Wow I’ve been so busy these past few days that I haven’t really had much time to upload anything. I’m currently writing this from the Abraham Jerusalem Hostel. I found out the hard way that the Jerusalem Hostel and Abraham Jerusalem Hostel are two different things (sorry for being late to orientation GoEco).
So before I talk about today let me talk about last week.
Sometime last week…(August 2nd) Amir took me and a few of my cousins out on a drive with his newly refurbished green jeep. This is the mechanical engineer who has always had a hobby with motorcycles (see previous post w/pictures), but now has taken a beaten-up rusty 70 some year old Jeep and fixed it up like new. It’s gorgeous. He loves it.
It was really fun to ride in it. Not because we were going that fast, but because I could feel that he really put his soul into making this vehicle and it felt great to be included with my cousins in this wonderful family ritual.
Sidenote: Babu, Peerly told me to tell you that your Dad had a Jeep like this one and so you’d probably like to see these photos. Cool stuff.
Oh and and super cool ancient well. No we didn’t go into it. Gross. Lol.
And my “nephew” Omer, is hilarious. He’s just this adorable kid with a voice and spirit that is so strong that it’s amazing that it fits into such a small body (just like Maya). Here’s him at the start of our journey.
I love this video where we hear Omer say that he’s gonna stand here (and kick the ball towards his Dad) and tells his Dad not to move. His father chuckles and says what do you mean I can’t move?? I have to catch the ball! Hahaaa. So cute.
Next. Sometime that week. Noga and I went out and saw the movie, “Now You See Me.” Great cast. Fun movie until the end. Luckily though she isn’t a bullshitter so as soon as we got out of the movie we both were able to tell each other that the ending sucked. She offered to grab drinks and chat. I’m just not a fan of drinking. I don’t like the taste of most alcohol. So we grabbed Coffee and had a great chat. Aroma is like the Israeli version of Starbucks. Israelis take their coffee very seriously though. That was random.
I think it was the next day she invited me to celebrate one of her friend’s birthdays with her friends at a club. Of course I said yes. It was really fun. We headed to start the party at his girlfriend’s gorgeous house. It’s the kind of house that’s fun to look at because of how ridiculously extravagant it is. It was awesome. Fountains. 60inch TV. Chandeliers randomly placed. So we ate some rum chocolate cake that Noga made. She’s not just good at making cakes. She’s unbelievably good. I wouldn’t lie. They’re professional quality. They’re actually better than the expensive cakes we usually buy at Whole Foods…no offense hippies. We hit up a little dance club near Haifa and had a blast. We danced our butts off. It was really funny because a lot of the club songs I had never heard of and are so inappropriate that I can’t include the videos. However, when the song “Bubble Butt” by Major Lazer came on and the chorus of “Bubble butt, bubble, bubble, bubble butt” repeated 3x I just burst out laughing. I had never heard this song and they knew all of the verses! Kinda felt embarrassed that I was American at that point. It was a great night.
On the last night I was there we went out for Sushi. The food didn’t interest me but we had a great time talking. I’m not sure if it’s something innately characteristic to Israelis but our conversations are deeper and often more revealing. With both sides being more honest and open. I think it’s because when Americans start talking to each other we try to be polite and start with extraneous pleasantries. Israelis don’t do that. The whole “cut the shit” thing is in their blood. I’m really gonna miss my family for the next three weeks. They’ve been such wonderful hosts.
Oh and we’re jumping back a few days. Whatever.
We went out with all of the family. 13 peoples. Wowza. To celebrate Amir’s birthday. Great food. Great people. Gorgeous view.
Finally. Today I’m staying at the Abraham Jerusalem Hostel. It’s gorgeous. The people have been wonderful as well. In the morning we all hung out and ate lunch and some of the people went on a tour of the old city (I’ve done that with Maccabi and I don’t like tours much) so I headed out. I met up with them later that day and I received hugs and “where were you?” Just awesome people. They were getting some light beers and heading up to the roof while I hadn’t eat dinner so I quickly grabbed a bite and grabbed something to drink and went up to the roof.
We had a good hour long discussion about everything. We talked about the importance of legal limit laws. We had an interesting conversation about how and whether Israelis are uniquely racist. I think you could make an argument for that fact but that the GoEco leader was making a bad argument. He was saying that Israelis stereotype everyone and that no matter what you are (blonde, wearing glasses, Russian, American) they will judge you. That’s just people dude. Sorry. A better more interesting argument would be whether you could consider the internal distaste for different denominations of Judaism a form of prejudice/racism or whether the racism in Israel is based upon religion (Jew, Muslim and Christianity). He also was very adamant about the danger of Facebook becoming a force that causes people to live in a virtual world. Then we got into an argument because I think people use non-issues to rile people up or scare people. Both of which distract from much more important issues. It was really wonderful though because we all are liberal hippies who want to help the world. I wasn’t a fan of all the smoking on the roof but I loved that 15 people were singing along to the one guy playing guitar to Tenacious D’s “The Best Song in the World (Tribute).” Love that song.
Sooo. It’s late as usual and it’s possible that I won’t have wifi for the next three weeks. I don’t know yet. I will have it on my phone so I’ll be able to make Facebook statuses but blog posts are pretty painstaking on a phone. I’ll have to see if I’d be willing to do that or not. Either way. I will find a way to get all of my experiences up even if that means stockpiling blog posts and posting them all “House of Cards”/newest season of “Arrested Development” style #PopCultureReferences.
Before I go here’s a picture of the lobby and the free ear buds (cause of sex, snoring…who knows?)
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