Day 3

I’m totally exhausted and don’t know how much I will be able to write, so just let it be said that today was the day that shall be henceforth remembered as the day that I ate cow tonsil on a skewer. At dinner tonight Ilan and I, who have been getting increasingly more silly as the trip has progressed, decided that there was no point in having a meal that wouldn’t be memorable, so we decided to order something exotic off the menu, and cow tonsil seems pretty frigging exotic to me. We enjoyed the girls waving their hands and making gross-out noises ( I think “eww!” is the typical literary depiction of this), and when it came, we posed for a picture, looking all excited about eating something from the back of a cows throat. Ilan and I pop it in our mouths. “It’s pretty good, huh?” Ilan said, “it has kind of a different texture, but the flavor is amazing, doncha think?”

“Yeah,” I replied and cut myself some more. But I have to admit: it was pretty freaking nasty. If a Chicken McNugget and a chink of raw liver had a baby, it would have the consistency and texture of skewered cow tonsil. But I couldn’t let on. Oh no. I went out of my way to make a point of how “you’ve got to try new things!” and “later in life I won’t remember having another lamb kabob, but I’ll remember this.” Yeah, I’ll remember it. Every time I burp for the next couple days, I’ll remember those unholy cow glands. I guess that’s what you get for being a self-righteous prick.

Tomorrow I’m sticking with chicken.

Day 2

Breakfast was amazing! It was more like brunch, but at 7:30 a.m., and I stuffed myself but good like a true American. Most hotels that include a breakfast in the U.S. seem to provide a continental-type breakfast. Cheap bastards.

We went to the Israeli Independence hall and heard a rousing presentation about the 2000 year old dream that was fulfilled when the state of Israel was created. After listening to the recording of the Proclamation by Ben-Gurion of the founding of the state of Israel followed by the emotional, cracking voice of the Rabbi saying the Shehechanyu, the whole room stood and sang Ha’Tikva, the Israeli National Anthem. I have never wanted to know the words to a song so much as I did then. Many people were brought to tears, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t close myself.

Other stops followed that were interesting but couldn’t live up to the presentation in the morning. We went to the Palmach museum, which was a look at how the first Israeli fighting forces did so much with so little. It was interesting, but it was also a little too much like an Epcot center presentation w/ video screens and cheap pseudo-anamatronics. After that was a tour of a bullet factory where soldiers posed as kibbutzniks in order to make bullets for use in the war of independence. They built a factory underground in 21 days (!) and went to extraordinary lengths to keep it secret from the British. A great story, but not really much to look at. There was much nodding off by the Aviv from afar…and my first glimpse of Arabs.

Avi and Jacquie arrived safe (but without their luggage), and we all had dinner at a dairy restaurant, Yot Vata, with some knockout cheeses from a Kibbutz.

I was told this was a relatively easy day. Good God, I’m going to be wiped out when I get home!

Day 1 (and a half)

It’s 5:15 in Tel Aviv, I’ve got no idea what time my body thinks it is, and I’ve just spent the last hour lying in bed hoping to fall back to sleep. Our first full day in Israel is coming and I have been trying to make sure that I’m going to be rested enough to get through what I’m sure will be a full day, but I’m just too excited to fall back to sleep (the same reason that I spent so many hours on the El Al flight yesterday just staring into the back of my sleeping mask). I was expecting to enjoy our trip, since Shoshana and I had been talking about coming here for at least the past 4 years, but I didn’t think that I would be this wound up. It’s pretty strange for a Jewish guy to make this analogy, but I feel the same way I did on Christmas, when Scott and I would wake up when the morning was still technically night.

So here I am, sitting on the balcony of out hotel room at the Renaissance Tel Aviv. It’s one of the only four hotels located directly on the Mediterranean in this city. After these 4 were built, they stopped allowing it so that the beach didn’t end up looking like Miami, with high-rise after high-rise on the water, with little open beach access for the public. You can see the sea while you drive down the coast here, unlike Route A1A in South Florida. In the short time that I’ve been here, I’ve really liked how much the public good seems to shape many of the civic decisions made here.

We flew in yesterday, arriving at Ben Gurion airport here in Tel Aviv at about 4:30 pm. Flying into the city I was amazed at how urban and developed the city looked: lots of skyscrapers and really modern looking architecture, large planned green public spaces. Driving through the city afterwards, it reminded me of L.A. or the hipper parts of Dallas. The people who live here have done so much with land that was just seaside desert.

The other striking thing was how all the buildings have a similar color. I’m sure it’s probably pragmatic (who wants to live or work in a black building in the desert?), but the look of the whole city makes it feel very natural, very “of the land.”

After going thru customs and then watching Shoshana nearly melt down in fear that our bags had decided to take a trip somewhere else (all the bags DID decide to join us), we met with the rest of the crew. Our group to this point is Shosh, Aliza and Ilan, and also Berna and Larry Klur, two synagogue members and friends of the Kapneks. Avi wasn’t feeling well (and by not feeling well, I mean really freaking sick), so he and Jacquie will be meeting up with us today, day 2, at 4pm or so.

We met our guide for the day and headed to the hotel. The hotel is nice but not ostentatious at all. I don’t know if it’s because of the socialist roots of the country, but nothing I’ve seen yet feels opulent? Elitist? That’s not quite right. I guess what I’m saying is I’m just not seeing the huge differences between the highest and lowest class of living like you would expect to see in other western countries. I really like it.

(Shosh just popped her head out to say hi, admire the view, and head back to bed.)

Dinner last night was in the Yemenite quarter of the city. The food, if I just list the dishes, sounds like (and looked like) meals I have had a hundred times before: humus, falafel, Israeli salads, shish kebab. But it was so much better than anything I had eaten in the U.S. My only complaint is that it felt a little “This is where all the tourists go to have Israeli food,” but since so much of the economy of this place revolves around tourism anyway, the number of Americans eating there did little to affect how much I liked the meal. Oh, that pita bread.

That’s enough for now. Don’t want to burn myself out on writing about the trip. I’m not sure how good I’ll be about writing (or posting, if I can get the internet running), but I really want to try to make an effort to keep a record of what is shaping up to be a really moving and life changing experience. And if it’s not, at least I’ll lose a few pounds dragging my ass around the desert for a couple weeks.