Laila Levan in Tel Aviv

Last night was Laila Levan (White Nights) in Tel Aviv, a night-long celebration that started when Tel Aviv was dedicated as a UNESCO site for all the white Bau Haus architecture. Its important because its the only place in the world, outside of Miami Beach, where there is still pure Bau Haus architecture because the rest was destroyed in the world wars. In light of this, there is a festival going on all night in Tel Aviv, with museums open all night and tons of concerts out in the streets all over the city.

We started the day with our program at 8am on a bus to the Jaffa port, reminiscent of birthright.

 Our tourguide Stav was not your typical Israeli, but what I'm learning more and more on this trip is that there is no typical Israeli. He was very very tall, with  long brown hair in a pony tail down his back, and very Austrian/Germanic features. We were speculating about whether or not he was Jewish based on his all too deep knowledge of the New Testament.

He told us about Jaffa and basically took us to the shops...that's basically all he did all day, including during our "tour" of Tel Aviv.
Me and the girls (Lindsay, Claire and Julia) at the Jaffa port:

The most memorable thing about our time in the Jaffo port was the lunch we had at Cafe Jaffa where an Israeli Palestinian girl who spoke PERFECT English served us an amazing breakfast - I love Israeli breakfast. Since this was probably the first Palestinian most of us had encountered on our trip, we started bombarding her with questions about her politics and feelings about being an "Israeli Palestinian". Her main point was that, there, in Jaffa, a mixed city, it just "wasn't a thing". Arabs and Jews lived and worked side by side, and that's simply how it was. It makes you wonder, though, the attitudes of an Arab living and working there, knowing that in the eyes of the government they are still inferior, and are, at the same time, considered traitors and abandoned by their own people and government.

From Jaffo, we took the bus to Tel Aviv to continue our "tour" during which all we saw was a museum of Tel Aviv, the Carmel Shuk (Market) and one of the Bau Haus buildings. I hope our "tour" of Jerusalem is better because there are actually things I want to know about there!

We spent quite a bit of time at the Shuk, and most of our afternoon wandering and shopping in the exhausting heat with our blue, matching,  super-cool "Oranim Israel Adventures" backpacks. Oh yeah.

Thanks to Chanita, I was staying in Tel Aviv that night with her friend Daniel who has an apartment blocks from the beach. I think this is the most striking thing about Israel - perfect strangers are perfectly happy and willing to take you into their home, feed you, and give you a place to sleep, for no other reason than you're a jew visiting Eretz Israel. Anyway, Daniel picked up me and Lindsay from the Tel Aviv boardwalk at a point where we were really too dead to keep walking. He took us home to his (mostly) air conditioned apartment, and then we hit the town, starting with dinner at a delicious fish restaurant. Once again, my favorite part about eating out in Israel is that within moments of sitting down, they put food in front of you!!! Not just bread and butter, but salads, vegetables, dips! I love it.

Then we met up with Daniel's friend Shai to experience a little of the Laila Levan. During our stroll down the boulevards, we saw Argentinian dancing, Brazillian music, Spanish dancing, Russian dancing, some church-like signing, and an African congo drum show.

 At that point our energy ran out and we hung out at Shai's place where he "babysat" us until Daniel was done studying for his MBA tests. All in all, a great night!

Friday we woke up late and had another AWESOME Israeli breakfast and went back out to wander Tel Aviv some more, this time coming home with a manicure. I then once again successfuly got myeslf home to Ashdod, getting us both to the Central Bus Station "Tahena Markazit" (By the way, my Hebrew vocabulary is improving at a steady rate. In the last 4 days its gone up from 3 to at least 30 words!) , and then onto the bus to Ashdod, and from the Ashdod bus station home! I'm starting to feel a little more human. Once I can read, I'll feel more or less normal.

Now I'm sitting on the balcony of my "villa" in Ashdod, and all of my roomates are asleep. Its Friday night, so its Shabbos in the land of Israel. Everything closed slowly this evening, and I missed the last buses from the bus station and had to walk home. All the stores are closed, and there was a peace and quiet descending onto the already quiet streets in the early evening. There is nowhere for any Israeli to be this evening except at home with their friends and family, enjoying each other and the Shabbos. My roomates and I even created our own little Shabbos meal, go to know each other a little better, and spent the evening talking and laughing.

I have no religious attachments to any of this, but from the perspective of culture and values, this is the unique thing about Israel. This country almost FORCES you to embrace those family values, and strives to remind you on a regular basis the things that are truly important - not work, not your social life, not material possessions you can go out and buy, but family, conversation, stopping and enjoying the moment. Because really, from Friday night to Saturday night here in Israel, you're not left with much of a choice!

Shalom, Ashdod!

These last two days were our "Orientation" in Ashdod. We spent it learning about Israel, each other, Ashdod, and the type of volunteer work we would be doing.

The first day, Momo came to talk to us. Apparently he lost like 60 pounds, though I get my memory from 5 years ago is very hazy so I don't actually remember what he looks like. He really is a man who was born to do what he's doing, bringing kids to Israel and making them want to stay. The way he talks about Israel being the homeland for the Jewish people and being "one big happy family"...you just want to accept everything he says as true and he's so warm and welcoming you just want to do whatever he says so that he'll be happy with you. He has that power. I see how he was able to brainwash me 5 years ago, and I'm kinda sad that I had too many other experiences to go with it. Maybe I'd be speaking Hebrew by now!

I can already tell who I dislike on my program. I gave them a full two hours of a "benefit of the doubt, trying not to judge" window, but there are at least 4 that have already blown it. Partially its the fact that a solid half of them are under 21, and just dumb by factor of being naive and inexperienced. But being young doesn't make you annoyingly stupid...which a lot of these kids are. There are a few cool people for sure, and a couple in the house, so we'll see how this develops.

We learned that we'll be split into two Ulpan groups - beginner and advanced. No question about it, I'm in beginner, since I can't read and don't even know the alphabet. Unfortunately most of the people I'd prefer to be around are going to be in the advanced class, so I'm gonna be stuck with the geniuses in the beginner class.

We had a scavenger hunt around Ashdod as well, during which what I basically learned was that my Russian and French will get me much further in my month in this city than any Hebrew I'll acquire. Our day ended with a few hours at the market, followed by sitting on the beach waiting for the last group to arrive. There's nothing that irritates me more than sitting around and waiting, but at least we had a nice view:

The "adventure" begins

So, Sunday afternoon it was time to leave Barcelona, after another sleepless night, and head out to Israel.

This "trip" was definitely stressing me out, and in the end, with good reason, although everything concluded successfully. I was paranoid about Alex's apartment because I felt like I'd already pissed her off with the key copying situation so I made sure to clean everything and follow all of her instructions to the T. I had scheduled a cab to show up at 3:45 to give me time to take her keys to her friend's place and get to the airport on time. I went to take out the trash a few minutes before the cab was supposed to arrive. When I walked out to the trash, I saw the cab driver there, confirmed in my broken Spanish that he was there for me, and proceeded to the trash can, pushing my bag of trash through. Then I heard a clink, and my heart literally stopped. With the big deal Alex made about her keys, I knew she would kill me and probably find a way for IESE to kick me out if I somehow lost her keys. I tried to reach down, tried to see if I could hoist myself down the shoot, and all to no avail. I screamed out to the cab driver "Ayuda me por favor! Mis llaves!". He got out of the car but seemed pretty much at a loss of how to help me. I went around to the other side of the trash bin and saw that I could lift the cover off from the other side. He ended up hoisting me into the bin, which was mostly empty, and I recovered the keys. Whew!

I successfully delivered the keys to Elie, and got the airport 3 hours before my flight.However, since it was an international flight, I assumed I'd be able to check in and then chill at the gate, watching Sopranos in peace. HA! So much for that. I was about the 5th or 6th person in line, but the Spanair agents did not arrive to start checking people in until about an hour and fifteen minutes before the flight. They were not in a hurry at the least and took their sweet ass time with every passenger. When it was finally my turn, the he/she checking me in looked me up in the system and asked me where my return flight was...I'm not going to go into the details, because I'd rather forget them all, but basically, he wouldn't ticket me without a return flight. I panicked, and bought a ticket on the spot and was freaking out too much to have the calmness of mind to buy a refundable ticket. I caused a scene, with tears and screaming, and had all the nice Israelis, who love nothing more than a scene, coming up to me afterwards to check up on me and telling me that "OK, if the ticket cost $300, its just money, and got will bestow me with 300 blessings". Lucky me!

When I finally got on the plane, I discovered he had put me in the corner in the VERY last row. Thanks buddy. There was a very nice Israeli woman sitting next to me, that gave me the what's becoming a typical reaction when I tell people I'm going to Ashdod. Everyone's like uhhhhh why? Ashdod? There's nothing to do there! The guys in front of me were super annoying, and the flight confirmed once again that Israelis cannot follow directions. When the plane landed, they hopped up 3 times before the seatbelt sign was turned off, despite being yelled at 3 times in 3 different languages that they were not do so!

I got a cab from the airport driven by a female cab driver, who, when I told her the cross streets, took pity on me, seeing that I didn't know where I was going since I had given her two PARALLEL streets. She managed to get me where I needed to go and I actually got a pretty good night's sleep at Drew's, though I doubt he wants me back.

The next day I took a sheirut - shared taxi - to the Central Bus Station with my GINORMOUS suitcase that was a pain in the ass every step of the way. The sheirut driver seemed annoyed by it, the security guard that checks everyone's bags was PISSED at it "You vivitor? Vivitor? Vivitor?" ---blank stares--- he meant VISITOR. They're not big on the s-sound here. There was basically NO signs telling me where I needed to go to catch a bus to Ashdod but after asking 5 different people I finally found the right bus and within 15 minutes was on my way to Ashdod. I took a cab from the bus stop, since I had no idea where I was going, and arrived at home:

View Larger Map

I spent the afternoon wandering around the town, getting to know my roomates, and attemping to make couscous without any salt. This house has cornstarch, flour, and sugar - who would know that they wouldn't have any salt! My roommates are turning out to be quite the characters - the girl I'm sharing a room with, for one, is a super-skinny Ukranian blond with a perfect body and a straight from the motherland accent, and stuffed animals on her bed.

View of the beach in Ashdod, my home for the next month:

Adios, Barcelona!

Saturday was my last full day in Barcelona. In the early afternoon, after more sleeping pill induced sleep, I met up with Grisha, the son of my mom's best friend from childhood. He was visiting his friend Tanya who is living here for the summer, doing an internship and studying Spanish. We sat in a few cafes, had a few beers, and walked around the Sagrada Familia and more of the city center. He had quite a "manly" appetite and kept not being satisfied with any quantity of food and insisting that he needed some cheeseburgers, plural, to tide him over.

At night, we got all the groups together and met down by the Barceloneta port for a Paella dinner. There were 8 of us: Mayra and her husband, Tony, Andy, Grisha, Tanya, and Tanya's friend Gayana. This girl was the epitome of Russian - she basically yelled at the waiter to bring her an English menu, didn't say please or thank you a single time, and generally kept away from the "new" people.

Dinner was pretty good, and the portions of paella were ENORMOUS and fresh. After dinner, we bar hopped a bit , had some mojito's, did some dancing at the touristy dance bars, and ended the night chillin' in a hookah bar down by the port.








 Unfortunately, it wasn't all great because Tanya ended up having her purse stolen. It's not much of a surprise, as pickpocketing and non-violent robbery happens constantly in Barca, and she did leave her purse unattended, even if it was for under 10 seconds.

I arrived home around 6 in the morning, as the sun was rising. It was perfect, but I don't think I can do this on a weekly basis. I'm TIRED!