soul food and saying goodbye

It would seem, my friends, that we have reached a parting of the ways.

My last day of work (yesterday) wasn't too bad. Spent the morning weeding in the camping area and the hanging gardens, and the afternoon ironing and changing cabin linens. Then, in the late afternoon, Lilach had a brilliant idea.

She was like "JANE! You are leaving tomorrow!" and I'm like, "......yeah," and she says "WE SHOULD HAVE A FAREWELL DINNER FOR YOU!" "....okay....." Anyway, she decides we should cook something that is my "native food" so to speak. "What do you eat in Alabama?" "........uh....." "I KNOW I KNOW! WE WILL MAKE FRIED CHICKEN! Do you know how to make fried chicken?" ".........uh, no....." "WELL THEN GOOGLE IT!"

So I did.

In the 18 plus years I have lived in Alabama, I have never made fried chicken. I go to Israel for six weeks and I end up cooking it. Go figure. It was surprisingly pretty easy. I guess I could succeed as a Southern housewife after all. We also had mashed potatoes with it, per my recommendation. Stephen was like, "Isn't this what black people eat?" Oh, Stephen. That would involve greens. Instead we had Israeli couscous.....we'll call it a blended meal. Also enjoyed some of the house wine for the first time, which was excellent, and some leftover birthday cake. All in all a very nice last meal.

Meanwhile, Magdal was rioting.

Magdal Shams is the Druze village about a half a mile from us. I still don't know exactly what was going on except that it involved taxes and some guy who was dealing drugs in France. Kind of crazy. But, as per Lilach's prediction, at 930pm the rioting stopped.

The Mundial was on.

I didn't watch, I went to pack (and by pack I mean spend several hours distracting myself from packing). If you like Spain, congrats; if you like the Netherlands, my apologies.

Eventually went to bed, and eventually finished packing in the morning.

Ended up taking a much later bus than I expected, but it turned out alright. Got into Tel Aviv around 4pm and was planning to take a bus to the hostel. However, I never found the intra-city buses. Remember the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station? The giant one that's like an airport? Yeah, I got lost. Finally I gave up and asked a taxi how much it would be, and the price was reasonable so I opted for that instead. Then the taxi driver got lost, and I had to pull out my map and help him figure out where we were in broken Hebrew. Turns out we were basically driving in a circle around the street the hostel was on. When I got to the hostel I hadn't made a reservation, so I asked what they had available. I was expecting a dorm bed, since I haven't encountered a single full hostel since I got here (and I have now stayed in a grand total of about 10 different ones). Then she says the cursed words to me - "NONE AVAILABLE". I'm about to flip, since I'm tired of carrying all this crap and getting lost in taxis, whens she's like "......but you can have a rooftop mattress for 60 shekels. You just have to be gone by 8 o'clock." I'm like......what did you just say?"

Basically, this hostel is awesome. Not only is it in Jaffa, which is a really cool and nice and not so touristy part of Tel Aviv, it has a flippin sweet roof. Its partially covered, with mattresses for sleeping and lots of tables and chairs and couches, plus a fountain, full bathrooms/showers, a full kitchen, and laundry. No AC necessary, the breeze off the sea is perfect and the view of the city skyline is beautiful. Its also in the thick of the shuk, which is the best shuk I have been in in this country, and five minutes from a gorgeous beach. I'm lovin it :)

After getting settled I went to find food, since I pretty much hadn't eaten all day. I just wanted a pita with any of the staples in it (falafel, schawarma, schnitzel, or kabab), I didn't care which one. I thought there would be a stand near the hostel once I started in the direction of the beach, but I didn't see anything. I kept walking up the promenade into the rest of Tel Aviv, and finally, once I got all the way to the street I stayed on my last time in the city (roughly a mile), I found a place and got some schnitzel (Sidenote: Every time I eat schnitzel I find myself involuntarily humming "My Favorite Things" and I'm starting to annoy myself with it. Damn you, Rodgers & Hammerstein). One of my favorite (and by favorite I mean least favorite) things about Israel is how everyone assumes you want hummus on everything. I didn't really want hummus with my schnitzel, since hummus melts basically the instant it hits the pita, resulting in soggy schnitzel, which I didn't particularly want, but the man literally asked me "Do you want hummus?" as he was putting it in my pita. Urgh.....national foods. I then walked the mile back to the hostel to eat my schnitzel in a less hot environment, and of course, it was soggy. Sigh. Oh, and then I realized there were like, 5 pita stands in a ten foot radius about six steps in the other direction from the one I walked. Jane Fail.

Afterward I went out to the shuk, which was pretty much all closed. Picked up a couple things for different people at the places that were open, and then wandered back to the hostel.

In other news, been on a very folksy kick musically the last few days and I'm having the renewed urge to learn how to play guitar. I just found possibly the best song I've heard in the last decade and it turned out to have been written for Hanukkah several decades ago. Go YouTube it, Peter Paul & Mary singing "Light One Candle". Watch the holiday concert from the 80's and you can get a laugh out of whatever the hell Mary's wearing. Is it a trash bag? A solar panel? We just don't know.

My last night in Israel (for a while). Crazy to think. But, as the padre taught me to always say, I'll be back.