Tel Aviv !

8/15/10

Sunday evening, cooling down, taking it easy, rejuvenating, waiting for Chertok to call us for dinner... I think he is having a busy work day... it's almost 7 pm but that's early for dinner in Israel.

I think I'm getting into the flow of things, experiencing the country, but worrying less about stuff, Micah is asleep on the floor. He was falling asleep on the bus, on our way home from the Diaspora Museum, an interesting, but not really worthwhile stop, well it was definitely worth it for the air conditioning - maybe with a guide it would have been better, it was a historical museum about communities of jews all over the world under the rule of other empires and some of the jewish philosophers like Maimonedes and Rashi. Rashi supposedly sat in a stone chair at the head of the table of his students...

One interesting quote... " A rabbi whose community does not disagree with him is not really a rabbi and a rabbi who fears his community is not really a man." Rabbi Israel Salante

The museum was out by Tel-Aviv University, which appears to have a very nice campus with a sculpture garden, it seemed quite large. It was super hot out as always. It took us quite awhile to find the bus to the museum, we had to take a detour to cool down in a mall, large and air conditioned! Then we found the bus pretty quickly after that. After the museum and sculpture garden we took the bus back to the mall - shared a falafel, cooled ourselves off in the mall and tried to rejuvenate, decided we should go home - so we walked to a bus stop and took the bus back to the hotel, where I still don't have internet which is a bummer, but she said she'll fix it tomorrow, and I could use her computer downstairs, it's just not the same, whatever. David just texted me, he has to push dinner out till 8:30, Micah is asleep on the floor, which I guess is O.K. if we are going to be out late...

I might have to go out for a beer at the internet cafe and see if Jackie is around to Skype with... It's just too easy and it's practically free...

So that was our afternoon. In the morning Micah woke up around 5:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep. He tried, but he couldn't so around 9am we headed out to take a swim in the Mediterranean Sea. The beaches of Tel-Aviv near us are funny, there is a segregated beach - male and females have different days - we almost walked into the female only beach and then noticed all these women with girl children only heading to the beach for a morning swim...

We swam, and walked and explored, we were looking for a place to body surf, but the beaches were mostly bays, the better surf had no swimming signs all over the place...

Then back to the hotel for morning showers and then out to breakfast at a cafe called MOVIEING - upstairs they have a bar area with lots and lots of DVDs... And they had wireless and we were able to Skype with Jackie... who was still awake at 2 am...quite funny to be Skyping as the waitress brought us fresh squeezed orange juice and a latte... We had an awesome breakfast, and talked to Jackie who was very happy to be able to see us and talk to us and us her, And then after a very relaxing and filling breakfast, it was off to begin our day of walking in the heat, getting money, buying a tour book, and hanging out trying to read, speak and understand hebrew and having fun.

Tel-Aviv life starts when the sun goes down. The streets are alive with people, cars, the cafes are full, it's cooler out, it feels cooler tonight then it has been, but we haven't been out out wandering the streets at night, we've been working on getting back on schedule jet lag wise, Micah is still napping, I'm sitting at a cafe having a beer and listening to an American group in front of me and Israelis behind me, english, hebrew, hebrew, english, I wish my hebrew was better, it will be by the time we leave. David will be calling me for dinner soon, I should probably shake Micah awake, I think he wants to hang out with Noam tonight, don't know if that will work out, jerusalem is going to be so different from Tel-Aviv...