Happy Channukah

SO it's been another week since my last post. Judging from the sheer lack of comments on this blog, I take it I'm keeping everyone happy. No complaints, everyone's okay with the length and the details and the pics... What's going on with my fan club? Many of you seem to think that just because I post blogs it takes off the pressure of you having to keep me informed with personalised emails about what's going on in your own lives... comments or emails guys, both are kindly welcomed and a response guaranteed.

So, winter has finally come. Exhibit a:
I love these blue gatkas. The problem is so does Eli. We invent some sort of competition each morning to fight over who gets to wear them. Really, we should just buy another pair. But even if we bought another pair, I can see what would happen.. we'd still fight over who gets the blue gatkas. My blue kathmandu gatkas simply rock and there is no comparison. That's all there is to it.

I worked all week at Wall Street. Signed my contract officially now. My first lessons went pretty well. One of the classes was disastrous but apparently everyone's had one of those, so I felt better knowing that... I had one rude girl who was about 22 and she kept saying "this is boring" in one of the social activity's I'd planned... gggrrr kids can be so mean.

But in another class, I had a woman who was very impressed with me and she took it upon herself to actually go the director of the centre and put in a complement for me, and this came back to me via my manager, who gave me the big English thumbs up! YAY!

In one of my Survival classes (a lovely euphamism for... well, you can pretty much guess their level of English) we were working on the concept "blah blah blah, SO THAT blah blah blah"... ok? knowing where to connect 2 parts of information in a sentence with 'so' or 'so that'... so I prompted my class with "we come to Wall Street..." -and I was expecting a response to go something along the lines of: "so that we can learn English." And what did I get instead?

"so that we can be American"

I was a little taken aback by this, especially since it was coming from a man who would've been in his 50's... and so I asked another student, and they just thought about it for a while, and then nodded and enthusiastically agreed with the first man's response and said "yes yes.. we come to wall street so that we can be American" and then I had a class of students all nodding and agreeing in synchro saying "we come to Wall street so that we can be American"

so I said, "but I'm not American. I'm Australian"
And this threw them a little bit.
They seemed dumbfounded. So I continued by saying: "and that teacher there is from Ireland, she is not American either, she is Irish. And that teacher is from England, she is not American either, she is British, and that teacher is Canadian and that teacher is south african...." etc...

and one asked, a little confused, "you also speak American?"
and I said, "In Australia, we speak English. In Ireland, they speak English too. In Canada, they speak English too, and in South Africa they speak English too. And in America? What do they speak in America?"

they thought about this, and one said "ah, so it's the same. English and American."

So my lesson took a bit of a tangent where I found myself teaching the difference in differentiating nationality from language, and many were shocked to hear that in Australia we speak English, like in America. They reviewed their reasons for being at Wall Street, but I still had one stubborn student who seemed to genuinely want to be American. In the ever-wise words of Eli, "Nuuuu..what can I do?"

So that was that.

What's nice though is that I was officially welcomed as a new member of staff to Wall Street and I was presented with a welcoming gift- a very cool mug. Also, my manager took me out for a coffee during work hours. How sweet is that?!

Oh yeah, I also hung out with Shir last week- Shir, for those who don't know, is a friend of mine who I went to school with and who moved back to Israel after yr 12 and I hadn't seen her in 5 years. So it's all very exciting. Here she is, everyone say "Hi Shir!"


What else? I came home one day and as I was walking up our flight of stairs, I could hear a wonderful synchronisation of Eli's saxaphone playing with Sharon's electro music. Sharon is our next door neighbour and he has the full studio set up in his place- with computers and microphones and keyboards and everything... so I found Eli and Sharon jamming away in Sharon's apartment. There was a great vibe in there as both were very excited about the prospects of using this music in clubs and bars... it had taken 4 weeks of being next door neighbours for both of them to realise they could each pick a bit off the other one's talents. And it's true, they were making beautiful music: I tried to capture the moment.

Oh yeah, I went to visit my Aunty Guta and Uncle Henry (my mum's sister and her husband). They were staying at Uncle Henry's sister's place in Rishon. Uncle Henry's sister told me how she went travelling after she finished her uni degree at UNSW, the plan was to buy a round the world ticket and end up in Israel, but when she was in Israel, she was on a bus and some guy tripped her and she fell, literally into his arms, and then.. well... some people fall in love and some people literally fall into love. So she never made it back to Australia and she's been married to him ever since. aaaaaaaaawwwww
The following day, my aunty and uncle and I went to visit another relative, this time in Ashdod. Her name's Sveta, and she's Yula's dad's sister (for those that can make the connection). She didn't know I was coming so it was a big surprise for her and she almost fell. I'd told uncle Henry previously that I'd only eaten a bowl of cornflakes all day since I knew what lay ahead at Sveta's place.. and sure enough, there was heaps upon heaps of delectable Russian food. But Uncle Henry, being the big mouth that he is, actually said to Sveta, in a joking way, that Sarah here hasn't eaten all day because she knew you would have cooked so much food, so the poor woman interpreted this meaning that I was ravished and she cooked up even more food! There was no way to stop her. Here's a pic of her grandchildren, which are, well.. let's just call them my cousins, Nata and Sally. Sally is super cute. She is intelligent and sweet and cute and cheeky- just like that little boy with the glasses in Jerry Maguire, but cuter!
There were 4 languages going round the table. Sveta would say something to Aunty Guta in Russian, Aunty Guta translated to Uncle Henry into Polish, Uncle Henry would tell me in English and then maybe I'd pass it on to my cousins in Hebrew if they hadn't been paying attention... it was absolutely insane!

Other than that, on Friday arvo Eli and I made our customary trip to his mum's place near Haifa for Shabbat. We ate and slept over, (I'm beginning to think there's some sort of hidden agenda going on beween the Russian and Moroccan families on our sides-it's like some kind of unspoken competition, who can win our love more by feeding us til we reach exploding point.) On Saturday, we went to Eli's cousin's barmitzvah. This was interesting. Eli's grandma does the Moroccan 'lalalalallalala' thing with her tongue-for circumcisions, barmitzvahs and weddings. It's really loud and it sounds like a wild bird. A little hard to describe. Anyway, I was standing right next to her at the time she let it out, and boy did I get a shock! Such a big noise from such a small woman! After the service we went to eat a massive Morroccan lunch. Very loud, very yum, very nice....

Eli's mum coloured her hair bright reddy-orange. Very punk style. She bought Eli a present for his bday but didn't want me to feel left out or something so she got me a poncho. I think I've secretly always fancied having a poncho. Like Converse All Stars and overalls and clogs, I never had these fashionable items when I was growing up because I couldn't bring myself to buy them, but I still managed to be cool somehow without them. Now I own a poncho, wahoooo!!! Here I am, wearing it, and this is Eli's mum. Not the best picture, but still.

Right now, Eli's made me lunch (which is what I would call dinner... I've basically switched around my eating habbits so that what I would previously have eaten for lunch has now become dinner food (salads, cheese, bread etc) and what was dinner food has now become lunch food (rice, chicken, meat etc..) so I gotta eat basically, which is the moral of all my stories, and then I gotta go to work.
It's a hard life but somebody's gotta do it.
merry christmas and happy channukah (we are celebrating both at Wall Street)
lots of jam donuts and other oily things,
xxxx
ps- my street is like mini Venice right now, Tel Aviv gets so flooded in the winter I think I'm going to need gum boots- and not just for the fashion statement.

Eli's birthday week

Well it's been a week since I last wrote. I've been at Wall Street every day since then (except, of course, Saturday) and things are moving along very fast. I teach my first class tomorrow. In fact, my first 4 classes tomorrow. All very exciting! I'm not going to go into what I did every day, but let's just say I've done an intensive crash course in English grammar and educational psychology. Anybody know their past perfect tense? What about present progressive? Or future simple? Nups.. I didn't think so. Anyone care? That's right... so read on.

I also did a lot of observing classes (where I was there to basically watch the teacher and take notes) and this was very interesting- especially the beginners class where they speak ZERO English, but we aren't allowed to speak any Hebrew, so the students get extremely frustrated and love to remind us in Hebrew that they paid a lot of money to sit here and not understand a thing. In fact, no matter what level class I observed (there are 60+ levels), in most classes, at least 1 frustrated student would bring up the fact that he paid lots of money for this course, and if other students have wasted 10 minutes of his time at the beginning with asking questions or taking their time answering the teacher's questions, or whatever, these frustrated students like to demand that they get their full 50 minutes' worth of class and then insist on speaking broken English non-stop. Israelis are soooo impatient it's unbelievable!
Anyway, I work with a nice bunch of (mainly) girls. There is one guy amongst us and he is gay. He loves to advertise this fact too. All of us are in our 20's, the eldest being 29 (and she looks remarkably similar to me, which confuses the crap out of some of our 1000 students!)

Apart from Wall Street, I'll try think of some of the highlights over the past week. Uh-huh, we found an excellent Indian restaurant/bar around the corner from our house-there's a vegetarian buffet there and cool couches and stuff, and you can pay whatever you like (Jord, I am taking you there immediately.) Eli and I hung out there a little bit. Eli was meloncholy about the end of his 20's fast approaching, so we drank more than usual this week. We celebrated his 29th bday over three nights. Actually, 4. 2 nights before his birthday, we celebrated with cocktails at this Indian place. Then the night before we went out for dinner and had a huge feast where each main meal came with 3 free side orders (??!!), then on his birthday some friends came over to our place and later we went out to a well known bar at the beach called Mike's Place. It's a popular American touristy bar (I'm likening it to Scruffy Murphy's in Sydney) where there was a bomb there a couple of years ago. A drunken Irish guy picked a fight with Eli because he didn't like the way Eli played pool??. Eli played too cool for school, and also, he was having problems understanding anything this Irish guy was saying, so the Irish guy was getting very pissed off about having to repeat himself all the time and he thought Eli was playing games with him as Eli could evidently speak English. Then the guy tried to bitch about Eli to Danny, our Spanish friend, and Danny told him he doesn't speak English very well- which is true, but the Irish guy had heard Danny and Eli speaking English with each other, so this was too confusing for the poor drunkard and he was convinced the 2 of them were evil and mocking him... it was very amusing. One MASSIVE communication breakdown! haha :) I was the only one who understood the whole situation.

Anyway, oh yeah- there was a massive fire across the road from our house! [Exhibit b---->]

I'm telling you, things are really happening where I live!
Anyway, on Friday, Eli and I went to Eli's grandma's place which is near Haifa. Winter has kicked in very suddenly, and it was cold in Haifa. It's been raining over the last couple of days too. But Tel Aviv still seems to have the best weather in all the country. Yay!
Shabbat was cool. Very loud, as usual. I'm finding it hard to get used to the loudness thing in Israel. It's just not in me to yell. I keep getting on the sheroots here (the shared van taxi things) and whenever I want to be dropped off, I walk to the front of the taxi, maybe a block away, and tell the driver and wait near him. It's a habit. Today the driver yelled at me, 'Okay I'll stop there for you, but whyn did you come to tell me this, sit down and scream to me, this is how I listen best"
Eli's grandma for example, who is mostly quiet, yells everything she says, when she decides to say something. Albeit, she is 80 something years old, but still... we got into a conversation at the dinner table about perfumes and aftershaves and deoderants (for those who know Eli well, and Lena, I think this is mostly directed to you- you'll understand where this conversation was heading and what Eli's opinions are about the matter...) anyway, the grandma had hardly spoken a word throughout dinner, and then all of a sudden she just screamed out of nowhere, "I have many many deoderants and perfumes... all my life people were giving me these for presents and I never wore perfume or deoderant not a single day in all my life! Never! And I don't smell! I never smelt!" This outburst cracked me up for the rest of the night for mnay reasons. You have to imagine this tiny woman, yelling out this fact, in such a serious manner...It was very funny and I'm only sorry I couldn't take a picture of her (it was shabbat)

After Shabbat dinner on Friday, Eli and I went with Maor (Eli's brother) to his bar, where he works late shifts (as in, 11pm-6am). Due to popular demand, I am posting this pic of Maor:
It was a fun night.

Now I have to get to work and then meet up with my uncle Henry and aunty Guta. Yay, more clothes have arrived for me! Finally! I'm through with wearing Eli's mum's shoes... even if they are cool boots from zara that fit me perfectly.. still, I have a thing about wearing other people's shoes...

Oh- and check out my recent photos online at http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sarahknopman/my_photos
Sorry they're not very interesting. I've been really bad with remembering to take my camera places...

see ya
xxxx

First Day at Wall Street

So today was my first day of training at Wall Street. My first day of my first full-time job. I was pretty excited for it. I don't know why, but throughout the day I kept being really conscious of the recurring thought that today was a significant day of my life. Strange feeling. Hard to describe. Like the start of some kind of exciting new chapter. And I was very aware of it.

Even though I only live 20 minutes away from the Azrieli centre, I woke up 3 hrs before I needed to be there. This was partly because I had some errands to do before I left... like buying bread and milk and nana (mint leaves)... and returning a trolley wheel thing to the cafe- we borrowed it to schlepp a stove from around the block to our place. Whoah- what a mission that was. Eli and I struggled to get it down the 3 floors of the block where we got it from.. then we wheeled it to our place, but we live up 3 floors as well. It was an impossibility. So after an hour of futile attempts, we decided to leave the trolley inside our building and we moved out of the way, behind the stairs where no one would really notice it. Then an hour or so later, I'm having a nap, Eli's playing music, and then he hears what sounds like a stove being dragged.. and he looks out our window onto the street, and sees our stove walking. So he runs downstairs in his slippers, and a screaming match ensues between him and some guy who lives in our block and who's sort of like, the care-taker of the building (we just found this out the hard way) and he had dumped the stove in the trash across the road and he's yelling at Eli saying that nothing is to ever be left inside our building, that it's not a dumping zone, that druggies will do anything to break into a place if they see something they can sell, and Eli was therefore somehow attracting druggies to our building, and Eli's yelling and cursing, telling him he's too poor to afford a removalist, and that he carried this stove here by himself, and he explained that he was just leaving it there for one night and tomorrow morning his friend was going to come and help him...

anyway- The guy's wife was also downstairs, and apparently she had told him to go and ask all the neighbours in the building who owned the stove before he went and chucked it out... and now she was listening to Eli's sob story, and she felt sorry for him, and she yelled at her husband and told him off big time in front of Eli and then demanded he help Eli with the stove. So Eli, still in his slippers, and this big angry man, already sweating from having dragged the stove out of the building and across the road, then helped Eli carry the stove up 3 flights of stairs to our cosy apartment.

So anyway, after I returned this trolley thing to the cafe downstairs this morning, (and got my free borekas from the guy that works there... nyahahaha :-) )-for those who don't know, borekas are yummy warm pastry things filled with yummy things- like cheese or potatoe or mushrooms..
I made my way to Wall Street. I was part of a group of 14 other people who have been employed at the same time and will be doing the training with me. There are 7 branches of Wall Street around Israel. The Tel Aviv one (my one) is the biggest and serves as the head quarters. It's going to be an intensive 2 week training process because not only are we being taught All about Wall Street, (today we learnt about its inception, its history, development, and current status in the world English teaching market) we learn about the international company, and we are also being taught it's unique English teaching method, the system, and of course, many of us are being taught a bridging course to English grammar. We had a full tour of the centre today and had lots of people do workshops with us. Our group is a mixture of receptionists, personal tutors and teachers. They think it's important that everyone understands everything about every position in the company. I'm a teacher. This means I teach people of all different levels English, and all different ages (between 18-80) but the maximum people ever in a class is 8. It's English only at Wall Street so not a single word of Hebrew is spoken throughout the centre. I'm the only Australian. Females dominate Wall Street with a ratio of about 5:2. They kept reiterating to us that there was a huge filtering process as part of their recruitment so we should all be very proud of ourselves for getting this far. Yay!! They spoke about exciting things like Wall Street international transfers.. like right now, they're working on sending one of their staff to teach at Wall Street in Japan and another to Switzerland. (Wall Street has about 360 branches in about 30 countries throughout south america, west europe, asia and the middle east)

Anyway, it was a good day. I had fun. It was so easy to tell which ones in the group were native Israelis and which ones were foreigners. A hell of a lot to take in for poor little me though. I haven't needed to use my brain for anything non-thesis related for quite a while. During our lunch break a few of us went up onto the roof of Azrieli to eat. Such amazing views. That's it- tomorrow I'm taking my camera. I promise (myself and all of you) more photos!!

Oh! And today, not 1, but 2 people told me I looked like Uma Thurman??!! Weird Israelis. Nevertheless, perhaps this explains why I was feeling so good today.

I came back home after a full 8 hours and went grocery shopping and was really proud of my purchases- no one knows how long it took me to decide which cous-cous to buy- there was a ridiculous variety to choose from! And same with the eggplant dips. And the date spread. But I did so well! I bought products with absolutely no English on them. And I was so excited to come home and tell Eli all about my day and all about my purchases... and you know, it's important for me especially because this is about the most exciting and truly eventful day I've had here in 3 weeks and I know that if I had my first day at a company like this in Sydney, my family or a couple of my friends would call me afterwards to find out how it went... but when I came home, first of all I was surprised to find Eli home because he's supposed to have uni til late in Jerusalem- but he said a friend marked his name off and he escaped from class because he wanted to come home and play for 2 hours. So he wasn't interested in listening to me and told me he had to play now, that's why he came home early, and he'll speak to me in 2 hours. I told him any normal human being would want to know how my day was. He said he's not normal. Accept that. He'll talk to me in 2 hours.
gggggrrrrr..... So this brings me to the end of this. I finished reading my Steve Martin novella. I think he should stick to acting.

Oh- one more thing- they actually encourage playing boggle and scrabble with students at Wall Street!!!!! Have I landed my dream job or what??!

Hanging out

So last night, Eli and I were on our way to go hang out at an Ethiopian reggae bar when Danny called us and we went to meet him for a beer at a tiny bar opposite his place instead. (Yes, that's us outside the bar... and yes, I am cradling the poor beers that were about to get knocked over) We watched the end of a basketball match on the tv- in which the Maccabi Tel Aviv team lost and Danny was beside himself. Danny is a cool guy. He's the one who told Eli about this place. In addition to some random furniture he gave us , we're also getting his stove. He's of Argentinian background and he's an actor. He does a lot of theatre work and ads and stuff... he has this habbit which forever keeps me on my toes- of slipping into unsuspecting monologues all the time. I'm constantly shocked by things he says, until I realise he's actually acting... Eli tries to do it as well, but we can both always tell when Eli's doing it.

So we drank beer and ate fries. Then Eli and I walked home. Eli had work today at Azrieli so it was another early morning. I occupied myself... somehow. Right now, as I type this, Eli has called out "Sarah!!!" (It would be so much cooler if my name was Stella. And if Eli had the booming voice of Marlon Brando. And if this street had trams named Desire.) Anyway, this is my call to come to the window and wave to him hello. It's also an announcement to inform the whole neighbourhood that Eli has arrived home. It's become something of a daily ritual. It's quite funny. Okay, so I better go.

yay we have batteries that finally work in the camera! (That's all I had to say about that)

eli trying his hand at artistic photography

Update on Eli's work at Azrieli

I'm still not happy about Eli's security job. But he seems to be enjoying it. I went to the Azrielli building yesterday (which is right across the road from the visa office, where I have spent my week going back and forth) and it was the first time I saw Eli doing his security thing. I understand now, it's a very big power trip. It's nothing like the security guard jobs back in Oz.

First of all, he doesn't look like a thug. None of the guards do. He looks very authoritative and respectable. He wears a full-on policeman uniform and bulletproof vest thing and has a gun and looks.. well.. kinda threatening. His job is to make sure EVERYTHING runs smoothly outside Azrieli. At any one time, there are 4 of these security guards patrolling the building.. any problems and the nearest guard to the action runs to attend to it. Eli runs after people who don't cooperate and grabs them by the shirt. Who would've thought? If he suspects ANYONE for whatever reason, he approaches them and says 'boker tov' (good morning) and listens out for their accent. He has about 7 staff under him, they're the ones checking bags and scanning and letting delivery cars in etc... he is their commander, so if there's any shit or if anyone's rude to "his staff" (and Israelis are a very rude nation, everyone reckons they're deserving of special treatment for whatever reason) the staff will call out "Guard!" and Eli goes after people who are not playing by the rules and demands respect from them and tells them not to be rude to his staff or next time they're not going in... he tells everyone the same thing "listen- my staff are doing their job and we're doing our job for you, don't make life difficult for them or I'll make life difficult for you. Now listen to me and shut up. Open your [bags/boot/whatever] Now!"

In the last 2 days he's come home with so many crazy stories, I cant believe he has this job. He almost gets into fights every day. I can't believe they're his stories he tells me, it's so full on... This is my Eli we're speaking about!

Anyway. He told me on his first day he was being watched and he got told off for having his hands in his pocket and not ready on his gun, and he was told off for speaking with people- even people who ask him for diections.. he's not allowed to be distracted. He has to be on alert at all times. He can't even turn his back on the building. So I was too scared to even talk to him when I came, but he was talking to me without looking me in the eyes for too long. He then called out to one of his staff that I was his girrlfriend and he made sure I got in without lining up or getting checked. Later we had lunch together on his break, and because of his uniform we got a special discount. As he was leaving, I stayed in the cafe and he was going down the escalator and blowing me kisses, so the whole shopping centre in between us saw and I couldn't stop blushing- especially when he yelled out " bye shnook, mwa!" and then he bumped into someone. It looked so unprofessional!

Anyway, he likes to think that when I'm working inside Azrieli, his job is made more worthwhile because he's protecting me. Or some crap like that. I think he just likes the gun and the uniform and the people watching.

the visa the robot and the shopping

VISA-
So, I finally finalised everything with my working visa today. I have the sticker thing now in my passport and it gives me multiple entry into the country, and I can work for 6 months and then extend it. Whilst I was at the office I also opened a file as a prospective aliyah maker. Everything will be dated back from today. Whatever that means. The visa office was predominantly full of Phillipinos, Thais and Russians. However, the few Israelis twho were there managed to make the biggest scenes. So much arm flailing in the air and voice raising and tongue clicking in frustration... Israelis are just drama queens. That's all there is to it.


ROBOT-
So, on my walk back from the visa office, I encountered a crazy experience indeed.
Police cars appeared seemingly out of nowhere and all of a sudden sirens were going off everywhere and cars were tooting and it chaos descended within seconds. As I approached a certain street light, I realised all the action was taking place on this particular corner... so no one was allowed to cross the road and all the traffic ad pedestrians were stopped and kept back by police.

In the middle of this mayhem where the streets had been cleared- there was apparently "a suspicios item" and Israelis don't take to 'suspicious items' lightly. So there was a security van in the middle of the intersection, with its back doors open so I could see all the screens inside. After a long time of seemingly nothing happening, out of the van appeared this little robot thing to go check out the suspicious object. It was so cute! It was like something off The Jetsons, or something you'd expect to land on mars. I think there's something like it in Star Wars. Or Star Trek. I never watched either of them, so my recollections are vague. Anyway, the van was making lots of beeping noises and everyone's attention was fixed on the man in the van looking at the screen, and the robot slowly making its way to the object. After a while, the robot began to look like some kind of dinosaur. It ran on tracks, like a mini tank. But it had a gun which was manouverable, like a neck. The robot cautiously got the suspicious item and brought it into the middle of the road so all the soldiers and stuff could see what it was. It was a backpack. A backpack that had been left inside a garbage bin.

After a lot of standing around (I was now in a crowd of about 100 curious and frustrated bystanders and everyone kept asking me what was happening cos I was at the front and people assumed I knew what the hell was going on... Like I've seen something like this ever in my life?? The whole scene was incredibly trippy. Then all of a sudden there was a lot of shooting by the robot at the bag. After the shooting, this guy in a space suit thing (which protects him against chemicals) appeared, walking with his legs spread widely apart, as if he too was walking on the moon, and he came to the robot to look at the bag... and he emptied it out really slowly- It was at this point everyone's necks were craned, and eyes strained, aching to see what the wait had been all about... The bag's contents contained: a pair of socks; a sheet; an empty bottle of water; a t-shirt and some other crap. It was just someone's chucked out bag. It was an anti climax. But everyone cheered. And life continued.

I love it how in Israel, whenever something happens, everyone becomes an instant expert on the matter. After the Netanya bomb a few days ago, Eli and I went for a walk at night to Sheinkin street (had some excellent kubbe soup...mmmmmm kubbe) and we heard these 2 guys arguing about, if they were there, and they were the security guard, one of them would have "shot for the legs", and the other guy was like- "legs?? What are you talking about? The head! I'd shoot for the head and then maybe the legs".. and same with today... as I continued walking down the street, after I crossed the intersection, I could hear snippets of conversation where, mainly men, would be arguing about what they would have done differently.

Anyway, never a dull moment in Israel.

Oh! That reminds me- when I was walking to the ministers office, there was a construction site with loads of people standing around, some taking photos... so I stopped to look too. I thought it was some kind of April Fools joke- you know, where someone stops to look at something up in the sky and other people stop to look at what that person is looking at... Or like, when someone stands facing the wrong way in a lift and others supposedly do the same thing.. well anyway, I felt like I was stuck in exactly one of those situations. Then I reasoned- one of the people on the inside of this construction site must be famous. Hence the photos being taken.... then I asked someone what was going on- and they told me simply "they're going to move the house". I must have been blank-faced because he elaborated a little further for me. "The house is here. They're going to move it over there. In 20 minutes from now" and he looked at his watch, excited. Perhaps these were architecture students or something? Or perhaps there's something wrong with me, but moving a house is not something I would ever consider worthy of 30 people gathering on a narrow footpath for to watch, and to count down towards! I guess in retrospect, it was semi-impressive. Like, they'd excavated the whole block of land surrounding this old house, then they'd dug upwards, from underneath the house, and affixed its foundations to this structure thing which looked like you could just slide the house over and rails.. like it belonged to some studio set...

anyway.
SHOPPING-
I bought my first things today in Israel, yay!! By things, I mean, I spent money on something which was not transport or food or drink... I bought sneakers which were 100 shmekel ($30!) which are really funky and cool... like, the 80's style ones which go up at the ankle and have laces + velcro.. yeah.. they're black and pink and white. I've had my navy and red adidas ones for 5 years now.. I thought it was high time for a change. haha, high time. Pun. Anyway, I also bought 2 tops for work. I'm getting a little nervous about work now. I didn't really bring an office/ nice/ work wardrobe with me here. I didn't really think I'd be teaching English full time. I thought I'd end up waitressing, maybe doing some secretarial job... but my boss at Wall Street even stressed to me that at work they dress very smart. No jeans etc.

I have exactly 6 work tops. That will get me through the week. Great.

Bomb in Netanya

There was a bomb on Dec 5th In Netanya- outside a shopping mall. 5 dead (including the suicide bomber) and many injured- I think it's at 70, but the reports kept changing. So. Not good. I'm really not happy about Eli having this job as a security guard outside the Azrieli. I work in the Azrieli. It's a really big building, offices, shopping centre etc.. like westfield bondi junction but on a MUCH bigger scale. It may actually be the largest bulding in Tel Aviv. They're extremely tight on security there, as with everywhere you go- you get used to it though. Bags being checked and walking through scanners etc.. anyway. Eli's job is to stand outside the building, infront of all the bag checking and scanners... and keep an eye out for suspicious looking people and if spotted, to keep these people away from the entrances. So basically, it's a job for people who are trained as fighters in the army, it's a respected job, it pays well, but it means he's in the line of fire in my opinion. Today the suicide bomber detonated when he was approached by one of these kind of security guards.

Eli came home from shooting practise today. His gun was in his pants. It's weird welcoming him home with a kiss whilst he unloads his gun. Just mind-numbingly bizarre actually. I never (not even in my wildest dreams) pictured myself kissing a man with a gun. I'm really not happy about all of this. Stern discussions are being had. But I can see he's relly enjoying this job. He's had 2 shifts (at the time of this post) and it's such a power trip for him. He loves having 'his staff' under him, and being a 'commander'. I listen to his stories when he comes hme and some insane shit goes on down at the Azrielli every day....sheeesh

Anyway, the day of the bomb was interesting. I was in the markets when the news began to spread like wild fire ('pegua' means bomb) all of a sudden- from one stall to the next, "pegua, haya pegua gadola.. pegua pegua"!! That was all the conversation, people were shouting it out for the benefit of keeping others informed and everyone jumped on their mobile phones. Everyone was listening intently to radio reports in every shop. How many died, how many were injured, who was claiming responsibility now, which roads were blocked... I wasn't panicked or scared or anything, but I felt the sense of tension in the air, and there was a very profound feeling of community and what it's like to be living in Israel and dealing with this sort of shit.. you're not just one pair of ears listening to a snippet of news, you're part of a million pairs of ears listening out for and thinking about that same snippet of news. It was interesting.

I came out of the markets and saw one of the craziest things I've ever seen. Ok- there's this graffiti ALL over Israel- and no matter who I ask, no one seems to really know exactly where it came from or what it means. ['na nach nachma nachman meuman'] anyway... thanks to Ezra, this has been explained to me. [Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na_Nach_Nachma]it's some kind of religious thing- it's on stickers, inside shops, inside taxis, buses, on buildings, bus stops... you get the point. So when I came out of the markets, where everything was pretty tense, I saw these ultra religious Jews driving on the street alongside the kerb really slowly in a van with HUMUNGOUS speakers.. like, I'm talking just basically speakers on wheels here... but covered totally with this graffiti slogan- and blaring out reggae music and wearing hippy glasses and dancing- Eli says they're totally stoned all the time. There were at least 6 of these religious dudes- with the full curly long payos and black clothes, all circling the van, dancing and jumping up and down in the streets, making their way slowly along the main drag.. holding out donation boxes with the meshiach.. it was sooo bizarre. Eli says this happens on our street too but I hadn't noticed it yet.

I came home and listened to the radio. I noticed that all the radio stations after the bombs play a lot of patriotic music- I imagine to keep peoples' spirits high. (Eli confirmed this for me later) A LOT of feel good music- both in English and Hebrew... and apart from these fantastic uplifting songs where everyone feels like singing out loud, there were just updates on the bomb situation. Interesting.

I bought 2nd hand english books to read from the markets! I've never done that in my life! It's on par with my pen philosophy. And lighters. I just accumulate them. They appear. But I'm done reading my hebrew childrens books. There's only so much one can take... So I got me a Steve Martin novella (didn't know he's also an author) and Irvine Welsh's 'Glue'. This is going to take me a while to get thru. It's fucking not even English. I read trainspotting last time I was in Israel, so I felt it was apropriate to read this. I like that I have to read it out loud so I can understand what I'm reading. Anyway, it's a cool system, if I take the books back, I get 50% off the next ones. Cool, huh?

I also went to the ministers office to sort out my working visa. Crazy process. So unnecessarily complicated. There were 60+ people in this tiny room waiting to have their number read out, and to be served by the one man working there at a tiny window. No loud speakers, no screen... just an angry man yelling numbers- the same pace he would spelling his name... You sneeze and you miss your turn. That's it. So everyone hovers around the desk, pushing and edging to get closer, too scared he'll race past their number. We did this for more than an hour. Eli of course made lots of friends whilst we were waiting... haha it was great.

Anyway, I've almost caught up to date..

Sickness and Wall Street

I got a cold the day I left Sydney. Then I was really sick for my first week here. Then in my 2nd week, little did I realise, I was incubating the tonsilitis virus, then I managed to catch a virus that Eli had- which is not connected at all to my present state of tonsilitis (Eli doesn't even have tonsils so I didn't get it from him). My immune-system is absolutely shot. My glands in my neck were so swollen for a few days, they were the size of big grapes.

I had one night alone here on Thursday night when Eli had to stay in Jerusalem. I came home after hanging out with Shir and catching up from the last 5 years that we hadn't seen each other. It was so great to see her. We spoke and spoke, went to a cool bar.. and I was conscious the whole night that I was feeling cold. Inside the bar I had my scarf and my coat on and I was shiverring. After a sleepless night of shivering and shvitzing, I got up to go to the toilet at about 8am on Friday. I was dizzy and weak and low blood pressurey and on my way back to the bedroom I took 2 panadols and put them in my hand... then I fainted. First time in my life. Pretty scary experience. Especially because I was alone. I totally blacked out, and when I came to, I was lying splat on my back in the kitchen and my head was throbbing (we have tiled floors all throughout the unit). I remember opening my eyes and the first thing I was looking at was my hand on the ground. I was wearing Eli's pyjama top. I thought it was Eli's hand. But it was definitely mine. But what was I doing on the floor??? I was so disorientated. Then I got up, grabbing every wall I could for support, and I tried to continue walking to my bedroom, (The Dr at the hospital gave me excellent advice- if this EVER happens to me again, particularly as I do have low blood pressure, I am not to get up, but instead I should stay horizontal and put my legs up in the air for a while to get my blood circulating... great. Wish I'd been given this advice earlier)...and anyway, the next thing I know my eyes open and I've fallen splat on my back for the 2nd time, right near the entrance of my room- my head absolutely pounding. I dont know how long this journey from the toilet to the room took me. I have no idea. All I know is it took me forever to get off the floor, I was just lying there, helpless, in such pain, and i saw myself in the mirror- white as a ghost- More white than I remember Maya on her first night in Amsterdam. And that was WHITE.

Then I had to crawl on all fours back to bed, and I wanted to take my 2 panadols, but I couldn't remember what happened to them. This will always be a mystery. Til this day I still don't know what happened to those damn panadols... they are nowhere to be found. Probably flew into the kettle or the wasking basket or something. I found 2 Neurofen next to the bed, but i didn't have enough strength to even open the lid from my watter bottle so i swallowed the tablets dry! Eeuuwwwww I am NEVER doing that again. I gagged for ages. I called Eli and cried. He told me to go on all fours and crawl to the kitchen to get a different water bottle. He stayed with me on the phone as I crawled to the kitchen. I decided instead to pour myself some water from the kettle. He called me periodically throughout the day and came home as soo as he could. We called off our trip to Haifa and had our own Shabbat dinner.

On Saturday morning I woke up and vomitted a lot. Mum and Dad called and Mum begged me to go see a Dr. The Russian Dr I went to in the hospital confirmed that I have tonsilitis, and that the virus was something separate which has passed now (it's true, Eli only had it for 2 days), and he said the vommitting was probably just related still to my head injury- I'm not very balanced.. It's either that or the fish Eli cooked for me the night before. I swear I have bad luck eating Eli's fish. It's the 2nd time he made me fish, the first time -in Waverley, he had to rush me to hospital bc I got a bone wedged in my throat...

aaaannyywaayy

I'm on antibiotics and sucking lots of strepsils and taking panadol equivalents for the head pain. (every time I cough my head throbs) Back of my head is still bruised. Makes sleeping difficult. Especially because my neck and shoulders and back are also very sore from the fall. I'm getting lots of massages though & Eli is treating me like a princess. I really can't complain about anything. I am one very lucky girl. 2nd time I fainted I was very close to our heater. Could have been much worse. Besides, I am revelling in this new found freedom of having the time to write and read and play scrabble... and go for walks and discover more about my cool neighbourhood.. and I dont feel like there's anything else I should be or need to be doing right now....

I start the training for my job at Wall Street ('Val Strit') on Dec 11. That's this Sunday. It's going to be very intensive. I'm excited. I'm getting a working visa which is, as every one warned me about, indeed 'verrrryy complicated'- but I'm very fortunate. I got the english teaching job at Wall Street- after only being here for 2 weeks!!! Lots of people immigrate to Israel so the competition for these kinds of jobs is fierce. It's a full-time job. So I will no longer be a full time domestic slave. As much as I was loving it....

The Wedding and the Spanish Hombres! (My 2nd Thursday and Friday in Israel)

(that's Eli and Jordy at our place)
On Thursday 24th November, I went to a wedding in Jerusalem, where Eli was playing in the band. I was part of 'the band table'- which included the band and the guys who rig the stage and change the sound.. there would have been about 10 of us. The drummer also brought his cousin along... for no particular reason. And one of the guys' sister came to visit for a while. That's how weddings work here aparently. No one's really hung up on numbers. You set up enough places at tables for random people who will no doubt end up coming along.. invited by someone else who was invited... that's how it is. The hall was decorated amazingly. They had big tall jars in the middle of the tables, with about 4 goldfish swimming around inside, and one flower on a stem, completely submerged in the water, with a spotlight shining from above. Looked really spectacular. I need to somehow convince Alex and Danielle that this is what they should do for their wedding. Something tells me Alex won't be happy about goldfish being used for decorative purposes. I don't dare contemplate what happened to those goldfishes after the wedding...

Anyway, this was one amazing cultural experience I was very fortunate to be a part of. No tourist sees what I saw. I'll describe it in deatil: It was a wedding (about 300 people) where the bride was Moroccon and the groom was Ethiopian. The groom was 22 yrs old and obviously religious.. not black hat, but religious. He wore a tzit-tzit and he had lots of religious friends there- I noticed 2 tables with mehitzas (dividers) around them.. it was like they had their own private booth. Very weird. What was also weird was seeing men dancing around with guns stuffed in their pants. The bride was 28. Gossip quickly reached our table, that she was his teacher at school. Her family totally did NOT approve to their marriage and there was a big crisis where up until 4 days ago there was going to be no wedding. So- it was a very emotional night. More crying than usual, and not all tears of happiness.

The band were EXCELLENT. Extremely professional, very smooth and the singer (the band leader) is extremely charismatic. He had his cards laid out on the table next to the stage and I'd say 20 people would have taken his card. Weddings are a very good business here, and Eli's found himself in a very good band. They play Israeli music which even I recognise, and mainly Eastern music- ('Mizrachi' means Eastern in hebrew) lots of Yemen influence... as the singer is Yemenite. His name's Yeffi. He reminds me of some Arabian Prince. He is very charming. And he loves Eli.

Anyway, the order of the proceedings was nothing like I'm used to. People arrived.. an interesting mishmash of young people (the groom is 22, remember-) and old people, moroccons, ethiopians, yeshiva ashkanazi types, some russians, some black hats.... and everyone started to help themselves to buffet food.. entree sort of food. The food was also a mishmash of flavours... Loads and loads of it- they had a guy making stir fry in front of u whilst u wait, and crepes, they had Kebbe soup (my favourite!), and lots of chicken and herring and salmon and salads... and everything 5-star deliciousness!

Then after everyone's already stuffed themselves with the entree food, the chuppa takes place in the middle of the dance floor in front of the stage where the band play. The singer acted as the sort of MC for the evening, telling everyone when the chuppa was about to start, when to go eat etc... Everyone stood around. Not even in silence, people were chatting to themselves... some were still even eating... those who wanted to pay attention paid attention. They had an Ethiopian rabbi and a Moroccan Rabbi. Each of them did their thing... once the groom crushed the glass and they kissed, all the moroccan women started to do the 'lalallalalalalalallalalalalalala' thing loudly with their tongues.

In Ethiopia, many of the Jews were forced to get tattoos of Crosses and were forecefully baptised. So I saw some of the old Ethiopian women with tattood crosses on their foreheads and tribal tattoos on their necks. Very weird. Their sense of fashion is very bright and colourful, and of course their hair is often plaited in tight corn rows. A lot of people wore jeans.

I sensed there was a large portion of the bride's family missing. For aforementioned reasons. But there were still quite a few Morrocons. Basically, the food kept coming and coming and there was a big variety to choose from. I think I had 2 different main meals, plus the buffet stuff in the beginning and then pita and houmous and salady stuff for an in-between entree and main meal type thing.. plus dessert.

Dammit all my early morning jogging is going right down the drain!

Anyway, there was A LOT of dancing, and the groom kept singing songs for his wife which I thought was very sweet. At one stage he played the tambas (African drums) and sang. There were no speeches. There was a lot of her sitting on a chair in the middle of the dance floor and him dancing for her, infront of her and around her whilst everyone clapped and fanned him with the serviette cloths. Lots of dancing with serviette cloths, they made a massive skipping rope at one stage and everyone was jumping into it like primary school kids. Lots of chair lifting. And then... one of the most incredible things. There was an Ethiopian dance session, actually, there were 2 sessions- when the band took a break and put on some recorded music. Eli explained to me that it's been dated as one of the world's oldest trance music. It's just this fast beat that seems to go nowhere, and goes on and on, very repetitive and scattery, and ALL the Ethiopians get up to dance, in a womens circle and a mens circle. This involves mainly dancing with the shoulders, spasmodically moving them and up and down and the neck side to side... And they're all enjoying themselves- they danced like that til everyone was hot and sweaty, many had their eyes closed, but all of them smiling... even the old grandpa and grandma, and the young ones... it was so fascinating- brought back vague memories of Ubud in Bali and the cachak dance. Like something off Baraka. I keep reminding myself these people are Jewish. It's quite fascinating really. Check this out for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews

anyway, I danced a lot. Yeffy danced with me quite professionally.. very ballroom like. Eli seemed impressed and not so impressed at the same time. I loved it! I had an absolute ball. The band said they wanted me to go to all of their gigs if I promised to always dance so much. Needless to say, I had a very fun night :-)

The wedding was over by 12, we then went to Eli's Spanish friends' place in Jerusalem. There's 3 of them- a couple (Maria & Danny) and another guy (Jordy). All 3 are violinists. They all played in the orchestra in Spain and had an Israeli violin teacher there who they claim is one of the best in the world. So when this teacher came to the Academy of music in Jerusalem to take up his post there teaching, they all followed him. So they met Eli at uni. Their classes here are in English, so after 3 years of living here they still dont speak much hebrew. So we communicated in English. Their English is worse than Eli's. It was an amusing evening. Plenty of 'lost in translation' moments... Every second word was "thio" ('friend', i dont know how to spell it). I kept getting muddled up and calling one of them Theo... We went out til very late to some bar, and then Eli and I slept back at their place.

So on Friday we caught the bus back to tel-aviv with Jordy. He catches taxis and sheroots (which are like shared taxis in vans) everywhere. He doesn't do buses. So this was a big thing for him. I think his family must be loaded bc he hasn't had a job since he's been here over the past 3 years. They're paying for everything. And his parents are 64 and 73, his brother is 42. Yes, he was a mistake.

We had to walk through the Shook (the markets) to get to the station. Friday afternoons in the shook, before shabbat comes in, is one of the craziest scenes I have ever encountered. It occurred to me that last time I was here I don't recall being in the markets at this time. It was so insane. There were challahs and fish and mint... all being thrown about everywhere, including right over my head! It was sheer madness!

Anyway, we got here, and then one of our neighbours offered us a table. So Eli and I went to schlepp this table from her unit to our unit. It's a beautiful and excellent table! Perfect size, and it extends. We have another neighbour who knocked on our door several times to offer us an assortment of furniture- cupboards, shelves, mattresses... we took a mattress (we now have 3 spare), and then my friend, Ariella slept over the following night- so that was great timing!

Early Days Still

Went to meet Ian in Jerusalem for lunch on Thursday. The bus trip over there was really hard. A really really really fat man sat next to me and I was squashed against the window with my breasts elbowed for the whole 55 mins... And I was reading my book, 'She's Come Undone' where the protagonist is really fat and people don't like her and I was trying to sympathise for her at the same time whilst hating the man next to me for spoiling my trip....

Anyway, it was nice to see Ian. And nice to be back in Jerusalem. We went to a cafe and then after 2 hours he had to get back to his class. I then found my way to the old city and the kotel. Wandered through the markets. Sat at the wall and prayed for a while. Observed everything and everyone around me for ages. Contemplated how rich the 2 old beggar women were becoming... making lots of money off every single woman who passed them by, unable to say no infront of such a holy place... I really enjoyed myself there. I like Jerusalem, but I think I have to say I prefer Tel Aviv. The cities have a very different feel. I heard more english than hebrew around Jerusalem.

Everyone complements me on my hebrew. I swear this didn't happen last time I was here! It must be the blonde...

The guy that owns the laundromat around the corner from us, where I did our laundry last week- was chatting with me and when I told him I was from sydney, and i learnt hebrew at school, he said "ah, at Moriah?" Turns out he was living in sydney for 1 yr just working for his brother's removalist business. He was living in Vaucluse. Small world. He then gave me a discount on the laundry :-) As I understood, I was able to do my own laundry at his laundromat, but as it turned out, there was a self-service laundromat around the corner, which charges 12 shekel, but because he does the service for you, he charges 20. But because he had a spare machine he wasn't using at the time I came, he let me use his machine and pay 12 because he said he' rather I do business with him, and besides, he was happy to chat with me. Sooo Israeli. He told me to come back in an hour, and even though I came back 55 mins later, expecting to unload everything and put it back in my trolley, (In found one of those old grandma shopping trolleys. I take it everywhere with me! It's my new {albeit rally old} accessory!) -he had beaten me to it and folded everything nicely for me. Very nice.

In Jerusalem, I made the mistake of wearing my nice-fitting dark green slacks with my hiking boots. The green pants are almost identical to the army uniform for some of the units here. So everyone thought I was a bloody soldier! At every bus station and shopping centre check point I was asked whether I had my gun on me. I guess wearing the with my hiking boots didn't help matters. I brought these as my 'nice pants'. I think this means I'm going to need to buy new 'nice pants'. Damn....

Getting a Feel For it

well, what can I say?
I LOVE this city. I love this flat, this neighbourhood, this area, the streets, the shops, Eli... it's so crazy!!! Everything's totally insane here. Eli calls it a zoo and a 'jungle' in the mornings. It's all happening. I love that I have everything within walking distance to my place as well. Plus things are quite cheap here.

Eli dragged me to some Tai Chi thingy. There is one white 'master' in the world, and he's an Israeli guru guy who turned religious. And he was in town and Eli's friend told him it's worth going, so we went and we sat there for an hour just listening to him speak and answer people's questions. I kept thinking about the purple shirt guy in the park at Coogee who Jord and I jog past all the time whilst he does his funny movements and we make fun of him... and then I thought to myself- hang on, I dont wanna be like that.. what am i doing here??? I couldnt even understand what he was saying... I thought we were going to actually do something, so i went dressed in my get-up especially.. tights and sneakers.. I was such a dag- for nothing!!! All I got from it was this guy showing us how he could floor a guy 'like this' and 'like this' or 'like this' or even 'like this with 2 hands'... (this 'like this' business has become a running joke now between me and Eli.) Eli turned to me at one stage, half asleep, and said "i don't even understand what he's saying.. fucking shit."

Everyone here says "fucking shit". It's really funny. I'll walk down the street and here hebrew jibberish... blablablafuckingshitblablabla.... cracks me up.

Our place is funny. We live on the rooftop. Up 4 floors. So it's quite a work out coming home.. I like it. It's like I got me a gym and a place in one. Our livingroom and bedroom have shutters and windows which can completely open up onto the street outside, so basically the 4th wall of the place is one long massive window which can slide open. I can sit on it and just look at whats going on in the street. And LOTS goes on in this street. It's like Khao San Rd in Bangkok- Israeli style. (Which, I guess, is pretty close to khao san rd actually, if anyone's ever been there before? yes? no? Beuller??.)

Anyway, it rained the other night (it's winter here, but it hasn't really hit yet), and our roof is made of tin, so it's really loud. It was beautiful. When Eli plays his sax and trumpet, you can hear it all the way down the street, because the windows are always open. This is the story of our life... me hearing Eli play his music from a few streets away. It's how we met, it's how I used to come home in Waverley, and now it's happening again. Especially on Saturdays here, Shabbat means death to city life, so when I go for a jog in usually busy streets I hear Eli's sax reverberating from blocks away.

One guy has yelled up from the street to shut Eli up- he said 'people are trying to work here' (in hebrew of course) and Eli just yelled something back and continued- that's the way things work here. Lots of yelling.

I went into a shop with eli to buy a drink, and the soccer was on the tv, so eli told the woman to turn it up, and then someone else came into the shop and saw the soccer and started yelling something, and then someone else came in- it was this tiny corner shop, and everyone was yelling all around me?!

We live on top of a furniture shop. The guy who works there, Jacky, (he calls me "sara-le"?!) always asks me in for tea. And he's become my designated direction-giver. As I said in my last post, my luggage didn't arrive on my flight, so i had to wait for it to be delivered to me the following day, so when it arrived, Jacky was downstairs and he saw me emerge from the building for the first time and immediately said "hallo hallo.. i dont recognise you, are you our new neighbour? Are you Sara? Welcome... lucky us... I'll help you with your bags... You're the saxophone player's girlfriend right.. I'm Jacky...If ever you need anything..." blahblahblah- and this continued non-stop up 4 flights of stairs. All in hebrew.

My hebrew picked up rapidly in the past week. Im making a conscious effort not to speak in english. But it's hard, of course. I'm convinced Eli speaks the fastest hebrew out of anyone in Israel. I understand everyone else better than I understand him. Im practising now and reading lots of childrens stories.

I went to Haifa over Shabbat to Eli's mum's place- it takes us about 2 hours to get to Haifa. Some of Eli's relatives came for dinner. One of his cousins, a 23 yr old girl, threw an absolute fit- the biggest tantrum I've ever seen- because she didnt want to move over. she was yelling and yelling like a maniac, and they just laughed at her. I was in shock. Her behaviour is indicative of a lot of the behaviour here. Eli told me later- "you should see when she gets angry.." No matter how well my hebrew improves, no matter how comfortable I get with Eli's family, I can predict I will always be the shy one in that family. No matter what, I will be quiet. I can't compete with such big characters, I really dont have it in me to yell the way they do. Moroccans are loud.That's all there is to it. And they kiss 4 times?! what is with that??? I thought that was French.

I find it amazing that Eli didnt know anyone before we moved here, and in such a short time he's met everyone. I mean I knew Eli was a friendly guy, but I love to see him here in Israel, where he's smooth and totally in his element. It's unbelievable how different he seems. Maybe it's my imagination. It's impossible for him to go into any shop and not start a conversation with someone. He just talks to everyone. And everyone's happy to talk back. I'm beginning to think Eli is the friendliest person I know. He'll talk to so many strangers on any given day. And my very initial impressions of him was that he was rude and forthcoming.... Who would've thought?

Today I went with Maor's (Eli's bro) girlfriend, Meital, and her friend to Carmel markets, Israel's biggest markets. Right next to it, every tuesday and friday is the arts market. Its where artists go to set up stalls and make and sell their crafts. I saw clocks made out of sudokus! And cool things made from cinammon sticks, and cool things made from match boxes and dice and buttons!! I live about 10 mins walk from it all. I live in the best part of the country! I am surrounded by excellent cafes and cool bars and shops.. -the way the shops work here is very interesting- you have a street which is the furniture street: Every single shop sells furniture. Then another street is the fabrics street. Another one is the lights street... then there's the bead street.. every kind of bead..then there's the sweets/lollies street, and the toy street, the belt/leather goods street... the nuts/olives/pickles street...

I like it. I'm happy.