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February 20, 2004
soon on the wing
sorta baffling that this is my last evening in israel. part of me is sad, especially since i finally broke the bike out of the box and put it together and rode around tel aviv a bit, should have done more of that but next time will suffice. i'm at ran's house, had dinner with him and his father at his father's office. ran's father provides security stuff for the israeli defense force, metal detectors and portable lighting rigs and stuff. after posing a question to senior rimon about whether israel is worse then it was 3 years ago, i learned where ran got his oratory ability. the answer was insightful and way too complicated to go into here. while he was talking part of me realized that i will have to go home and attempt to translate this experience into spanish. gonna be a challenge.
last night we went out, hit some bars, ran into evan from the tour with some soldiers he made friends with, then played some pool (i'm way off my game, steve is gonna rock me). got in around 4 am, so i slept till 11. glad that i'll soon be away from living at that hostel, it's full of people who live there almost full time, men who work in restaurants and stuff like that, not really a rough lot but just kinda weird.
so some more interesting observations about israel:
every building has to have a bomb shelter built into it. every house, every shop. ran's mother said they couldn't get their dog to go down into the shelter until the shelling from iraq during the first gulf war.
many people over here see the u.s. invading iraq as a good thing. i still don't, but it was interesting to hear their perspective, that they truly believe it's lowering terror. my perspective continues that it was done in such a duplicitious and slimy manner, notwithstanding the question of whether the u.s. has any authority to begin with to make such actions, that it will make things worse in the long run for both the arab people over here as well as us back home.
i hate not being able to read street signs. a lot. if/when i come back to learn, i'm gonna focus so hard, just so i can know which sign is for the bathroom.
ran mentioned that he thinks hebrew is pretty worthless for me to learn, outside of wanting to do so because of my heritage. he's totally right, but hebrew makes more sense then basque, which i was considering learning, which is even more useless.
tomorrow we're going to see the retaining wall they are building between here and palestine. i never made it into palestine, jenka will surely give me shit for that, and i'll deserve some of it. i think i'll feel more comfortable doing so next time, especially if i have hebrew on my side to communicate.
after that we're going to a mall to look for used tshirts. from the wall to the mall: the multiple personalities of israel. hehe.
for those outside of reno who read this, i got my first cover story. check it out.
Posted by bendan at February 20, 2004 09:04 AM
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