Valentines and skiing expedition

Last week, all in all, was one very exciting week.
The Henna party (see below) was on Monday, and it coincided with the Jewish holiday celebrating the start of the agricultural season and the fruitfulness of trees, Tu'beshvat. The following day, Tuesday, was Valentines Day, and then on Friday we travelled North to Mount Harmon for the snow. I'm telling you it was full on!

Some of you may remember the Tu'Beshvat party Eli and I threw at our place in Waverley last year with the big fruit tray? The observance of this holiday involves the ritual of eating fruits. Many of you said you liked the idea of coming together to party and eating fruits, and it is nice, so Eli and I said we'd celebrate this holiday again in the future. Also, now some of you may know this and some may not, but the first time I ever saw Eli was on a full moon night 2 years ago in Jerusalem at a Tu-Beshvat party. So it has some sentimental relevance and value as well I guess.

The story goes: I was in Israel and a friend of mine had bailed on me for the night so I went to this party by myself, and even though I didn't exactly speak wth Eli that night, I noticed him because someone else had pointed him out to me and told me he'd be playing sax at a jazz gig at a particular cafe the following day, and in his attempt to pick me up, this guy arranged a date for the 2 of us to go see the jazz together at the cafe. Now I was on a trot of bad luck at that time with guys not keeping to their word, so it came as no surprise when this one bailed on me as well. So the following day I went along to this cafe by myself, I remember it was decorated with fruits and nuts and dates everywhere and Eli was playing his last note as I walked inside, but I had heard him play from all the way down the street (which has since become a reccurring story) and I thought it sounded great. Sure enough I recognised him from the night before, and I thought it would be nice to introduce myself and tell him I thought he played really great and..... well.... baddabing-baddabang, here I am 2 years later.

So, Tu'BeShat and the day after it, is an exciting time to be alive. This year, Valentines was the day after Tu'BeShvat, and the Azriei shopping centre was decked out with everything fruity and sweet to celebrate the 2 holidays in-synchro as a double whammy. (I said 'double whammy' in the staff room at work the other day and got vacant stares and confused looks all over the shop. I didn't realise that was an Australian idiom. As is a 'scorcher', as in a bloody hot day. No one here seems to know what capsicum or rock melon is either!? And what I mean by 'heaps' and 'randoms'. Sometimes I feel fluent in another language that no one here knows. I speak Australian.) Anyway, I sampled so many delicious fruity things over those 2 days, I felt like fruit salad incarnate. Even at the henna party, many of the sweets were fruity. Anyone ever had cucumber sorbet before? Or how about banana crepes- as in, the bananas weren't just inside the crepe, but the crepe was actually made of banana and it had strawberries inside. And melon ice cream!!! Mmmmmmmmm.

Anyway, Valentines is called "Yom ahava", (Day of love) and everyone wishes each other chag sameach like it's worthy of some kind of Jewish holiday greeting. It amused me very much. This day also has sentimental significance for Eli and I for other reasons (not appropriate to write here, sorry! Ah, the disadvantages of a public forum, censorship!)... We decided to be very romantic and agreed to NOT buy each other anything (even though it was a biggy with Tu'BeShvat and 'that day after' and Valentines and 2 year anniversaries and what not) and instead, we agreed to celebrate by going out to a very nice restaurant and not skrimping on anything we wanted to eat or drink. Which is exactly what we did and it was excellent (Even if we did run into Eli's ex girlfriend who he hadn't seen in 7 years!) Incidentally, the boss took a liking to Eli and gave us free shots of Japanese pear wine and offerred us a 10% discount from now on, so I think we'll be returning there...

Being the honest and naive person that I am, I of course kept to my end of the deal, but Eli couldn't help being sweet (and dare I say, cliche) and surprised me with the token bottle of champagne and Max Brenner gourmet chocolates at 3am, after we got back home late from the henna party. Our table was nicely set up with candles and everything...(Max Brenner- i.e- gourmet chocolate place on Oxford Street in Paddington as well as in Bondi Junction- is Israeli, and it's really big here). Even though I was flatterred, I was made to feel like an ass. Why don't people keep to their promises goddamnit? I told Eli I knew he would buy me something, I knew it- and he said he knew I wouldn't buy him something, which was good because that was his aim.
Bah.

So anyway, sufficed to say we were basically in a very celebratory mood this week.

We also thought it important to celebrate my much awaited 2-day weekend (I have 2-day weekends only every 2nd week) so we went on a road trip to the North to ski.
We stayed at Eli's grandma's place near Haifa for Thursday and Friday (for shabbat) and came back late on Saturday. Mt Hermon is in the far north of the country and it borders with Syria and Lebanon. In fact the same mountain range partly belongs to Israel, and partly to the other countries.

It was great to be in the snow. I love it! But as some of you know, skiing + Sarah don't go particularly well together, so I was very content to sit the day out in the cafe reading, writing, drinking hot chocolates and soaking up the beautiful views and the crazy atmosphere. I did the exact same thing, in fact at the exact same table, 2 years ago when I visited Mt Hermon. It's a truly unique way to experience Mt Hermon I tell you. Eli went skiing and his brother, Maor went snowboarding.
Like in every country, skiing is an expensive sport, and in Israel, the cost of entering the mountain, then to get the chair lift and the ski gear and everything including the petrol you need to drive all the way there... we worked out that it's cheaper to fly to Turkey! (Seriously, there are US$129 return flights to Turkey which include 3 nights at a 4 star hotel inc. breakfast) So that's another plan of our's for a later 2-day weekend down the track.

Throughout the day I kept thinking I could hear the name "Eli Vanunu" on the loud speaker. But I couldn't understand the rest of the fast and mumbled Hebrew after it. I was so confused who could be calling Eli and for what reason. I was sure that either a) it must be for another Eli Vanunu- which wouldn't be so surprising here; or b) it couldn't have been Maor looking for him, because if he wanted him he'd call his mobile or call me. So I sat, perpetually baffled all day and thinking I was imagining things and getting a little concerned. At one stage, I asked a guy next to me whether he just heard Eli Vanunu on the loud speaker, and he said he honestly wasn't paying attention, but he thinks he may have heard an Eli Onunu, which was funny because he grew up with an Eli Onunu. Haha.. that was funny for many reasons. Firstly, Eli has numerous ways of spelling and pronouncing his surname. In fact, it differs on his credit card, his ID and his passport. Vanunu, Vaanunu, Wanunu, Onunu, Vonunu and Voonvoon (the last one is lovingly only reserved for close friends who served with him in the army- several of whom, despite no contact for the past few years, Eli and I have met up with suddenly over the past few weeks)...
More interesting though is the fact that each family member spells it differently. His mother, Esther, who likes to be known as Eti, spells her name variably as Eti or Ety... Spelling is just simply not taken very seriously here. I swear I've seen major street signs here, which, most of the time are written in the customary 3 languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English, and I'm certain that there's a mistake somewhere because the pronunciation of the Hebrew name which I can read is totally different from the pronunciation of the English one.

So anyway, back to my so-called track, the guy remembered growing up with an Eli Onunu, and on a weekly basis we bump into someone here in Tel Aviv who Eli grew up with. Most of the time he can't place their face or name, but they sure remember him.
Anyway, it turned out Maor was in fact looking for Eli the whole day as his battery for his phone had gone flat. So I wasn't imagining things after all.

On the drive home from the mountains, Eli suddenly remembered that a long lost friend of his from the army lived nearby, so we took a detour and went to drop a visit on the guy. He was nuts, and really happy to see Eli and catch up after 8 years. After they filled each other in on their respectve lives over 20 minutes, (hey some people have interesting lives) we arranged to meet up again in a couple of weeks and go for a trip in his jeep 'through the nature'.

In other exciting news, I heard that Wall Street every year throws a relly big Purim dress-up party bash. Last year they hired out a nightculb and everyone came dressed up and the person who won first prize scored flight tickets to Europe (and I don't mean Turkey or Cyprus, I mean Barcelona!) How cool is that!!!

Anyway, it's 2:30am. I will write about the wedding later.

To be continued....


gruzenberg 35 talitana