apples and onions

My voice sounded a little better today, but it wasn't enough to sing well. We've just come back from a (supposedly) Messianic Jewish service, about which I'll write in a later post. For now, I'll just pick up where I left off with  the weekend.

So yes, Friday. Larissa had been napping when I got back from my class/singalong, and after a bit of puttering about we phoned Cas and Paul and Ivony to ask where they were and could we join them. We arranged to meet at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre near the centre of the Old City, and so Larissa and I were off on the light rail.

Side note: when Lyera and I were planning to go to Jerusalem, we met Paul at his house to talk about various details (and have him demonstrate the making of what I hereby term a "pastascramble"). He told us that the fastest way to the Old City was walking through the garbage road, the Wadi Al-Joz, which is an Arab neighbourhood -- one they told us not to go to in the orientation this year. That walk, he explained, is dirty and smelly, but takes only about forty minutes and takes you directly to the north side of the Old City walls. So we did. Lyera being a more delicate creature than I, she eventually found out that there existed a light rail service that takes one right to Damascus Gate -- clean, cheap, easy on the feet, a bit quicker, and with a bit more central destination. This light rail service didn't exist in his year. As for me, I maintained a bit of the adventurous fondness of the road. You got to rub shoulders with Arabs and their chidren, after all.

Anyway, so Lars and I ended up at Damascus Gate -- probably the most "Disneyland"-ish gate, as Seoren would put it.

The going was unusually slow and packed -- we really had to push to get through the thick crowd in the narrow, curving tunnel of an entrance. This gave Lars plenty of opportunity to look at the life some people lead, including children of very young ages. They look perhaps six or seven in some cases, with a table filled with some random undesirable object, such as cheap coloured balloons, shouting at the top of their voices in Arabic. (One word I hear a lot but don't know the meaning of is "ashara".) One shopowner even has recorded his frantic spiel that plays constantly on a little speaker while he sits and takes a rest.

I also discovered a trick for getting people to leave you alone: answer in Hebrew. It just takes two words, namely "Lo, toda," which means "No, thanks." I guess if you speak in Hebrew they assume you're a local and not a tourist. One young boy was pressing Larissa to buy something, and I said, "Lo, toda!" to him, and he replied a couple of times: "Lama?" That is, "Why?" I don't feel quite sure he just meant why were we not interested.

Slowly, after a bite to eat inside the gate while waiting for the crowd to disperse a bit, we made our way through many alleys and past half a dozen identical candy shops stuffed to the brim with gummy things to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Paul, Ivony, and Cas were there, as well as another friend named Randi.

Last time I was at the Holy Sepulchre, I didn't really feel anything. This time there was a slight aura of intrigue. Here's an intricate golden mosaic that mesmerized Cas and me for a bit.

I explored for a bit and found some interesting floor stones, the fantastic old dome (it's interesting that the beam of light strikes these specific arched panels of stone, but they contain nothing in particular), and a candle thingy overflowing with the wax of so many pilgrims.

Then I returned to the main foyer where the others were. This slab of rock is one on which Jesus was supposed to have been laid at some point. People kiss and touch and pray on it all the time. I touched it for good measure, and then asked Ivony whether she believed in anything related to all this. It turns out she's a Catholic, which makes the whole apartment Christian!

Over the next little while first I and then all of us made our way down to the lower levels, where there is an Armenian section and some original caves exposed. Besides the occasional picture, we spent quite a while in quiet reflection -- as Paul said, reflecting on everything we'd seen.

The altar stone is reflective through so much wear and wax.

There are letters behind the screen and a faint mural on the rock.

I really liked the random colour patterns on these tiles.

Then we ventured out, had a stranger take a picture (well, two pictures -- well, actually two accidental pressings of the record button which together resulted in an eight-second video).

Video credit: Camera-inept passerby

We went up to this most unusual rooftop and climbed this dome:

Video credit: Lars

Photo credit: Lars

...we found a cross with crystals in its arms that changed colour depending on the angle of the light...

...we discovered Queen Helen's church and cistern, with this sign --

-- which didn't mention the extortion of five shekels for entry from a priest nearby -- and some stagnant water...

...and some fabulous echoes indeed...

...and we found a small shop exactly like all the others, tucked into a little hallway up there with some shadows that at this time of day were awesome.

The shop was run by a couple of Christian Arabs who had spent years in America (and spoke good English!), but who had returned to Israel in the end, fearful of losing their Israeli IDs. Besides, they explained to us during the lengthy conversation, here they made better money, and moreover they were in their element. In the Christian Quarter they were at the top of the heap; if they wandered into the Muslim Quarter they would be guests, but they would still be connected to the other Arabs. We asked whether ethnicity or religion bound people more strongly in this country and, after stressing that the only time such divisions would happen were times of strife, they said religion, easily. Very interesting. And they were adamant that it was quite safe here: "No one would come up and stab you. No one! They would break anyone's legs who did that. No one would do it! No one!" And they downplayed the presence of the soldiers, but I don't know. In Canada it's not every day you see soldiers carrying large automatic weapons. Here it is.

Amusing haggling incident: I bought some postcards and one of them said, "Six shekels." I don't even think about haggling; this was my first purchase in a year where it would be appropriate. The other shopowner corrected him, "No, nine, say nine!" But it was clearly too late now, so I said, "Let's make a deal -- you don't say nine, I don't say three." And they said, "Eh, no haggling at this shop anyway... too tired to haggle." Paul and the others talked to them at length.

They also recommended their friend Mike of Mike's Tours for his tours, so we checked it out. He was friendly, but he had more stray cats than tours.

A distant cousin of Butterscotch?

Then we made our way towards the Western Wall, eating at a cheap falafel/shawarma restaurant, where we talked and it became general knowledge that Randi too is a Christian.

Photo credit: Surly restaurant owner on Lars's camera

We passed through some interesting neighbourhoods on the way.

Near here, Paul ran into a shopkeeper friend made in the best way possible: after a long round of stern haggling and an agreement finally reached. The friend teased the girls a bit, much to their chagrin. More pleasantly, here are some blocks of spices of all kinds. Can you guess which is myrrh?

And then it was the Western Wall, with its warning about the Divine Presence (click for full screen):

On Shabbat they ask you not to take pictures, so I didn't. (Actually, I took one as we were leaving, but it didn't turn out. Karma...) It was quite the sight, though. There were so many people crowding up to the wall that we didn't even try to go up to it. Up close in the crowd there were a few groups, including ones dressed all in black (Orthodox), ones dressed largely in white (?), and ones dancing and singing loudly. Outside the secure wall area -- the main difference between it and the general wall plaza is that it's segregated between men and women, and a kippeh or shawl will be forcibly stuck on your head if you try to go in -- there were soldiers gathering, and large crowds of what Paul assumed were Reformed Jews dancing and singing like mad. This is the Shabbat welcome; it is to be welcomed with joy. (We wondered if the Orthodox were annoyed by all the noise.)

Then we made our way (painfully slowly) out the south gate in order to walk along the wall on the outside, so that we could see the Mount of Olives. I don't have any of those pictures with me right now, but there will be better ones later -- as these are after sunset they are quite dim. But you can have some unexpected horses riding along the wall:

And a view of the wall itself, so high and impressive: 

Here are a few of us observing from this neat lookout whose floor was a stone map of the landmarks visible from it:

Photo credit: Lars

That was quite a leisurely walk. By now we were all quite exhausted from having walked all day. We came to an intersection where we would have to walk back through... you guessed it... the nighttime Wadi Al-Joz. (There was no public transit because it was now dark and therefore Shabbat.) Some of us have walked through that area many times, but the girls were a little worried. After all, the university said it was unsafe!

So, as I had suggested earlier, we made a detour for half an hour to get knaffa at a boiling hot Arabic sweet shop, and it was much enjoyed. My conquest to convert the world to knaffa advanced by three or four people. Besides, it's kind of a tourist password among the Arabs. You simply mention the name of the dessert made of melting cheese and sweet, syrupy dough, and you instantly become a Cool Tourist.

And then it was time to brave the wadi.

We made our way through it, dodging the cars as always (the sidewalks are generally chock-full of parked cars, necessitating a little road-walking). Before long we heard loud foreign music pounding through the streets, and proceeded cautiously until we came to this little slope leading down into a square.

They had Jordanian flags up, and there was a ring of people in costume dancing in the centre. A small TV crew was filming it, and a live band on stage was providing a strange mix of traditional-sounding and quite modern music. Many people were dancing and milling around.

Suddenly, as we stood at the top of this slope and watched, a middle-aged man approached Cas and invited him to join them. "Come and sit, drink lemonade!" We became a bit nervous. Meanwhile, someone else was already coming up to the girls and Paul to invite them down too, and soon we were hesitantly wondering if it was safe.

The first thing I thought of was the orientation speaker saying that his daughters know never to accept a drink they didn't see poured, because they don't know what could have been put in it. Scary right off the bat. Besides, it was loud and it was dark, and we had been warned about this area. The Christian Arab shopkeepers by the Holy Sepulchre had also said that near the university people sometimes drive up at night and take funny drugs.

Still, we eventually gave in and headed down. We all took lemonade, but Larissa and I didn't drink ours right away. We sat a bit back and watched, and people watched us and came up to welcome us. Someone noticed partway through, Larissa, Randi, and Ivony were the only girls at the party, which seemed like a bad sign. Then Cas alerted me that there were children here and parents were letting their children drink it; after that we felt more comfortable and began to settle in.

They also handed out coffee. We gradually headed out after watching the dancing for a bit. Two of the girls were lingering and Cas and I noticed that a man was approaching them. Warily, I went down to check that it was okay. It turned out that he was... the groom! We had been invited to join in on an Arab bachelor party!

And this is the place they told us to avoid.

Throughout the rest of the walk several more people greeted us and we noticed many improvements to what no longer merited the "garbage road" moniker, including the planting of trees, the cleaning up of mysterious desert sand, the cleaning up of garbage, and the opening of new stores -- that is, Paul and I reminisced about all this. It was cool doing so; our experiences spanned two separate years, so we were able to compare what had already changed in my year.

So yes. Friday was the exciting day, the first real Yerushalayim day.

On Saturday we mainly planned some outings for our weekends. I'll leave most of that unmentioned since you'll read about them when they actually happen. One finding from that afternoon: the elevators that have locks labelled "Shabbat" work by going to every floor one by one while the lock is engaged. This saves you pressing the button... and thus being the direct cause of "work" on the holy day.

In the evening, wanting to make Cas's amazing pasta sauce with fried apples and onions and being short on both, we headed back down the wadi to the Arab supermarkets (which are indeed open on Shabbat).

It's funny how this place has changed. Over the last year, strolling down the bare, sandy Wadi Al-Joz in broad daylight and incredible heat has been one of my most vivid and most often mentally replayed memories of Jtown. How surprised I was to see it had been converted and cleaned up and generally sterilized. I'm not sure how I feel about it: on the one hand, it's obviously much nicer to look at. On the other hand, has something of its memorability been lost -- something of the excitement and adventure I felt when walking down it even when Lyera preferred the light rail, of sitting in Paul's living room while he briefed us on "the garbage road"?
As this post winds down, here are some interesting features of an Arab supermarket. One, all the spices are in piles:

Two, everything is in the superlative:

The increase in font size on "EVER" makes this perfect

Three, they are apparently divided into different buildings; this is the fruits and vegetables shop, but the same people (Tannour) have a general groceries store that you see in the right of that photo and a convenience store just behind where this photo is taken, for a trifecta of monopolization:

We finally made and ate that pasta with some friends Paul had made at a party two floors down on the previous night. It actually ended up being three hours since we had put aside our outing-planning and left for the supermarket. I don't know if it was the long wait or the inherent awesomeness of the sauce or both, but that was one good meal.

The view out the window from the dinner table.

And now, since we went for an evening stroll around the block last night after supper, talking and chilling after the sun's disappearance and the end of Shabbat, I am able to keep up the tradition of leaving you with a cat picture. This time it is a tiny Garbage Kitten.

ballooNIM

First things first: typing is very refreshing for me right now because, for the first time in my life, I've lost my voice. When I try to talk, the best that comes out is a kind of subdued murmur, and the worst is cracking and disappearance of air altogether. I'm not having difficulty breathing, just coughing a lot. I can't tell if this is a serious problem or not. It's also hard to say whether it's better or worse than last year's dropped-in-a-foreign-country affliction, namely a constant runny nose.

I last wrote on Tuesday. Wednesday was very similar to it. Early in the morning, I got up and went to class. Hold on, scratch that. I slept in and arrived late...

That class is very interestingly structured. There are many strategies of learning a second language, and this one differs widely from the Biblical Hebrew course I took last summer. The Biblical Hebrew class was highly explicit and direct: "This is the definite article. These are its various forms and the different circumstances under which it takes each one. These are the personal pronouns." It was an intellectual rather than an immersive approach, and I like that kind of thing.

This course, on the other hand, is entirely immersive. The teacher began with a vocabulary of about five words, and with the help of picture cards, expressive intonation, and pantomiming (Hebrew "pantomima"...), has expanded to using a few dozen to communicate with us. Everything is based on association: we know the contexts in which it's appropriate to use a word or phrase, but we don't know its literal translation. Asking for one is discouraged. Sometimes this can get to be a bit of a stretch. For example, she gave us the word "lechem", which means "bread". Again, because we learn all the words by their contexts, after pantomiming failed she said, "Sandwich, sandwich" with the kind of tone you might use in Taboo when you can't say the taboo word but must make your teammates think of it. Now, Hebrew has another word for "sandwich", and "lechem" can't mean "sandwich". So those of us who are used to taking everything as equivalent and not associated end up very confused. Had I not known the word from last year's course, I wouldn't have been confused, wouldn't have asked for clarification, and would n't have guessed that it meant "bread". Similarly, when talking about masculine and feminine, she doesn't use the Hebrew words for "masculine" and "feminine" but the ones for "man" and "woman"; I guess the intention is something like making us think on the spot in a social setting: "Ah yes -- I'm talking to a woman -- I need to use this word, not that one."

With my tiny bit of Hebrew I tackled another campus cafeteria and got some chicken schnitzel. I'm really taking a liking to the stuff.

(Not so much to the classic shapeless Israeli public art.)

Nobody guessed the location of the bird from the last post, perhaps because a cheap, kitschy item from the Old City is not much of a find. It was the British military cemetery I explored a few times last year.

Later that day I went out for a walk to the Shepherd's Field (not its actual name, just what I call it after meeting an Arab shepherd child with his flock there last year). I took this somewhat uncomfortable belt pouch for my water bottle...

Walking to the Shepherd's Field was nice. There were a few parties of children around. That area is one of the ones they tell us not to go to because it's sketchy, but honestly, after walking in it half a dozen times last year, I'm not concerned. I mean, look! They have kites that look like planes!

If I hadn't said they were kites, would you have thought they were planes?

And wonderful sunset vistas.

I took another video here, but sadly, you can't hear most of what I say due to the wind. (I think I talk about the olive tree Seoren and I saw, the fire that seemed to have taken place in the field, the fact that the concrete had been flowing and driven through before it hardened, the walls around the Arab settlements, and my return to the village. You can hear some of it around 2:45.)

Also, here's one of those prickly plants I've mentioned before -- the plants that exist for the sole purpose of prickling. They're 100% prickles!

Although, actually, I was enlightened this time by seeing the odd one with some actual greenery. So maybe they do have a function.

On Thursday I was reminded of the awesome haze-filtered sunrises in Israel. It's one of the few light events in the world that lend credence to the myth that the old "bloom" effect in video games is somehow realistic.

That morning a German named Joachim left the class. He found it too easy. He moved up to the class I had left previously. But then he had studied Hebrew before. Oh, wait... so had I...

Uh oh, I just heard Larissa cough...

Oh, that's right. Larissa's here now! So are Cas and Paul and a Surprise Mystery Person whose identity we didn't know but whose room was standing empty, waiting for its occupant. They left early Wednesday morning and arrived on (what was here) Thursday afternoon. They hadn't all taken the same flight, but their different flights happened to arrive at the airport at around the same time, so they shared a sherut back.

When I got back to the apartment (after scoring some kitchenware from the maintenance folk, who, it turns out, do have a stash of stuff previous students have left behind), they were there. The SMP turned out to be Ivony (ai-VONN-ee), another U of T student. All of them soon went off to an orientation I'd been to on Tuesday while I tried to set up our wi-fi and, for the first time, saw a helicopter land at the helipad near the student village. I also "spied" on them with some binoculars my family lent me, and felt very covert. It's easy to feel covert when you're spying on the army. I ducked down low in the window so I'd be hard to spot... it was an instinct.

Then I joined them for a shopping trip at Malcha Mall, which is Jerusalem's big indoor mall.

In this shot, Paul is behind me, snoring. A candid shot of him has been placed at his disposal.

They had a new variety of lump (i.e. a new colour pattern), which I dub the Chevalier Lump.

Malcha Mall is very strange... I'd say the majority of the storefront names are in English, not Hebrew. It feels, as Larissa said, very much like an Israeli Square One. We ate in the food court; the others had some lasagna and pasta and other starchy things in an amazing-looking but very thick creamy cheese sauce, and I decided to try out Israeli sushi. In ordering it I made a slip-up in my quest to order everything in Hebrew: I pointed to some noodles and said, "Sushi vzeh," which means "Sushi and this." His next question, first in Hebrew and then in English when he saw my confusion, reminded me that you can't just order "sushi". There are several kinds and numbers and whatnot... So that was a fail. Also, Paul noticed that the fish in it was cooked, because (I think) raw fish is not kosher. (But it's very hard to follow a thorough Jewish discussion of the question.)

Then we did a lot of grocery shopping and stocked up on everything, because it's hard to get groceries on Shabbat. We bought a pack of "classic tea" despite not knowing which tea is classic in Israel.

On the way back, a New Yorker named Tim told us about his adventures volunteering in Israel on a grant. Then, because we could, we bought some wine (the Hebrew rhymes: "yayin") at a convenience store, and had a small toast to celebrate the safe arrival.

Friday was the most fun and worthwhile day yet. First, here's a bit of something I'll be looking out for: odd packaging. This is a cereal box whose photoshopping is quite poor:

The front of it looks fine, but it exemplifies a common trend you find when you actually read the Hebrew on a package. The large letters are pronounced, from right to left, K - O (likely) - R - N - F - L - K - S. So yes, cornflakes. It makes you wonder who the target audience is. Is it Hebrew speakers who just find English words really cool even if the main name of the product is not comprehensible in their first language? Is it English speakers who, like me, have learned just enough Hebrew to read a transliteration of the English word...?

Also really cool was that after class, in which we had an assessment quiz (they really need to split this class up; some of us are finding it way too slow, while others are finding it way too fast), we went to what what was described to us as "singing Hebrew".

It was in the auditorium they have here on the first level, where I often played piano last year. It was quite dim in there, and people from multiple classes were gathering. I got there early, so after a very talented pianist played Mozart's Ronda Alla Turca by heart, I played a couple of my songs for the crowd, and quit while ahead. Someone from my class (incidentally, a Chinese woman who teaches Chinese in Uganda) came up to me and said, "Luke! You are a man of many talents. You leave your book at home because you know everything, you play piano --" To which I had to interrupt, "No, I left my book at home because I absentmindedly forgot it!" But anyway, it's nice to make a friend through a door like that.

Then the main event began. A portly Israeli man stepped onto the stage (still quite dim) and stood in front of the piano. We had been given some songbooks with Hebrew lyrics, the pronunciation of the Hebrew, and English translations. He explained partly in Hebrew and partly in English that these songs were traditional, but they also played a major role in the recent history of Israel's statehood. They had names like "Kol ha'olam kulo" ("The whole world is a bridge"), a beautiful song whose entire English translation ran "The whole world is a narrow bridge / and the most important thing is not to fear at all"; "Toda" ("Thank you"); and "Yerushalayim shel zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold"). That last is featured at the end of non-Hebrew versions of Schinder's List -- not Hebrew versions, because apparently actual Jews think of it as a pop song and not the score for a dramatic liberation scene.

He led us through each song bit by bit, playing the piano parts and singing each section first to demonstrate, before calling us to join in. Even I sang in Hebrew, and I don't normally sing. This is when I first noticed my voice was going, when it was cutting out (so to speak) on some of the harder notes. But it was a lot of fun, and all the teachers sang these no doubt familiar songs in fluent and lovely Hebrew. Man, Jewish music is so cool -- the way they design chord progressions is so fundamentally different that you don't need any music theory to hear it. Every song is interesting because surprising. After we had practiced, we sang a few of the songs again in a setlist of his choosing. It was a really neat experience.

I also asked around for my old Biblical Hebrew professor, Dr. Barak Dan, and we talked for a while both in a class break and on the way out of the campus. I'm the only person from last year who returned. We talked about the differences between the courses and I mentioned the odd plural of "stuDENtim" to him. He said that some foreign words behave that way, not following the Hebrew stress, particularly if they don't sound Hebrew. "For example," he said, "I think 'balloon' would be 'ballooNIM', not 'balLOOnim'."

And on my return everyone had gone to the Old City except me and Larissa, who was napping. So it was off on our first real adventure in the city. But as it was a long day and it's now past 1 a.m., I think I'll give that its own post -- perhaps tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy a catableau.