Jaffa and the past week

these days are starting to be very busy and go by very quickly. I've feel like I've been under a lot of stress and haven't had time for much of anything. Talking to mother has been tough to do, and I have a big project to finish up for next tuesday. I think given all the circumstances the correct phrase to say now is "oy vey", but I refuse.

Moving on, the other part of last weekends trip to tel aviv was a tour of Jaffa from a former israeli soldier who usually only does tours for VIP groups like diplomats and the like. He's also missing half of his thumb for an unknown reason, so he immidiately had my respect (or at least I was scared of him a little bit). He was actually a great storyteller and brought us all around the city of Jaffa, which is now an arab city next to tel aviv (well, it's actually been absorbed now into tel aviv so I guess is a neighborhood), but was for centuries the major port to come through from the mediterannean to travel into the middle east. After telling us some greek mythology stories, he then took us around to tell us some stories about how much turkish influence there is both in the city and around the middle east from the ottoman empire's rule for a few hundred years.

First he described during lunch about the ottoman armies using the pita and the kebab and spreading both foods all over the region. They'd often be in places with almost no water, so having the ability to put your mean right on your sword and hold it over the fire meant that you had no pots and such to cook. You could then just wrap it in a pita and eat it like that. This way you had no dishes or silverware, and no food got on your hands because you used the pita to grab anything. I thought this was interesting.

As we were walking around we saw a few mosques. Now to be honest, one of these pictures is the main mosque of Jaffa, although I'm not sure which, and it could be both. Similar to the syndrome where people of one race can't tell the differences between the facial features of another race, as I catholic I can't tell the difference between mosques. they all lookt he same to me. Seriously.




He then took us to the gates to the city of old Jaffa. The first picture is the area which was just outside the gates. As Joel described it, this was one of the things you could always count on in an ottoman city. In front of the gates, there stood an arch with running water coming in for travelers and visitors to clean themselves off. You can't really see it in the picture, but there is a very small hole at the bottom where water would run.



Next we saw the actual gates, which you can see here. It was 2 separate gates with space in between. Joel told us that in between the two gates the tax collector would collect money from both visiting caravans as well as from peasants paying their rent on the land. Peasants would never be allowed actually into the city so they were never aware of the opulent lifestyle the people on the inside were living. This double gate also acted as a second level of defense if attacked.




He also described to us all the old fashioned technologies that were used to keep houses cool in such a hot climate. As you've probably often seen, houses in the middle east are made with a dome. This is because heat rises and as long as people stayed low it was much cooler. I think this may also be why when middle easterns sit to eat they sit on the ground and not in a chair. Also Joel showed us houses with small pipes going into the house which would cool the house if any wind blew into them. He didn't tell us how it actually cooled the air, but we thought about two ways. The first is that the clay used to make the walls is very thick and the inside of it is very cool and as the air goes by it gets cooled. Also the pipes could get smaller as the go into the house, thus forcing more pressure and making it blow into the house faster. Here is a picture of this cooling strategy.



Here's another ottoman arch. I thought I'd just throw it up.


As we walked around further we went into what I think was an artist village or something based on all the art stores I saw. We also saw this piece of art which I thought was interesting.


It's a tree growing out of like a huge clay ball filled with soil which is completely suspeded by wires. It's supposed to represent the nation of israel finally growing up. Or something like that. I kinda zoned out right there. Speaking of zoning out, here's a picture of an archeological find. A long time ago, something happened here. That's all I got for you.



He then took us to a high point in Jaffa where we could see the skyline of tel aviv running along the beach. I feel like it could be miami from afar.


Here is also some ancient structure that was up there that is supposed to represent something. I think it's christian. It was remade for our viewing pleasure.



We also got a long story about why the people of israel respect the late King Hussein of Jordan, and I debated writing about it, but I'm not going to.

One more thing that I'll mention about Jaffa. You know as you're going into Jaffa because the you notice the city getting much more run down. I don't want to harp on this, and especially in this case Israel may have nothing to do with it, but the Arab city connected to a very modern city (Tel Aviv) seems very run down with empty buildings, small shops, and much more dirty. I don't really want to talk about this any more, but it's noticable.

And so ends my Tel Aviv/Jaffa experience. I hope to go back before I leave. Oh, and here is a picture of Christine wearing a green dress, sitting on a green chair on top of a green pedestal. She is one crazy bitch.



This week at MEET

This week in the program was another wild one that absolutely flew by, but I wanted to share a few stories.

First of all, people here don't drink chocolate milk out off a carton.....OK, after a few minutes of settling down, I hope you're ok to continue reading. They drink it out of a plastic bag, seen here:



I made my first student friends by asking them what these were and how I even drink them, and they thought it was hilarious that I didn't know. Just for your future travel knowledge, you bite off a corner and then suck it in. It is extremely dangerous and of course got chocoloate milk on my white shirt and then cleaned it off in the bathroom and basically was doing a wet t-shirt contest for an entire morning.

Also, it was a girls birthday this comming saturday and so some kids were singing happy birthday to her. I sang the "you look like a monkey and smell like one too" version, and the kids had all never heard this and acted like it was comic gold. I have not used that song as a joke in at least 15 years. They also thought the "high five, down low, too slow" prank/rhyme was great. This makes me realize that pretty much any joke involving an english rhyme they probably never learned about in school and will think it's hilarious. If anyone has any other ideas of stuff I could use I would love to drop it on them. I also wish I had a doctor suess book because I bet they would find that stuff pretty creative and funny.

I have a really tough time telling palestinian and israeli kids apart, especially because there are many palestinians who are much lighters skinned than I thought they would be. However, a very easy way to tell a palestinian from an israeli: israeli's will hug hello and good bye to good friends, and palestinians high five. This seems to be a pretty strict rule.

I got a free lunch from MEET every day this week. (free meal count: 16.5) Also, the Falaffel at the cafeteria I think is delicious and is only 9 sheckels ($2.25) which is practically free, but I won't count that as a free meal. I also am not counting my daily free snacks in the morning and afternoon of chocolate milk in a bag, a pastry, or some fruit. But I most certainly get my money's worth out of it.