Walking my weight in Shwarma

Today was much busier - I painted a house, went to a monastery, walked up 200 steps, I had an awesome dinner of shawarma, and I met up with some friends at a coffee shop.

So, I wanted to do some volunteering during my time here - I figured I've come here to learn to help myself, wouldn't it be nice to help others? I contacted Livnot on Wednesday, and they told me that I can help finish painting a house for a project. It's kind of like "Habitat for Humanity" I guess, except they're fixing up a pre-existing apartment instead of building a house from scratch.

We met up at the Livnot office at 9, and I had some quality breakfast of a chocolate spread and honey sandwich, with some peach nectar to drink. I know it sounds gross, but it was good.

The house we were painting exists in Ein Kerem - a predominantly Christian village in Jerusalem. The reason mostly Christians live there is because it was the birthplace of John the Baptist. Also, there's a spot where Mary (Miriam) apparently learned of her pregnancy with Jesus (Yoshuah).

It's a pretty nifty place, and this guy's apartment had an awesome view of Jerusalem. He also had two dogs, one of which kept following me around as I was trying to paint this little outside roofed-area. Then we fixed up the bathroom. The other volunteer painted the ceiling (she was tall enough to reach with the ladder, I was not), while I cleaned it. We finished in about two hours, and then the Livnot guy decided to give us a tour of Ein Kerem.

We went to the Notre Dame Monastery to look at the gardens. They have a beautiful garden with flowers, funky plants like aloe, and lots of different fruit trees. It amazed me to see that in the winter the lemon and mandarin orange trees were very much alive and still bearing fruit. The pomegranate tree was very much not. They're not winter trees. Another tree they had there was this one.



I told you it was Christian!


We left the monastery and went to the spot where Mary got her pregnancy test results back - apparently some angel told her at this very spot, where the mountain water ends up into a little stream.

I went back to Liz's place to get ready to go to Har Nof. I had to repack a little, and then I brought my stuff to the main road on the other side of Liz and Ronen's to get a taxi. 50 shekel and 20 minutes later, I'm in the dorm in Har Nof. It's a cute little apartment, with 4 rooms of 2, a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and patio. After being welcomed by the dorm counselor (RA) an instant noodle soup, water bottle, and a welcome note, I chose my room and shoved my bag underneath my bed to claim it.

Here's the fun part: The RA was going to the school, so I asked her if I could come along to see it. She told me it was a trek, but it would only take me 6-15 minutes to get to school.
Let me just explain something about Har Nof. It means "Mountain with a view." It's been cut into a mountain, and it has quite a view. Everything in Har Nof is up-hill one way, and down-hill the other.

We walk out of the building and she points to the steps. 200 steps. TWO-HUNDRED!! I walked up 200 steps to get from the apartment to the school. By the time I got to the building I was panting, tired, and achey. This is going to be a fun two weeks.

After touring the school, I went back to Liz and Ronen's. We got shawarma! It was awesome yummy shawarma that made me very full. So full, in fact, that I decided to walk down to Emek to meet friends of mine who are in Israel for the year. Quick shout out! Their Israel trip blog.

We met at this awesome ice cream place that has a whole section of delicious looking pareve (non-dairy) ice cream. But then we went to a bagel place that was also a bakery, and finally decided on going to Cafe Hillel to talk and catch up. We talked about old Binghamton times, and slightly newer events going on in our lives. It was fun, and 3 hours later, we walked back home (them to theirs, and me to my temporary one).

Now I'm excited for shabbos - or should I say Shabbat... It's the Israeli way to say it.

A street named Emek

My first full day in Jerusalem wasn't very exciting, I'll admit. But I'm on vacation! I'm allowed to take one day to lounge around and do nothing productive, right? Well, I did do some productive things, but I only left Liz and Ronen's apartment at 4 PM... and was back an hour and a half later.
I decided to go walk down to Emek Rafaim, which is one of the trendiest streets in Jerusalem. I can't actually say if that's accurate, but it's very trendy. There are about 50 restaurants in a mile strip of street: cafes, sandwich shops, steak houses, pizza shops, and even a McDonalds (not kosher) - so many of each kind that it's really amazing that they all stay in business. They have had American chain restaurants other than Micky D's, but sadly, they don't stay around too long. There was Pizza Hut (kosher) on Emek, and KFC (kosher) somewhere off Ben Yehudah, but they've closed sometime in the past 5 years. I do have to go down to Ben Yehudah to see if the kosher Burger King is still in business. It was so cool to order a burger there, even though it's greasy and horribly over-priced.

The other businesses on Emek are jewelry/judaica shops, sunglasses stores, little clothing boutiques, and markets for food. There's a book store, a video store and a few other random things, but the predominant business there is definitely the food industry.

I went into a few little shops, practicing my Hebrish (half Hebrew, half English) as I went along, and since everything was way too expensive, I bought myself a shnitzi and walked back to Liz's. Shnitzi's is a chicken place where they make your chicken in many different styles and give you pickles, lettuce, tomato, onions, anything you want on it, smothered in whatever yummy sauce you want on a gigonzic* roll. It was highly recommended by my good friend/food connoisseur, Alan, so I bought one. There is one in Brooklyn, but I hear it doesn't do the Israeli Shnitzi's justice. Next time I go there to get dinner, I will have to get me some burger's bar - it's essentially the same thing as Shnitzi's, but replace the chicken with the best burger you will ever have. I've been to the Burger's Bar in Brooklyn, and it does do the Israeli one justice. Am I right, Alan?

*not an actual word, but gives you the idea of how big the roll is.

I'm leaving on a jet plane... sort of.

Adventure finds me; I don't even have to leave the airport.
I'm standing in line waiting to be checked in - probably on the longest line I've ever been on in my life (barring the line to "Space Mountain" in Disney World). It's just not moving. I start to make some phone calls, and I'm just talking about my flight that's supposed to leave at 8:10. Two women in front of me say, "Oh, it's been delayed til 9:30." Great. Then they tell me that the flight has been chartered out.

What does that mean? Well, it means that IsrAir doesn't actually have a plane for us. So, they chartered some other airline to fly us to Israel instead.

I finally get up to the check in desk, and the guy tells me that they have to look for a seat for me. Um, isn't that the point of booking a ticket for a certain flight? Like, you buy the ticket for the specific flight so that you have a seat on said flight. He told me that they have to unblock some seats so people can sit on the plane. "Well, our system is a little weird." Weird? Weird is not the word. Stupid, maybe. Clearly, they overbooked. So I was told to wait over by the ropes, and 10 minutes later he handed me a boarding pass that said I would be sitting in seat 12 F.

At this point I was desperately thirsty, so I go buy a bottle of water for the hefty price of $2.70. It's like movie theater prices! I take the best drink of water I've had since that time my first Israel tour had no water in the dessert on our hike.

I walk to the security checkpoint so I can pass through and go to the gate. I totally forgot that you can't take liquids through security and here I am with a $2.70 bottle of water that I JUST bought. I was not throwing this bottle of water out, no way - so I downed the whole thing in about 30 seconds. Yeah, that was fun. Then I went through the whole taking off shoes, putting all electronic things in a bin, walking through the metal detector thing, and finally make it to the other side.
I walk to the gate and see that it is indeed not IsrAir's plane that we are flying on - it's World Airways. I was just hoping "World Airways" was actually going to take us to Tel Aviv, and not to, I dunno, Switzerland. Although, Switzerland would have been fun too - you know, for the mountains and chocolate, and cheese and such.
Anyway, finally, at 9:00, we start to board. Finally.

I get on the plane, and I find that I'm seated in-between two Chassidic men. Oh yeah. Me, wearing pants, sitting in between two chasidic men. It actually wasn't as bad as it could have been. The guy sitting on the outside got up about the same times I needed to use the bathroom, so I didn't have to try and jump over him without touching him. One time he fell asleep, and the chassid sitting on the other side of me saw me in my predicament and laughed - so I asked him to tap the sleeping guy for me - he did. :)

After many cramped legs, and two decently crappy meals, I land in Israel. Like all good Israeli travelers, the first thing I do is turn on my cell phone. This rabbi was supposed to pick me and a few other people up from my flight, but didn't know that the flight had been delayed two hours. So, I tried to call him to let him know that I arrived. I couldn't get through. I tried another number - nothing but some message from Cellcom I didn't totally understand cause it's in Hebrew. Great. Half an hour later, after I get my bag and go through customs, I try again and get through. The rabbi tried calling me, realizing my account hadn't been activated, and activated it for me! He's a nice guy - crazy, but nice.

Eventually, after waiting for two other people, we leave the airport. So, this guy is crazy - he was texting, typing, sending emails, making phone calls, all while driving. He's American, but clearly well acclimated to Israeli culture. After dropping the other two people off, we make a pit stop at the Magen David Adom, which is where he works. Ten minutes later he comes back to the car, and says, "There's an accident right near where we're going! You know what that means..." And I didn't, but apparently it means that we can take out our flashing light, put it on top of the car and drive like a complete maniac. Holy wow, I have never had an experience anything like that before! Thankfully, I am at Liz's apartment, relaxed, calm, with no shock symptoms from crazy Israeli ambulance drivers.