Hey, everyone. So, it's been a week since I wrote, and that's not good because things begin to pile up and get very hard to keep track of. This last week will be covered in (at least) two instalments: the weekdays (Sunday through Thursday) and the weekend. The latter may be split. I dunno.
The week itself was quiet, and the weekend jam-packed. First, a random picture from Sunday morning to set the mood. This broken fork is not exotic except insofar as it defies our perception of continuity:
On Sunday after class, we went to a Messianic Jewish church called King of Kings in downtown Jtown with some other people. Cas had researched it following a recommendation that we go to such a congregation. "We" here means me, Larissa, and Cas, since Paul and Ivony went instead to mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Larissa and I felt uneasy walking into the mall that housed the pavilion. In a malodorous food court at the bottom was a door that led into a churchy (but not cathedraly) hall, where a woman excitedly greeted us. Inside the sanctuary, structured like a lecture hall, we all sat quite near to the stage. The room began to fill up.
Before long the worship team came out to some possibly recorded applause (there was applause, but we didn't see anyone clapping). There was a brief speech from the dapper fellow leading it, hyping up the crowd, before they launched into some well-played but terrifically bland and loud worship music. Better was when they did a couple of songs in Hebrew. As I wrote in the last post, the odd melodies and chord progressions of Jewish music are more interesting to my ears.
Then there was a greeting and reading in what proved a very odd experience: an anglophone speaking Hebrew rapidly and easily, but with a practically American English pronunciation of the sounds. Eventually the pastor came out to deliver his sermon.
There aren't many things that can make me seriously frustrated in this world. Two such things are myself, and Christians who preach a message I think isn't very Christian. Of course, I know that most of them would say the same thing about me. The thrust of the message was that giving testimony is requisite for salvation, and what I found particularly poorly thought-out was the challenge, "Why would God want you on His side if you don't give testimony?" To me it came across as a kind of threat, and also a proud consideration that he or any other Christian had performed "the action" that would make God want them on His side. Cas also noticed some other things that were iffy.
When the worship team returned and the pastor prayed that as many people as possible would be tuning into the music online, I felt somehow that this was not in fact a Messianic Jewish congregation but some other denomination in disguise. I don't know which.
Luckily, that's all the negativity I have for this week.
We walked back and had what is called "shaksuka", a dish we'd never heard of before. Kind of like an eggy, main-course bruschetta. Very good indeed. And Cas and Lars saw Mamilla, the high-class shopping and arty district just outside Jaffa Gate.
I say "arty" because they often have exhibitions of art under various themes. Last year they combined musical instruments and the human form. I'm not sure what the theme is this year. For example, they have this learned owl.
And these dignified cats.
Walking back beside or through the Old City at night is an experience I missed a lot back in Canada.
This floating beam of light is in fact a huge crane.
Cas was enthralled by the way the light revealed the various depths of this palm tree.
We finally got back to the student village, in time to see how the cats here manage to get enough water. They simply wait for the sprinkler system to turn on and off...
Monday's random picture is this surprisingly unpleasant-sounding chocolate bar brand sold in the school cafeteria. Have you ever thought to yourself, "I would love some dark choc-cookies"? I thought not.
There's little to report from Hebrew class, except that we're really motoring along. We learn new and important vocabulary every day and constantly practice reading and talking to each other. The teacher, Ateret, uses flashcards, props, jokes, songs, dances, pantomime, and whatever else is necessary, so that it sometimes feels like a kindergarten class, which it should since we're essentially kindergarteners in Hebrew.
When I got to class, my usual spot was taken, so I went and sat on the other side, beside an excellent student named Caper, from Virginia. We quickly found out we enjoyed each other's conversation, and next thing you know, we had planned ice cream and a secretive invitation to a Canada Day party that afternoon (secretive because, as I just said, she's from Virginia). The Canada Day party had been planned by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, who gave us our funding in the first place.
After class, we secured some ice cream at a local joint and walked and talked. I didn't introduce Lars and Cas and Paul, since I presume my readers know them or at least of them, but here are some things to introduce Caper: She speaks very good Arabic and Spanish as well as English; she's here doing research for a project on Jordan as part of her international relations studies; she plays and sings Regina Spektor's songs on piano; she's witty and, against all odds, doesn't like knaffa. In the end she couldn't come to the Canada Day party due to something with friends, so Lars and I continued on our own.
The party was quite an odd affair, but an enjoyable one. Two refreshments were served: ice cream and wine. There was an introduction by a few officials of the university, telling us how much they liked Canada and sharing their Wikipedia research on the celebration of Canada Day, which everyone toasted with wine (but Lars and I toasted with ice cream). They also had these napkins:
So that, you know, you can pay honour to the flag by mopping up your spills with it! Anyway, we saw Cas and Paul there too, had a little wine, and moved on. I wanted to show Cas and Lars the roof of the Boyar Building where the international students study, because it has some great views.
Actually, we found out that this included a view of the Canada Day party. Lars shouted but they didn't hear her.
Finally, we decided to explore the botanical gardens on campus. These gardens are special not only because they are "based on a phytosociological concept advanced for its time" (from a sign explaining the intentions of the professor who designed it to represent the various flora of Palestine), but also because they're one of the weird places of the world where the shortcut (to class in this case) is also the scenic route.
We admired this extraordinarly tall grass:
This innocent-looking but secretly thorny tree:
These sunset overlooks:
This beetle:
And this grass that always reminds me of a line I've used once or twice, "grass the colour of lions", which I may as well confess right now is stolen from Anne Lamott's excellent book Bird by Bird.
Also of interest is this tree we encountered on the way home with branches of unlikely parallelhood:
And Tuesday began with clouds. Clouds! No rain, of course -- the travel guide Lyera lent me lists the average rainfall for June and July as 0.0 inches -- but clouds! For comparison, here's what the sky looked like when I went to sleep and when I woke up:
Tuesday morning was relatively uneventful. The main thing that changed was that our Hebrew teacher switched (intended to be a regular thing): instead of Ateret, we had Nomi -- it is indeed the Biblical "Naomi", but she pronounces it "Nomi" and spells it without the "a" in English -- who is, although very good as well, more of a slideshow person than a flashcards person. As Caper summarized it, "Ateret is willing to make a fool of herself to communicate with us." We were to have Nomi for two days.
I also visited the botanical garden again, and showed Caper the roof of the Boyar Building, since "I've never been on the roof of any building."
After class, Lars, Paul, Caper, and I headed off to the Israel Museum, which is a very large and excellent museum on the opposite end of town. Cas was to join us after his class, but as he had a late class that day and it's a long trip here anyway, the chances of his joining us without incident seemed slim. Anyway, since they were open late this night, off we went.
The thing was doomed from the beginning, because when we went in and asked when they closed, after a bit of confusion between their Hebrew and our English they told us it was four o'clock. Four?! we said; your website said eight! And then we asked someone else, and they said eight, and then yet another person said four, and in any case they weren't selling tickets anymore. We hung around the gift shop for a little...
...and just as we were leaving to spend the day in the Old City instead, I decided to use the wifi there to check whether I was or was not insane regarding my memory of the opening hours. And I saw that on Tuesday, they were in fact... open FROM four. FROM.
Ten minutes later, we were in and trying to decide what we could see while waiting for Cas that he wouldn't want to see once he got here (otherwise we'd have to see it twice), and yet that would be interesting enough for our perusal. We sat on these hands to ponder the question.
As if these weren't disturbing enough, we discovered a machine ideal for traumatizing the children who are expected to play on it:
This was enough to convince us to check out the contemporary art exhibit.
The first thing we saw I will attempt to describe as though it were meaningful when in fact it was not. It was a kind of video projected on the floor, and began with a tiny naked woman floating away on a body of water, caught on a set of what looked like peas (and Lars infelicitously compared to sperm) that were arranged in a slowly unravelling spiral. Something must have been wrong with my eyes, because I thought the spiral was unravelling in a forever kind of way, somehow internally regenerating itself, but the others pointed out that it was actually getting smaller, and that this no doubt symbolized that the world is temporary. When they were all gone, a new vision appeared before us: a close-up of some watermelons. As it slowly zoomed out and rotated, it became apparent that the peas were in fact watermelons through and through, and sure enough, soon the naked woman came up ("Why couldn't it have been a naked man?", someone said), surrounded by watermelons from which she had apparently taken too many bites, doubtless the cause of the sleepiness into which she had since descended, only to drift endlessly, cylically, out to sea.
Most of the art was like that, or worse. Paul revealed (what none of us knew) that he had taken two semesters of art class, and he pontificated on a piece of rough wood that had been juxtaposed with a nice, clean plank. "They are made of the same materials, and yet they are so different." We were impressed.
Actually, there was one cool piece of art: a painting of fourteen Israeli soldiers arranged at a table in what looked like an impromptu mess hall in a country building, looking for all the world, as the sign confirmed, like the famous painting of the Last Supper. Like Jesus's, it said, their lives could have been snatched from them at any moment. It was very nice: realist and thought-provoking.
A phone call to Cas revealed that he was yet a long way off, so we moved on to the next most/least interesting thing: reconstructions of synagogues. (Partway through this is the point at which I discovered I could get away with taking pictures in the museum.) There was a neat white Caribbean synagogue with sand on the floor, a dark Indian synagogue, an Italian one that felt like a Catholic church...
We sat in here awhile to rest and reflect.
The grilles at the top are the sadly segregated women's section.
There was also a very coolly decorated German synagogue. They had preserved some parts of the roof and walls and had replicated others.
Guess: How many of these things are real animals?
Also, I won my own squirrel challenge by discovering the squirrel-shaped feet of this pot (they may not look like squirrels, but a little board nearby said they were). So there are in fact squirrels in Israel. However, to be fair, this item is from the Americas, so these are really Mayan squirrels.
Around this time Cas confirmed that as he had to rest for a long trip tomorrow and was feeling flu symptoms, he wouldn't be coming to meet us. So we moved on to the truly interesting things: the Shrine of the Book and the Model of Old Jerusalem. Both of these things I've written about last year, but here are some pictures.
Does this look convincing?
We then visited a temporary exhibition on Herod the Great (which was less interesting than it was claimed to be) and peeked at the archaeology section. By this time it was getting late and we were pretty hungry and tired, so we stopped at the restaurant there. They were a bit pricey, so I suggested we go to a Chinese restaurant I knew of. The others were somewhat unsure whether we would offend by leaving after sitting down and getting a menu, and I reassured them we would not, and the instant we got up, two waiters approached us to ask us why we were leaving. Well, we told them the truth.
The Chinese restaurant (incidentally called Mandarin) was my favourite part of the day. Israeli Chinese food turns out to be quite good, and the service was nice, and best of all, we all talked and got to know each other better. You can know people for a long time, and in certain contexts they surprise you. And sometimes having first impressions in unlikely places is better than in a controlled, comfortable environment. Probably the most fun was when Paul conceded to Lars that he and his siblings wouldn't joke about an ugly person they met, unless perhaps said person was monumentally ugly.
I said the service was nice, and I was thinking of when I asked for lemonade (the waitress insisted on the Hebrew pronunciation, "limonadah") and was told that there was something new or fresh about it. When it came, I took a sip, and discovered to my surprise that it was warm. Just as I was setting it down, a second waitress appeared from nowhere and ambushed us to ask me if I was sure the limonadah was okay. It was.
We walked back through the downtown area and discovered some competing groups of street musicians in interesting garb.
So that was Tuesday.
The following morning I was treated to a nice scene of the watering system in the botanical gardens...
A potluck was planned for that night, and since that was to occupy most of the evening, it wasn't really possible to commit to anything for that afternoon. So a few of us took another class member -- actually an interesting person, Luka of Slovenia who researches and teaches linguistics (Hebrew balshenot) at the university -- up on his offer to do a psycholinguistics experiment. It was funny how similar the poster was to U of T's: "Are you a native speaker of English? Would you like to participate in a linguistics experiment and make 30 NIS/HOUR?"
The experiment itself was fascinating. We were given a screen on which there would be a sentence, all the letters replaced by dashes, and no spaces visible. When we pressed the spacebar, the first word would change from dashes to letters, and when we pressed it again, this word disappeared and the next one became visible. So we read the sentence one word at a time, and at the end there were two questions: we were to rate the difficulty of understanding the sentence on a scale from 1 to 7, and then we were asked a semantic question. For example, "The surprisingly panicky copilot was prepared to perform every manoeuver that his often absent pilot was before loading the cargo onto the plane." Then we would be asked, "Was the copilot a calm man?" or something similar. [Explanation of experiment masked until experiment has been run.] I was the slowest to finish by a good margin, probably because I was overthinking things...
Afterwards, Luka took us up to the roof of the same building (noticing a theme in this post?), because the view, he said, is the best on the campus.
And therefore you get another panorama (hopefully you can click to expand or download it):
And finally, a shot of the two delightful people with whom this all happened. There was one with all three of us, but it didn't turn out, so you can imagine me.
I had lost my binder at some point earlier, so after grabbing some lunch Caper and I did our homework and she taught me the Arabic alphabet, and then it was off to the potluck. The potluck turned out to be very crowded and loud (it was Paul's idea -- he actually made a Facebook event for it, too), and I remembered that I'm not actually a people person but a shy person, and so Lars and Cas and I largely stayed in the back rooms and talked. Then, we went for a refreshing walk, and ran into Caper on the way. So we all walked and talked... see what I mean about the week being quiet?
At one point while heading downhill, I pointed out that this means there'll be an uphill for us in there somewhere, and wondered if we'd be up for it. "Up for?" Cas quipped. "In any case, we're in for!" Which reminds me of a lame pun I made up yesterday based on the fact that in Israel all the sheet paper has two, not three, holes: "Why couldn't the Israeli binder record a studio album? Because it was two-ring."
Cas climbed a tree we had identified as ideal for sitting in, and an accidental misuse of a camera setting produced this cool shot:
Finally, here's a night view from my window. Before I go to bed each night, I look out my window to remind myself of where I am...
The next day Ateret was back and we had the chance to take advantage of some weekend (remember, Thursday is the weekend) opening hours; our options included Yad Vashem and Machne Yehuda (a shuk (a(n open-air) market)) in downtown Jtown that covers two parallel streets and everything in between), and since Cas was going to Yad Vashem with his class we opted for the shuk. Caper was originally going to join us, but then she went to a weekly weekend (weekendly?) engagement and so Cas and I explored it.
To begin with, some fish. We thought we might, in an alternate life, buy this guy and bring him back and put him in a bag on the table just for the sake of people's reactions. Predictions: Paul would say "Woah!" and the girls would scream. Hey, I said in an alternate life. We're not that mean.
Besides, I hate fish. I would scream too.
But have you ever wondered what a fish looks like on the inside?
The cool thing about Machne Yehuda is that, unlike the Arab markets in the Old City, it's essentially frequented solely by Israelis who are actually looking to buy groceries and, to a lesser degree, arts and crafts. In the summer it's open quite late, and at the end of every day and especially at the end of the week the food prices drop phenomenally.
We visited a pottery shop and wandered around, generally amused and fascinated. For example, can you spot how this shopkeeper inflates his stock?
I had one of my first experiences speaking Hebrew in the field when I asked a shopkeeper, "Matai atem osim haknaffa?" ("What time will you make the knaffa?" -- although I meant to ask it in past tense) and he replied "Lo yode'a" ("I don't know").
We found some actual cakes of halva -- real, fresh, delicious-looking, various-flavoured halva -- that ran some four hundreds shekels a cake on the higher-priced ones. Cas and I got a small slice of one to split:
(That's 99.00 shekels per kilo, and the cake is way more than one kilo.)
Then it was necessary to get some refreshing drinks. So we found a place called Café Aroma, which I have actually eaten at in Toronto as well! I didn't recognize it by the name, but I recognized it the instant they included this with the order:
The halva was SO GOOD and SO MUCH BETTER than the dry stuff you buy in the grocery store. I don't know if I can ever eat that stuff again. I just don't know.
Cas liked the geometry and opening-into-sky-ness of some buildings across the street, so we took some pictures. I forget who took this one.
Then we left the shuk proper and explored a few of the shops. In a game shop, we found this amusing game, among many others of its type:
And, wonder of wonders, we found Playmobil!
Here's a machine that logicians would have a problem with, as it is both super and yet inherently superior to itself.
In this toy shop, they also had a guitar, which Cas asked them to take down to see if it was any good. It was extremely out of tune, and fifteen seconds after he tuned it, it was out of tune again. He put it back.
As we walked around, we also discovered a mime. A tiny child high-fived her after much straining to stand high enough and finally having to jump, so that when he finally succeeded I exclaimed what Ateret exclaims a thousand times a day in class: "Metsuyan!" ("Excellent!") She also wanted a picture with Cas:
Larissa called to say she was out of class early and would be joining us, and while we waited we found a shop called Mania. To our amazement, they carried two things. The first was six-shekel beer (and 500 mL, too!). The other was a package labelled "bacon". Since we know they don't have pork in Israel, we wondered what kind of meat it was and took it to the counter.
The cashier couldn't tell us but I was able to ask of a passing woman, "At yoda'at anglit?" ("Do you know English?")
She replied, "Maybe," and examined it.
"What animal is it?" we asked.
"It's pork," she replied, and handed it back to us.
So we now have pork bacon to cook up for a special occasion. We've been perplexed by what kind of store this must be. There was a lot of Russian packaging, which might be a clue, but we don't know what that tells us.
We went to the train station to meet Larissa.
Here a group of young women sat down on a bench where we were sitting, and we got up even though there was a little space, and one of them exclaimed, "Lolololololo!" ("Nononononono!") and gestured that we could sit back down. It was funny to see how similarly people act around the world, Cas observed.
When Lars joined us, we went for a second walk-through in search of a restaurant.
We bought about twenty pitas for a total of sixteen shekels. Most of the pitas have since gone bad. Never again.
And we encountered this funny old man whose function we're not sure of:
Actually, after that trip, all his equipment fell over and so did his box of donations, so we had to help him pick it up. It seemed to be okay.
We encountered an impromptu drumming/humming band. At least one of them looks like he doesn't want to be photographed.
Can you find the typo in this highly reflective sign?
The area is really nice...
We found a couple of restaurants. There was one where we couldn't tell if it was a restaurant or a coffee shop, so I asked, "Mis'ada o cafeteria?" ("Restaurant or cafeteria?"), which turned out to be a stupid question because a cafeteria is the same thing in Hebrew and English (I should have said "bet cafe", "house of coffee"). At another, I asked someone, "Efo mis'ada tovah?" ("Where's a good restaurant?") and he gestured to his own restaurant, but close inspection revealed that he was likely mistaken. Finally we decided to give up on finding a good restaurant here.
Outside we found both this Engrish:
And this band of stray cats akin to the one in Aristocats:
We crouched for so long, fascinated by the cats, that people began taking pictures of us.
Jerusalem in the evening, even new Jerusalem, is so pretty.
We continued to walk and explore, and ducked into a thrift shop for notepaper, a mat to put in front of the sink, and other things. We also discovered that, contrary to our lifelong assumptions, "IQ" stands for "Incredible Quality":
The streets in downtown Jerusalem are really cool. Many of them are just pedestrian walking zones, with rails down the middle for the occasional light rail train. Crowds tend to gather and listen to music and talk and shop, and the atmosphere is just really enjoyable on a cool evening.
Finally we settled on a classy European-looking joint where they had salads with (can you guess it?) free refills.
This is an atypical shawarma:
This is what everyone in Israel calls a "salat":
And these are young chicken hearts (sorry, Caper) that Cas ordered:
I actually lost my appetite partway through, and Lars never finishes a meal anyway, so we got it packed up and went. Actually, even though it wasn't busy by this time, it took about four tries and forty minutes for them to finally come pack it up and another couple tries for them to bring us the bill. We decided to tip very little. Cas asked if they could bring the machine over so he could pay by credit, and the waitress gave him a look like he was crazy. "The machine?!" she laughed. We weren't sure what it was. Do they not have mobile card machines here? Anyway, because of this, Cas had to tell her how much we were tipping, and when he said "Five percent" (generous, in my opinion, considering the service) the waitress kind of stormed off.
A minute later, a man came out who was probably the host or manager or something, and apologized, first in Hebrew and then in English, for not speaking English very well. "Ein davar!" ("No problem!") I replied, and he gave us the thumbs-up. I'm really liking this Hebrew-practicing business.
We walked through Mamilla on the way back and Larissa bought some t-shirts. The ones she had, she said, were not appropriate for the field trips the class was taking. Sadly, two stores (Foxx and Gap) had only translucent shirts, tested by holding a finger up to the fabric and being able to see it from the other side, so she finally settled for some American Eagle which works but seems to be getting her honked and whistled at ever since...
There was more art:
And people giving public concerts:
And finally it was time to go back home through the Old City. The lights they have strung up in these photos are very similar to the ones I saw last year just before Ramadan started, so we took it as a sign.
The streets were relatively bare but for the people we were following and a couple of crews probably on their way to this:
In the Arab district one walks through on the other side, they had lights too, including the moon and star that proved the connexion to Ramadan.
This is also the site of the Arab bachelor party. The place where they had held it was now so depressingly desolate and surprisingly small...
So that's all. Soon: Friday and Saturday.
I can't leave you with a cat picture, because they weren't the last ones I took this time and I have no intention of copying and pasting. But if you will accept a one-letter difference, you can have a can picture. And not just any can, but the oddly tall and thin cans they have here.
Layla tov -- good night.
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