Friday, August 20, 2010

Eat Pray Love? How about Eat Eat Eat.


Shalom from Israel, Y'all.

Warren's niece is attempting to teach me Hebrew and I'm trying to teach her English. I'm "winning" in the sense that I have such a hard time with that ccchhhhhhh sound, and such an inability to grasp new languages that she, in desperation, is coming up with ways to communicate with me. Today, after a good long frolic in the Mediterranean, she gestured at me and then said, after searching for it, "Beautiful!" And I got all choked up and told Warren that his niece told me I was beautiful. And he said, "You are!" And while I was busy getting stillmore choked up, Warren asked his niece, in Hebrew, what she'd actually said to me. Apparently she was trying to tell me my TOENAIL POLISH IS BEAUTIFUL. Okay, I can accept that.

We are having a great time. I said, before heading over, that growing up in NJ prepared me as much as anyone can be prepared for a full-immersion Israeli experience. After 17 hours of flying, broken up by 8 hours of layovers in Atlanta and Paris, I got stuck in the passport line in Tel Aviv behind a group of Russians that were having a very difficult time getting their paperwork in order. Finally it was my turn, and the young passport stamper guy tells me two things:

1) Never get stuck behind Russians. They're the worst to deal with.
2) (After noting I was born in NJ) "Oh, from Jersey? It's a lot like that here."

Boy I'll say. From the fashion crimes to the pushy lifeguards, to not understanding a goddamn word anyone is saying, I feel almost like I simply took an extra-extra long flight to South Jersey. Although the water is prettier (apologies my beloved Atlantic) and the food, oh god theFOOD. Anyway, I'm not going to post too many words while I'm on vacation but I am hoping to put some pictures up as I go. And so, today, images from the open market and the beach. I should be a professional vacationer. I'm really quite good at it.








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