Part 2: Israel

Sorry, it’s been a chaotic last few weeks with finals. But I’m gonna do an abridged version of what happened in Israel.

On the second day, after a confusing bus experience where I truly realized how useful Hebrew is in Israel (Who would have thought?), I met my Gamma Phi friend, Zoe, at her dorm at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she’s studying for the semester. It was so bizarre to be in a place with all students living together without parents. What? People live outside their parents’ home before they get married? No way…

So, Zoe, being a wonderful host, showed me around the Old City markets. It was crazy. The minute we walked through the Damascus gate, I felt like I was back in an Arab country, with trash on the ground and frequent male harassment included. Now, that’s not to say that every man harasses foreign girls in the Arab world. But I would say it’s not a crazy statement to say that it’s the majority of Arab youth, and sometimes old taxi drivers, that find young foreign girls to be easy prey. After I snapped off a few times in Arabic in the market though, the guys got the idea. But the market was really cool, saw a bunch of sites and the different quarters (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian). We went in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where it is believed that Jesus was crucified. It was so beautiful, unreal. It’s massive, but just the amount of history behind it is incredible.

We walked around, and finally, we wove our way to the Western Wall. There was actually a military graduation of sorts when we arrived, so we watched for a little. Israeli military youth are everywhere. If someone feels uncomfortable around guns, I’m sure the first day or two in Israel is really uncomfortable. Since everyone in Israel is required to spend a time in the army (or national service equivalent), you see military men everywhere, and, depending on their job, many of them carry large, granted, unloaded, automatic weapons. It’s pretty intense.

After that, we headed back to Zoe’s dorm/apartment to get ready for Thanksgiving J The local Hillel had set up a Thanksgiving dinner for all the American students studying abroad there for a taste of home. It was definitely not a traditional dinner, but really fun. They had these crazy performers on stilts, and I enjoyed a great chicken/guacamole fajita of sorts, even though there was turkey and some of the more traditional Thanksgiving foods there. Then, there was an awesome concert-ish thing from an Israeli-Reggae band, which was great and kinda weird all at the same time. They also were very adamant about touting their Arak doused ice cream: AKA licorice flavored liquor ice cream. Not my idea of Thanksgiving, and I was not about to try the treat. Suddenly, the stilted performers became these raging fire dancers, which were entertaining and really fun.