A day in Jerusalim

I'm going to bypass the whole Taglit saga...maybe I'll continue to write about it later but I am so far behind and feel like my experiences these days are much more worthy of a rant. The following chronicles are not...chronolgical but still fun stories.

On Tuesday I met my cousin Britt who also happens to be on holiday in Israel for a day downtown. We ate breakfast on one of the main strips called Ben Yahuda before walking toward the Old City. The old city is surrounded by a huge wall and has many different entrances. We walked through Jaffa gate to wander the Arab Shouk which is a covered touristy market full of jewlery, fabrics, chatchkies, pottery, you name it - they have it. It is very similar to the Souks in Morroco and the bazar in Budapest but much of the retail is actually from Israel. Like every other similar market, store owners stood outside their stores speaking as much English as they can to entice you and sucker you into buying stuff. This is a bargining adventure if I ever saw one so the entire process was thrilling. Even being able to walk by a store owner without looking at him or saying Todah (thank you) is a feat. They are fiesty!

Britt is a very assertive and direct woman with the occasional hilarious quip. Example - half way into the market we were approached by a man who simply asked "you come to my shop. where you go where you go?" to which Britt responded "I don't know, it's a long road." She's sharp...I thought it was funny. Britt wanted to buy some door hanging chatchki so we stopped in a store to look at the goods. The man in the store took to me very quickly and said I had the most beautiful eyes. I sparkled, I shined, I said thank you and browsed the store. He and Britt haggled over the price and just as our feet were about to hit the pavement he caved to her price. She immediately turned around to finish the deal but it took me a while to stop smiling before I could get my game face back and turn around. He spoke in Hebrew to Britt something about how he liked me and how pretty I was etc. He invited us to have coffee with him and we said sure. I forget his name but he wanted to show me his jewlery and asked if I had a boyfriend and all that courtship gab. I told him no and asked if he had a girlfriend (fully aware of the answer). He said he wanted one and just to mess with him I told him he was crazy and didn't need a girlfriend. He had 10 good years to find a wife and should live life until he was 30. (he was 22 as well). He was shocked and seriously disagreed. He tried to get my number and find out where I was staying and ask me out for the night until Britt and I escaped. I thought it was all amuzing and flattering until Britt told me that while I think his liking me will get us a better price, he is thinking his flirting will get him a better deal. What a sucker. That was the last time I accept coffee from a Bedoin! (Desert people who migrate around the...desert).

We met a friend, Carmel, for lunch at a gorgeous restraunt on the side of a cliff. We ate out side and the view was so spectacular. I ate salmon carpachio and we were treated to a little champaign and watermellon margarita. It is so fantastic being able to travel around with locals who know everyone and the best places. Carmel then took us to a natrual watering hole to swim but it was full of kids and Donkeys so we just sat and watched.

At night my cousin Omri, and I went out for a beer before meeting his wife, Daphna, at a club. Daphna is my height (maybe even an inch smaller) and much slimmer than me but - she's tiny! There are a lot of small people in Israel and I love it. Omri is around 5'7" and considered tall here. Anyway, Omri and I had a drink at this very cute little tavern on a side street down town. I had a fig vodka and Omri had guiness. We shared their version of beer nuts which are a type of bean that you suck out of it's skin - kind of like edamame - but they are the same color as peanuts. After the yummy drink we headed further downtown to the club. It was in the middle of this green area that is apparently the Garden of Freedom. We climbed two flights of outside marble stairs until we got to this circular patio. There were more marble tables and a bar at one end, and then (think concentric circles) there is a door to go inside to another circular area which is the club. Bar...club..I don't know. The further most inside circle was the bar and then on the outside were more bar tables and a little area inbetween. I bought another round of drinks and when Daphna found us, we sat and talked and people watched. It was very noisey from the DJ who was mixing all this american pop. Omri and Daphna, both 29, thought that the scene was made up more of people my age but really, there was a mix. I left the two to peruse the crowd and walked to the balcony for a while to see what was good out there. Nothing much - more people socializing. I don't speak Hebrew so it is hard to go up to someone and say hey...so I went back inside after a while and Daphna and Omri were not where I'd left them. No matter - Dan said I would be fine making friends so - there I was. No one was dancing. I took issue with this. It was a club opening. Ok actually there were some girls standing on the bar but they weren't really dancing. They were more swaying back and forth. I kinda bounced around to the music for a while and I noticed out of the corner of my eye a man in movement. I whirled around to see the most fantastic dancer of my life and I walked right up to him to tell him so. He asked why I wasn't dancing and I said that I couldn't hold a candle to that. He told me to do my thing so...you know the rest.

I did my thing and the two of us put on a little show. We rocked it out to all the American shit for a while, I tried to copy his fancy footwork and hand jives and got completely lost in the music. Noone else was dancing. Eventually a woman in a sequined vest joined in on the party which was great! She was a quality dancer too. Somehow - at an Isralie club opening in downtown Jerusalim, I had found Marvin - a black jew from St. Louis and Lisa, a tourist from Australia to dance with me. I knew something wasn't right with Marvin and his god-like dancing abilities so I marched up to him and asked him if he teaches classes and he admited that he was - get this - the choreographer of Israel's production of Rent. Yea. That's who I was dancing with. I laughed for a while and then shaped up enough to get his details in case I move to Israel - the guy will teach me those moves. They were serious. Lisa was ok. She was fun though.

So - the two of them liked dancing with me but I felt we needed more players so I turned around and put my arms around two Isralies standing near by and asked them why they wern't dancing. One looked confused and the other said "I'll dance with you!" So Beni (everyone and their son is called Benyamin) started dancing too! I was surprised at how easy it was to get people to dance and though the club was very small, we made it work. The club photographers surrounded us and god know's where those blackmail worthy pics are. Omri came back eventually and bought me another drink. He seemed really surprised to see me in the midst of a dance party but was happy that I found a good time. Ironically enough, Beni's uncle is a rabbi in the Bay Area. This world keeps getting smaller and smaller. If you don't have a cousin in Israel, know someone named Benyamin, or are less than 3 degrees of separation from a Rabbi, you have no business in the homeland. That's all I'm sayin.