Markymoose in Big Sky: Haifa!

8.26.10 Haifa.

arrived at the home of Dori, Drori, Maya and Hiro (the dog) around noon. The drive out of Jerusalem (goodbye Jerusalem) and past Tel-Aviv, up the coastal highway was easy enough. I have been teaching Micah to map read and help navigate and he's doing a good job even though the maps we have aren't really that good. With Dori's directions we drove up the back mountain road up and found their home easily enough.

We arrived to a houseful of guests - 2 young women from Berlin and 3 young women from the Faroh (sp?) Islands between Denmark and Iceland. Most of them were on the floor with Dori who was teaching a spontaneous yoga class. Basically their extra room is their living/kitchen area which they have loaded up with beds. So tonight there will be beds and sleepers everywhere.

I'm sitting outside on their great balcony with a full moon, a lone star and Hiro. Dori, Droori, & Maya went to Tel-Aviv for an overnight for a celebration of some friends who have one month old twins, plus Dori has fisheries work every friday morning at 3 am at the Jaffa Port.

So we hung out and got acquainted for a couple of hours. Dori and Maya took Micah and I and Judith (one of the german gals) for a hike around to a spectacular view, then back to the house and the balcony where we just hung out and chatted.

When we arrived Dori was giving a spontaneous yoga class and when we got back from the hike Drori was giving a spontaneous welding/art lesson in her jewelry workshop room. Maya came up to me and let me play with her for a little bit, she's 9 months old, and loves to be held and (slightly) tossed in the air, she has a beautiful smile and is a very happy baby. As I expected it was like instant family.

Around 2 pm Micah and I and Judith and Anna ventured out together in search of the Baha'i Gardens, a beautiful gigantic terraced garden with staircases from the top to the bottom where there temple sits. The garden was immaculate and totally symmetrical, plus beautiful buildings, the temple was being renovated and was completely covered with a giant covering, usually it is golden. I guess this is one of the holiest places for the Baha'a people, a religion which began in the mid 19th century in Persia, but they have been persecuted by the Iranian governments. There are 6 million total, 2 million in India, and the remaining 4 million dispersed all over the world. They make pilgrimages to Haifa and volunteer at the temple and caretake the gardens.

We took a hebrew tour of the gardens, which constituted walking from the top to the bottom. An Australian couple noticing I was struggling with the Hebrew began to translate the highlights for me.

We ended up hanging out with Judith and Anna for most of the afternoon, going to the gardens, having a falafel, meeting up with their friends for a coffee and hiking down the staircases of Haifa to a neighborhood called Masada where Micah thought he found his first skateboard shop, but it turned out to be a graffiti shop where they sold spray cans!

Micah has been loving the graffiti, especially the graffiti of the security walls he commented again today.

At one point today young man Micah found himself sitting around a table with 5 young female internationals...

After checking out the Masada neighborhood with Anna and Judith we split up - they were going to meet up with some of their friends and we took the Carmelite, the Haifa uphill subway back up to central Carmel where we found our car easily & miraculously, no ticket! & then miraculously we found our way home! and then found a small arab grocery where we bought food to make our own dinner, rice, veggies, and chocolate

we were looking for avocados

but they didn't have any

so we settled on veggie stir fry

bought tomatoes, garlic, onion, peppers, carrots, onion

and what we thought was a zucchini

the zucchini was hollow, Micah shook it and you could hear something

rattling inside, he sliced it lenghtwise and it was an avocado

an unripe avocado with a loose pit

so we put it in our stirfry

which was delicious!

so now it's evening, we've had our dinner, it sounds like the Faroh ladies are eating up our leftovers which makes me happy, I hear them thanking Micah who is on the computer inside.

Another great day, Micah experiencing the world of travelers, the new world of couch surfing.