Lessons Learned

So I thought that once I was done with exams and on vacation, I would be done learning for a few weeks. But as you might expect, somehow when I get out of a classroom, the learning starts. Things I’ve learned this week:

Freeze yummy cookies so that Santa won’t eat them. I guess I didn’t really learn that one, but that was my observation when I woke up the morning of the 25^th and realized that I had put my delicious box of cookies from home in the freezer before going to bed the night before. The thinking was really that they had been out for a week and it was time, but I suppose maybe there was some subconscious Santa-prevention going on. Sort of like the board that used to be in Grandma and Grandpa’s fire place in Great Neck. In reality, I am not sure there’s a city that notices Christmas less than Jerusalem. I played tour guide on Christmas day in the Old City, admittedly not all that well, but I did talk to some shopkeepers in Hebrew. While we didn’t make it more than a few steps into the Christian Quarter, there were no signs of Christmas anywhere else, other than the massive numbers of American Jews visiting on their vacations.

Storm drains are an amazing invention. We took a day trip to Tel Aviv on Tuesday, hoping to get to an arts fair that they have twice a week and that I can’t really do when I’m in classes. By the time we arrived there late Tuesday morning, it was raining lightly. The fair was okay, but it seemed that a whole bunch of the vendors didn’t come because of the weather, and most of the ones who were there had their tables covered in semi-transparent plastic, and would lift it if you looked interested. The street the fair was on was a pedestrian street, closed all the time to traffic. It also appeared to be the garment district of Tel Aviv, but none of the garments were made yet. As in, there were at least two dozen fabric stores down this one street. Maybe more. Mom, you were missed. (Well, sort of. We would have been there a lot longer if you had been there! Perhaps Dad and I will drop you off and meet you on the other end.) Eventually, we got hungry and headed to a street with a bunch of restaurants, including one where we were hoping to go again. Walking down the street was a challenge though. It started raining harder, and we noticed that Tel Aviv streets don’t have storm drains. This is a problem. It means that in a downpour, the water all rushes down the sides of the streets, but there’s nowhere to go except downhill. We tried crossing one street, only to realize about two-thirds of the way across that without an ark or bathing suit, we weren’t going to make it the rest of the way. That’s right, we turned around and just couldn’t cross the street at that corner! We had to go across the other way, and essentially cross the other three places at that one intersection instead. When we finally saw Max Brenner’s across the street, the restaurant we had been aiming for the whole time, we were sadly disappointed to realize that the entire block of the restaurant was surrounded by a 4-6 foot wide rushing moat. (It was literally the width of the cars parked on the side of the street!) Unfortunately, sacrifices must be made for a good meal, so we had to splash through the ankle-deep water to earn the deliciousness awaiting us inside. We sat there for a good three hours, not wanting to deal with the storm drain lacking city outside. But we learned another good lesson! Dress for the weather? Not exactly.

If you’re going to get stranded somewhere, do so in a chocolate shop. Max Brenner’s is a chocolate shop first of all. They also have real food, and the soup we started with was delicious (although it didn’t dry my socks or my shoes). But for the next three hours, we sat and talked and watched the other diners around us and inhaled the aroma of chocolate. And then when we were hungry again after lunch, we had some chocolate fondue. They bring out fresh fruit, marshmallows (kosher ones, but covered in chocolate it doesn’t matter as much), and “cake” which was more like pieces of churro, or sugar coated bread. They also bring you two separate fondue bowls, so you can choose two types of chocolate: dark, milk, or white. “Dark and dark, please.” I knew there was a reason Michael and I got along so well.

Bureaucracy is awful, but more bearable in English. We took a trip to the municipality office this morning to deal with a student reduction in renters’ property taxes that we were notified about during exams, and which had to be done before the end of the calendar year. We arrived as recommended, a few minutes before the offices opened at 8 am. We left around 10:30. In between, we dealt with several clerks who all gave different answers and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English, wrote out an affidavit of monthly expenses, all in Hebrew, and successfully pulled a very Israeli “I was here earlier, so even though I left in the middle to go take care of something that wasn’t ready when I walked in, I’m not waiting in the over-an-hour-long line again so I’m next.” But we also succeeded in getting the reduction we came in for! Yay. It might have taken just as long in English, but I wouldn’t have misspelled every couple of words in my affidavit or had to have things explained to me quite as many times, quite as slowly. Success in a foreign language might be even sweeter though.

If you measure snow in millimeters, it sounds more impressive. We had heard that Jerusalem shuts down in the snow. The student services coordinator for my program warned us that the city shuts down, and when there was a little snow in the forecast, she even sent an email to the whole class, much of which is on vacation in America right now, advising us to stock up on necessities. It started snowing this afternoon! For the first few hours, it was really just pretty, but sticking on nothing but the trees. Later it made the sidewalks slushy and the streets a little slick, but the cars all pretty much disappeared. On the way to meeting friends for dinner, two double-length Egged buses drove by. Early evening, they’re usually packed. There were about five people on each bus. Everyone must have gone home early! Why? THERE WERE 10 MILLIMETERS OF SNOW!!! That’s right. An article on Ha’aretz online said that, in early evening. (There’s more now.) But doesn’t 10 millimeters sound a lot more threatening than one centimeter? Or less than half an inch? Maybe the DC area wouldn’t get so much crap for shutting down for an inch of snow if it was reported as 25 millimeters instead. Especially because Americans don't understand the metric system.

The guest blogger is too tired to add his opinions tonight (probably because he was up and at the municipality with me at 7:50 this morning), so expect some edits or a long comment tomorrow!