Only in Israel

After living in this country for almost ten months, I really couldn't help but notice how things are made way more complicated than they need to be. Especially with trash removal. It's so ridiculous, the first time I saw it, I laughed. The dumpsters are these huge round containers and when the garbage men come to empty them, they use this huge claw machine type thing to lift the enormous garbage bag lining the dumpster. They attach hooks to the huge bag and lift it out before lowering it into the truck. I guess Israelis really like claw machine.

There are claw machines everywhere, most of which contain only a few toys scattered amongst fake Rolex watches, and packs of cigarettes. I always thought those machines were supposed to be for kids.

But I guess there are a lot of blurry lines in this country, like liquor stores that also sell candy and toys. Fun for the whole family, I suppose.

The public transportation system runs pretty well, except when everything stops for Shabbat. My most humorous bus rides are when I go to Be'er Sheva. As we leave Ashkelon, passing by Palm trees and Date trees that are so tropical looking, we pass a highway sign that says, "Gaza 10 km." I wonder why no one has removed those signs yet. Is anyone actually driving to Gaza? It just makes me laugh. Almost immediately we are in brown farm land and empty fields that remind me of Nebraska. It's just ugly, brown, and boring. There's nothing to look at. Soon after that we are in the desert passing roaming donkeys and camels in the middle of nowhere. And then someone rings the "stop" button. The bus stops in the middle of the desert, and I look out the window looking for something, some sign of civilization, but there's none. And then I see someone get off the bus and just walk off into the desert. Where are they going? There is nothing around for miles, from what I can tell, and how does this person even know that this is their stop? I guess it's the one right by that rock over there.

The teenagers walk the streets with the music from their cell phones blaring. No one uses headphones. I don't know if it's because they can't afford them, or if they just think their music is so good they need to share it with the world. It's usually techno, or that obnoxious song that is everyone's ring tone here, that always gets stuck in my head, no fail. "Stereo Love," I think is the name of it. Look it up, you won't get it out of your head for days, and I fully intend on making that my new ring tone when I get back in the states.

As rude and pushy as Israelis are, parodied to a T on "The Simpsons," people have a strong sense of community. Several times I've been on a bus or on the sidewalk, and a lady has come up to me and asked me to watch her baby for a minute. It seems so contradictory, rude pushy people asking complete strangers to watch their kids. But no one is as rude as the old ladies at the grocery store. So many times while I'm waiting in line at the store, a little old lady comes up with one item in her hand gesturing that she wants to go ahead of me, and being the nice, well mannered American that I am, I let them. Then out of nowhere bags and bags of groceries appear, like these old ladies hide them under their skirts so that they can cut people in line.

There have been so many things to get used to in this country, seeing people walk around with pistols in their belts, adult claw machines, and liquor stores that also sell candy. But I've enjoyed my experience, and have a lot of items to add to my "Only in Israel" list.

If You Want Me, I'll Be In the Bar

My mom's visit over Passover break was just what I needed. My mom, my aunt, and I spent five nights in Jerusalem where we took a four hour walking tour of the Old City which included a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was absolutely gorgeous. The mosaics were so detailed, and all the gold plating on the ceilings were amazing. It's incredible to think about how old these places are, that I'm walking on the original stone. You just can't find places like this in the States. We took a day trip to the Dead Sea, which I don't care for. It is beautiful there, but I don't like swimming in the Dead Sea, it feels like I'm swimming in soup, it grosses me out. Mom came to Ashkelon with me for a few hours to see the depressing one bedroom dorm room I share with two other girls, and to help me pack up all my winter clothes that I no longer needed.

We spent two nights in Tel Aviv right on the beach. Of course, there was not much for us to do besides sit on the beach, because of Passover, everything was closed.

Istanbul was amazing. Our hotel, the Seven Hills, was right between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. A lot of the restaurants and cafes had patios on the roofs, providing great views of the bay and all the mosques. Five times a day every mosque had a "call to prayer," a loud voice chanting, or singing, if you can really call it that. Most men would drop what they were doing to go pray. The Grand Bazaar shuts down for an hour to pray, and while we were there some men started rolling out a really long rug. I thought they were showing it to someone, trying to sell it, but then all the men shut down their kiosks and knelt on it. Traffic stops during the call to prayer. People get out of their cars in the middle of streets to pray. But only the men can pray in public, I'm not sure what women do.

The Blue Mosque was pretty. People still pray there so when you enter you have to take off your shoes and women have to cover their heads. It smelled like feet inside, and someone told us that in the summer, people have to wear masks because it smells so bad. At least it was still cool outside while we were there.

The Hagia Sophia was gorgeous, there was Islamic art all over, as well as Christian mosaics that had been worn and eroded with time, but they were still pretty.

We also went into the underground cisterns, where Medusa supposedly lived, and there were sculptures of her head carved into the bases of a few pillars.

Everything we did was really interesting, but there were so many tourists there we couldn't walk on the sidewalks. We had to weave in and out of the crowds, walking in the street a lot of the time. I even saw a guy steal something from someone and run away, only to try and sell me what I had just seen him steal. He told me he got it on the Black Market. Well, of course it was the black market, he had stolen it, isn't that what the black market is?

It's funny to think how all these Turkish people make money, when every store you pass is the same as the last one. Ceramics store, rug store, ceramics store, rug store, cafe. Everyone has an uncle who has a shop right down the street. When we asked for directions to a restaurant we were led numerous times into a rug store. This doesn't look like a restaurant. The sights were amazing, but I could have done without people yelling at me to come into their shops. If you even glance in the window of a store, a man starts yelling prices at you, and saying, "Please, come in!" I don't need anyone to tell me where to shop. If I want to go into a store, I will, but yelling at me is not going to help.

Returning from break I felt like I needed a break from my break.

I went with a few friends to a "Rainbow Gathering." It's just a bunch of hippies in the middle of the woods. The directions to this place were, "follow the rock piles." On the bus to get there, we met some other people who were going there as well. When we got off the bus at around ten at night, we started looking for the rock piles, which were few and far between. On our hike, with all of our gear strapped to our backs, a car pulls up asking if we were heading to the Rainbow Gathering. The girl in the car told us it was a three hour hike from where we were, and she gave us a ride. We got to the Welcome Center, which was a tent that had a big "Welcome Home" banner on it, we got all our stuff out of the car. Our driver lead us to the main campsite, taking us on a "short-cut" which involved walking through thorns and other prickly bushes, straight up the side of a mountain. This guy was barefoot the whole time and told us that he had forgotten his shoes at home and had been barefoot for the past two weeks, since he got to the rainbow gathering. Rainbow Gatherings are based around the cycle of the moon and can sometimes last up to a month. This particular gathering was three weeks long, but we only went for the weekend. When we got to the main campsite there was a huge fire with hippies standing around singing "Kumbaya" type songs, jamming on whatever instruments they had brought with them. We met a lot of really interesting people there, people were constantly coming over to our cam site with their guitars, or with tea to share. Everyone was really nice and I felt totally comfortable leaving my belongings outside of my tent all night long. You couldn't do that in the states. Alcohol is frowned upon, and I could see why. In the states I think a lot of people would get wasted and cause a lot of trouble, fighting and stealing, it happens all the time at festivals. These people we like to call "wookies." They are only there for the drugs or to get messed up, they completely take away from the message these gatherings are supposed to represent, which is unity, love, and family. I love camping, so I thought it was a great weekend, although the Rainbow people seemed a little cult-like, with the prayer circles, standing holding hands and chanting, "om," and talking about the "great spirit" visiting them. It was a little extreme for me. But that was one more experience to add to my "Only in Israel" list. On our last day after careful consideration and planning, we concluded that we couldn't get back to the Jerusalem bus station in time for me to make the last bus back to Ashkelon, and in order for me to do so, we would have to hitchhike. We caught a guy driving out of the camp grounds and asked him for a ride, which he kindly gave us, dropping us off at a junction right outside of Jerusalem. I'm counting this as hitchhiking because this is probably the closest I will ever come to the real deal. We stuck our fingers out(not our thumbs, cause that's how they do it here) attempting to hitch a ride into Jerusalem, but before anyone pulled over a cab stopped.

Now, school is almost over and I couldn't be more excited to go home. I have had a great experience in Israel overall. There have been many times where I've broken down crying wanting to go home, but I toughed it out, and I can say that I have had some experiences that cannot ever be duplicated. I swam with dolphins in the Red Sea, I met the Egyptian ambassador in my underwear on the Tel Aviv beach, I've been egged, I've had soccer balls kicked in my face, I've had some really messed up students with a lot of issues, I lived five miles away from Gaza. I went on beautiful hikes, attended my first rainbow gathering, I hitchhiked, sort of. I kayaked in the Mediterranean Sea. I did so many amazing things this year, and now that my time is coming down to the last month, I can honestly say that this was a great year.