Back in the States

Writing from LaGuardia airport using my cell phone as a hotspot.  I indulged in having real NY pizza for breakfast, not because I tired of Israeli food, but because we don't have it in Kansas City.

My skirt report is that the plane ride wasn't any different than riding the buses and otherwise schlepping around Israel. So now I have a modified travel plan that makes a little more sense.

P.S. I'm completely home now.  My hotspot connection was too slow to actually update the blog.  Tired but ok.  See you soon.

Answers to great questions, and other musings on the way home

Well, a question that I've had for four years is  what the heck is the name of this cheese?  I have muddled through successfully for four years by asking for the tall cheese.

I'm not crazy, and it is the tallest cheese in the dairy case.  That is a standard coffee cup.  It is a bit salty and firm, mild like mozzarella, and I've eaten kgs of it.  It's kosher, widely available and reasonably priced, so I still think it's produced inside Israel.  But Israelis don't know what cheese I'm talking about. The standard Israeli cheeses are quite soft.  My dairy guy in the Carmel shuk has crummy handwriting, so his label didn't solve it. But today in the Jerusalem shuk, those nice dairy people had typed signs.  Ha!

The woman's hand is over part of it, but now we know.  It's garuzinit.  And it's a Georgian cheese.  With all the Russians, that makes sense.  I can have so much more dignity on the next trip.

This afternoon I got a limonana.  Not like we make at EEF.  See...

Really minty.  Not that I'm suggesting we make blended drinks, just that this what the original is like.  Yummy.

Another cosmic question is, can I travel in a skirt?  I only wear skirts in Israel (long, very functional), but I usually travel in trousers.  And showing up in Israel, I always feel like I'm out of uniform.  I wonder if going through El Al security might have gone a little smoother on the way in.  So I'm in my long, turquoise skirt, and we'll see.

The plan for the next few hours (I'm at the safest place on earth: Ben Gurion Airport): juggle the weight in my suitcase, change into a dry shirt, check in for my Southwest flight, and generally be an asset to the universe. Signing off for now.

Mediterranean

I needed to buy (a reasonable amount of) halvah and my favorite soap.  The hard part was finding an ATM that still had money in it after Shabbat.  The fifth one did.

A lot of the Bauhaus building are being restored. This one is right across from my building and I watched it under construction last year.

Isn't it lovely?

See the last photo on this page of my blog from 2015.  It's really nice now.  So what kind of halvah did I get? Coffee (of course), cinnamon (that's a new one for me), date and poppy.

Then a first crack at packing.  Best news is that I'm ok on volume.  Marginal on weight, but I can always put a couple things (not knives!) in my carry on.  Don't have to pay for an extra bag (a lot), and I can manage this on my own and take the bus and train (for cheap).

And it was time to say "hello" to the Mediterranean.  I found a better path from my apartment to the beach than I had used before.

Really, that's how it's spelled in Hebrew?

I sat for a bit under a shelter (pergola) on the sidewalk, and then found the iconic statue of Ben Gurion.

Ben Gurion University, his grave in Sde Boker, and now him playing on the beach!

And I got another malabi to try (caramel syrup and coconut topping).  BTW, all the syrups are pink, even lemon or caramel.

Last shabbat

Well, after all my bus rides this week, I just felt like a ball of crumpled paper.

So I resolved that every time I stood up, I would stretch. That strategy worked. It was a disappointing start, but I ended up in much better shape and feel much better.

I bought some dreamy strawberries that were completely ripe.  And organic. Mmmm.

I'm eating up all my food bits that I can, and washed what I can. Tomorrow, I will finish up loose ends like buying halvah. And then it's packing for Deb.  Wish me luck.

Yom Yerushalyim placards in Safra Square

Busy in Jerusalem

The plan was to have lunch with my friend, Anna, dinner with Rabbi and Margolit Friedman and see the light show, and then catch a late bus back to Tel Aviv.  Busy, but sounds like a plan. I double checked on the light show, and I was really wrong about the dates. Not like I looked at the wrong month--more like G-d wanted me here during these two weeks.  Needless to say the light festival is in three weeks.  But there is something going on down at the Jaffa Gate each night for Yom Yerushalyim.  So change in events but not really the location.  Hmm.

When I got to Jerusalem, I found a bench in the shade and shot these photos of these light rail cars for you:

Jerusalem unified

Anna and I planned to meet at Mahane Yehuda (shuk in Jerusalem).  She suggested that we get sabich. I had heard of it but never tried it.  It's a rolled sandwich, not like a pita pocket.  This place is Iraqi and it was fresh, flash baked Iraqi bread, smoky and soft and wonderful.  The sandwich has grilled eggplant, a hardboiled egg, hummus, and some expected things like tomatoes and harissa.  Marvelous, but huge.  I brought half of it home. It's a takeaway place, but they had one table and two odd chairs on which we perched ourselves.

She invited me to her house for the afternoon which I accepted.  I needed to be at the Friedmans' @ 5:00.  No problem, 10 min bus ride from Anna's, 20 min bus ride to Givat Zeev.  Except for some spooky traffic gridlock.  It took over an hour to get up to the bus station.  A soccer game?

At this moment, the bus is completely blocking a large intersection because we can't go forward

The driver would let anyone get out to walk, but it was a big hill (mountain, really), and didn't I do that a few days ago?  And we had a shade inside the bus.  I was at peace to be late without heat exhaustion. Of course, the three of us left on the bus made it, and a #132 bus to Givat Zeev appeared quickly.

I had a lovely reunion with Rabbi David and Margolit. I left at 8:00 to see what there was at the Jaffa Gate.  Lots of people were headed that way, but I couldn't see anything but I could hear music. Oh, they had big projected images on the old city walls.  I took a lot of photos and video with my Canon, but it doesn't talk to this tablet, so I'll upload that stuff when I get home.  Here are a few I took with my Android:

Then a wonderfully unremarkable trip home.

Eggs and Ariel University

It's fascinating to watch deliveries down on Allenby St.  It's probably just an urban thing where there's no room for people to do their jobs.  The palette jacks are used in the street proper.  So I was gazing and I saw a neat delivery.

 Sorry that it's not the clearest photos.  I will explain.  The truck is an egg truck.  Just eggs.  I could see into the truck back:  it was dense-packed with egg flats. About 20 eggs on a square cardboard tray each.  No cartons or boxes.  I see the guy bring a two-wheeler around, and I think, No, he can't do that!  But sure enough, they just loaded up the two-wheeler just like the UPS guy.

And then headed across the street.  Israelis eat a lot of eggs.  These are the flats  of eggs that I used to buy at the shuk.  Well, this is how they get to the shuk, I guess.

After the egg truck excitement, I headed up to Ariel.  It's no surprise to anyone from Tel Aviv that I had trouble finding the bus in the New Bus Station.  But I negotiated in Hebrew, so at least that's an achievement.  It was on the 7th floor.  And I made the 2:15 #286 Afikim bus to Ariel.  And got myself to Rivka's office on campus elegantly.  They have some new landscaping, and this is an interesting plant:

We had a coffee and some snacks including one with zaatar that we may incorporate for Israel Spirit.  Then there was a student event where a faculty band opened the evening.  The Dean of engineering is on the keyboard (dressed in black).

It was quite a production. Those are LED screens, and they had smoke machines and lasers (the event, not the band). We left after the band's set of four songs.  Rivka's sister (MD) joined us for a late supper at Biscotti in Petach Tikvah.  We got kicked out because the  restaurant closes early.  I got sent home with lots of doggy bags. There's a joke in this somewhere: three women doctors go into....