you see at the UN assemblies.  (That'll make you feel important haha.)  It was a bit more charismatic than I’m used to but was good.  The service started at 10:30 and the preacher hadn’t even started his sermon at 12:20 haha.  The songs in Hebrew are beautiful.  I’m going to try to find a CD of the hymns and post them for people to take a listen.

Oh and a little bit of humor for you at my expense.  The orthodox Jews wear dark suits 24/7.  Black pants, black coat, white shirt.  All the time.  So I figured that if those guys wore that to the beach then church, even for the non-orthodox, would be fairly formal.  So I rocked a full-on suit.  Pinstripes, bowtie and everything.  Nope.  There were people there wearing PJ pants.  So if the white kid didn't stick out enough anyways, I certainly did then.  Definitely made me stand-up and introduce myself in the middle of the service since I was so obviously a visitor.  Right on.

[I've now caught up to exactly one week behind.  By the end of this week I'll be back to posting in real-time.]

Where There’s Smoke

Friday, the 11^th of Feb.

Yesterday during my wonderings I found an internet café tucked in the back of a corner store nearby and resolved to go back.  Well when I woke up today my internet was briefly working.  Unfortunately the first emails I saw informed me that my grandfather had a stroke Thursday evening (US time) and is in the hospital.  So that made my trip to the café even more of a priority because of course the internet only worked long enough for me to see those emails.

The café is really close, the guy speaks great English and is really nice so overall that’s a big win and a huge answer to prayer.

Anyways, as I was leaving the internet café I thought I smelled smoke.  I have a notoriously terrible sense of smell so if I can smell it then you know it’s bad.  I started looking around and sure enough ahead of me a building was being evacuated as smoke seeped from the second story.  (I’d love to use the word billowed, just because I love that word, but that’d be a tremendous exaggeration.)

So the store employees are pushing out the customers, literally pushing them out and yelling.  (What they were yelling I have no clue.)  The first emergency personnel to arrive were police officers on roller blades.  Yep, roller blades.  I didn’t even see them roll up but suddenly they were right beside me.  Next came three fire engines, an ambulance and several police cars.  I got bored and left before finding out what was wrong.  I could tell by the way the firemen were moving that nothing exciting was going to happen and my attention span failed.

The Israeli public is absolutely unflappable.  I think that comes with years, decades even, of dealing with terrorism and war first hand.  We all know someone who died on 9/11 or was deeply impacted by it, but these people live with that on a regular basis.  The loud sirens here do not signify tornados but incoming missiles launched by terrorist organizations sworn to eradicate the Israeli people.  Security guards check your bags at the door because people blow themselves up in the buildings here. (FN1)   All that to say that despite the fact that the building was on fire the customers still wanted to shop and so the shop employees had to force them out.  Later I watched people continuing to try to enter the shop despite the fact that the police were blocking it off and the fire department was crowding the sales floor.  It was a fascinating and impressive display of cultural adaption to danger.

FN1.  Danger.  All that is thankfully a few years behind them.  The security remains but I don’t sense any danger at all.  I honestly feel a lot safer here than I do walking the streets at night in Tuscaloosa or I did leaving the office in Birmingham.

The Old, Old World!

Shabbat shalom everyone!  My first Shabbat (Saturday holy day) in the Holy Land is about to begin.  I have not had internet access at all for the last several days hence the lack of posts.  Needless to say, that will change soon!  When it does, you can expect a TON of posts!  In fact, I have typed up about 20 pages in a Word doc on my computer so get ready for lots of stories, pictures and cultural observations.

In the mean time know this:
I jog every day on the beach.  With sailboats on the horizon.  My neighbors are awesome.  I found a Messianic church within walking distance and the people here are extremely warm and friendly.

THUNDER!

Thursday, the 10^th of Feb.

Woke up this morning to loud claps of thunder!  I mean LOUD!  It made me miss Alabama thunderstorms.  Well prior to that I woke up around 1am to some bumping music next door.  At first I thought it was a club opening up but then I realized it was coming from the other side of the wall.  Oh well, it was really fun music and I enjoyed it.  I got up and danced alone in my apartment haha.  Plus, after the first song or two they turned it way down.  Very considerate neighbors.

The day was uneventful but what a night!  I started off the evening eating dinner with Daniel, my classmate over here.  On the way back to my building I found a Messianic (FN1) coffee shop that’s only a few blocks away from my apartment!  Hello great place to study!  Not only that, but they invited me to church on Saturday!  Wahoo!

Then coming back into the building I met one of my neighbors, Zoe, who introduced me to a lot of my other neighbors!  She was really outgoing and very nice.  We chatted for a while then I went into my apartment and realized that Zoe probably corresponds with “dlink-zoe” - the router with perfect signal (my internet is still out and I’m desperate).  So I went back to ask her but she doesn’t know the password and asked me to try and come fix it because she can’t get her iPhone on the network either.  Anyways, next thing I know I’m hanging out with a group of my neighbors: Zoe, Rhavid and Merri.  Zoe lives with her partner, Rhavid, next door.  Her birthday is today and it was their mini-party that I heard last night.  Merri lives downstairs.  At one point Zoe interrupted the conversation and said, “excuse me, but I just have to ask.  Is your nose yours?”  Meaning, did I have a nose-job.  That’s the second person to comment on my nose since I’ve been here.  The security guard at the mall, who spoke no English was talking about it and pointing.  I have no idea what’s going on.  Anyways, Zoe and Rhavid invited me to her real birthday party on Saturday!  I think I shall go.

FN1 Messianic.   Messianic Jews are Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

A Swim in the Mediterranean, Well Almost

Wednesday, the 9^th of Feb.

Today to switch it up I decided instead of running I was going to go for a swim and the Ben Gurion pool complex at the beach.  It’s kind of expensive to get in, even with the student discount it was 50 shekels (~$13.50) but I wanted to swim.

This however presented a dilemma.  The pool is about 1.5 miles from my apartment.  I could wear normal clothes and change there or just make the trek wearing pool clothes.  I decided that I couldn’t be bothered to find the locker room and pack a change of clothes so I made the trek wearing a swimsuit.  Haha it was awesome.

The swim was great.  It’s advertised as “salty, mineral groundwater” and it delivered.  It was a little like swimming in the ocean except with clear water and no waves.  I swam my normal workout for about two hours then decided to relax with some breast-stroke.  I could not do it.  It was impossible in the salty water.  Haha I just could not get the rhythm right because I usually glide a little bit under water on every stroke but no matter how deeply I angled on entry I’d just bounce back to the surface every stinking time.  So that ended that brief experiment.

Ah, it’s the little things…

Tuesday, the 8^th of Feb.

Today marked a pretty significant accomplishment for me.  I’ve been to three countries in the last week, and four continents in the last month, but I’m pretty sure today marked the most significant travel accomplishment of all of it: I bought toilet paper.

I don’t think you understand how difficult this is over here.  I have spent three days wondering the streets of Tel Aviv, been in countless stores and markets and not found one that sold that vital tree pulp.  Not the little store where I bought my shampoo, which coincidentally didn’t sell hand soap (see below), nor the PM/AM “super”market.  Neither did any of the other stores where I wondered, but I finally found some today in one of the markets I discovered during my daily jogs.  I think my finding it was because this morning I finally reached the critical stage of “do NOT come home without it.”  (Read: no TP anywhere in the place.)  Of course now that I’ve found a place that sells TP, it will be ridiculously easy to buy it again.

The rest of the day was pretty mundane.  I slept in, went on a 6 mile run and worked in a couple of workouts at the free gyms on the beach. 

Observations

(1)    Shopping.  It is completely unlike the United States.  There is no Wal-Market and no equivalent that I've found.  Everything is sold in small specialty stores.  This means that the store where I bought my shampoo and shower gel did not sell hand soap or a mirror to shave.  That’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s completely offset by the fact that there are probably dozens of grocery stores within a few blocks of my apartment.  Two blocks over there is a huge market with everything you need from a spice vender to a butcher to tons of fresh produce to a vender who sells knock-off watches.  The market is truly huge.  I jogged it today and it runs almost half a mile long.

(2)    Pricing.  The prices here are different.  Today I bought six rolls of toilet paper, six rolls of paper towels and four bars of hand soap and it was around $13 or $14 which I thought was kind of high.  I also purchased a couple of nice oranges, some big apples and a bunch of plump bananas and it was less than $4, which is affordable to say the least.  Much to the delight of my mother, it looks like I will be living off fresh fruit and vegetables.

(3)    Clothing.  And by clothing I really mean modesty.  I could write an entire post on the fashion here.  People here wear stuff that women of the night would blush at wearing but that goes with Israel’s proximity to Europe.  However, because Israel is still a relatively religious country and because it is in the Middle East, there are some interesting twists to modesty.  For example, people here LOVE their spandex.  Love it.  I have yet to see a dude wearing a swim suit other than a speedo.  Additionally, male joggers rock the spandex shorts hardcore. 

Yesterday at the market a girl about my age was wearing see-through pants.  Not “oh bad lighting” or “wow it just rained really hard” but straight up see-through pants.  As in I was about 15 feet away and knew exactly what kind and color of underwear she was wearing.  However, today when I went running and wore normal length running shorts (not the Paulie Bleaker style) I got dirty looks from men and quite a few leers from women.  Not to brag, but about 15 years of running and a couple years of triathlons have given me some darn good leg muscles.  In fact, I think I have pretty hot legs.  If you like ‘em pale and hairy.  Haha.  All that to say that I think the spandex for the jogging crowd is because it is more acceptable here to wear really tight stuff than really short stuff.  Just a theory.  Like I said, I’ve only been here three days.

P.S. I think I ‘m sunburned, but I can’t tell for sure because after three straight days of shopping I still can’t find a mirror.

[Update:  Since I wrote this post I've learned a that the AM/PM that I originally found was more of an "express AM/PM" there's another one that's close that does have a bigger selection of food as well as a very limited selection of cleaning supplies.]