Jafa

Gallery tour today. I forgot my camera (!). We took the #10 bus from Ben Yehuda to Jaffa. Let me just say, it feels absolutely empowering to ride on the Israeli bus system with an unlimited Tel Aviv bus pass...even though i am with 16 other friends ushering me towards the bus door. While driving down the coast of the Mediterranean at 8:30 AM, I passed surfers waxing their boards for an early swim, and vendors setting up pomegranates and cactus fruits for the market. Since I was put into a scenery-induced coma, when I walked off the bus I almost didn't notice the scent of fish and old-israeli-backgammon-player B.O.

That's the only thing about israel that truly bothers me. You'll be slowly walking down the tel aviv promenade. You will relish the scent of salty sea breeze and then

WHAM

cat feces

dog feces (no proud israeli would be caught dead with a plastic baggie in his hand, stooping to clean up after his mangy cur, so there is incidentally shit on every street corner)

or human feces

fish scales

schwarma

rotting mangos

OKAY. It's gone now. You pass a bakery cooling fresh-out-of-the-oven pita. You would buy it, but the guy selling them has no teeth and will probably ask too many questions like why you are visiting Israel. how old are you...would you like some tea on the couch over there...so you keep on walking and

PHEWWWWWWWW

it hits you again like a wall...a wall made of the flies eating away at a homeless man's inch-deep leg wounds.

An injured pigeon cooing in a cardboard box...its wings coated in poop.

Finally, our group dodges into a narrow alleyway, another alleyway and again until we finish our game of smell roulette and enter an air-condiditioned workshop. There are small squares of copper, mini saws, and files. We are making jewelry. The gallery owner whips out an impressive 22 inch (computer monitor) and plays a short "commercial" on the history of the Star of David which views like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I drilled a little pendant. The dude who polished the finished project scratched the copper. So it goes.

We left the workshop and met an Argentinean guide who gave us a tour of Ilana Goor's home. She is most famous for a brief stint in Vogue for selling fancy belt buckles in Bloomingdales. She has a posh home. It makes me hopeful...if I can somehow gain a wee bit of press release for some belt buckles, sell them for a gazillion sheckles...i can have a pimped out vacation home overlooking the sea with a whole room of christian relics from the byzantine empire. Mrs Goor is also a athiest, feminist, morbid, has custom-made glasses that and believer in the turkish fertility goddess, and avid art collector. She seems pretty fierce.

http://www.ilanagoor.com/

We had lunch at Dr. Shakshuka...a Tripolitan restaurant and our waiter looked like Jafar. http://drshaksuka.rest-e.co.il/

they kept on bringing out food. This ground beef thing with potato under it. Spicy chicken kababs, salads, breads, beefy stews, bean soups, and shakshuka. They gave us tea and semolina cake for dessert. We ate it in front of these genius turbo-jet friends...they're a mega version of those spritzer fans your mother bought you for summer camp..

We then walked to shuck ha pishpishim (market of the fleas) and were overwhelmed by the "cheap treasures that were endless".

Came back home. Watched Inglorious Basterds with my roommates. Tried to follow the hebrew instructions for microwave popcorn. it burned. I'm staying in tonight because tomorrow is our first day of ulpan classes. I think beauty sleep will make me look more sabra.