Shopping and Relaxing

Today and yesterday we didn't go tour historical/touristy sites.

Yesterday my dad had to go to Mofet. Mofet is a research institute that my dad will work with via Fulbright. Since my dad was there, my mom and I walked around some of the shopping districts near the Eden House. At Kookai, the store where I got a jacket and tank top, I got a pair of white capris. We also walked back to Dizengoff Center because it started raining. For dinner we walked north up the beach to the Tel Aviv Marina and Tel Aviv Port. We ate dinner at a beach front restaurant that was only mediocre. My dad and I had lasagna and my mom had an eggplant dish.

Today, we walked to Benedicts for breakfast. I got chocolate pancakes and they were really good. The pancakes were very fluffy and had big chunks of chocolate melted on top with powdered sugar and homemade syrup if needed. During breakfast it started pouring out and we sat in the restaurant for a while but then decided that we wanted to get back to the Eden House and took a taxi. When we arrived back at the Eden House, the internet wasn't working so I played itouch games and my parents worked on their computers. After about an hour, the rain had picked up a little and my parents went for a walk. I stayed home and watched Mean Girls. When my parents came back I fell asleep reading Fahrenheit 451. I thought I had only slept for half and hour but my parents informed me that it was now 6pm and that I had slept for two plus hours. Whoops!

Old Jaffa

After another fabulous breakfast at the same café we went to yesterday, we walked to Old Jaffa. Old Jaffa is a very historical city where some biblical events happened. There is also the Wishing Bridge with every different horoscope. To get to Old Jaffa we walked along a beach boardwalk. There were many cats sunning themselves along the beach. However, there weren't very many birds. After we got at Old Jaffa we walked through some of the ruins/streets to the Wishing Bridge. After we made our wishes we continued walking through the town looking at the streets and some of the art galleries that had opened up in the town. Thankfully it was very sunny and warm today so the walk was actually pretty nice. Not in the ruins part of Old Jaffa there is a flea market. The flea market had so much junk. For example: outdated magazines, bushels of clothes tossed on the ground, and beat up kitchen utensils. It looked like the unwanted extras from rummage. When we got back to the Eden House my mom and I fell asleep till 6pm. Because we were so tired and didn't really feel like going out to dinner my mom went to the market and bought some bread, cheese, and fresh fruits and vegetables. And of course, Halavah, a traditional Israeli dessert.

First Full Day in Tel Aviv

Today for breakfast we went to this wonderful little café. My mom and I had the muesli with fresh fruit and yogurt and my dad had some traditional Israeli breakfast with eggs and bread. At breakfast we met this nice lady, Anat, who works with politics and lives in Tel Aviv. She also has to pugs, Peggy and Oosh, they were very cute. After breakfast we went to the biggest mall in Israel, Dizengoff. We went to Dizengoff not only to look around and shop but also to get sim cards for our cell phones. It should have taken a maximum of a half and hour to get the sim cards but it took 3 hours. It took so long because their computers didn't really work and each phone contract had to be signed at least seven times. After that we came back to the Eden House and relaxed for an hour before we went out on a walk to a neighborhood with bauhaus architecture. Bauhaus style is when houses have balconies and most of them are large and rather fancy. While walking back to our hotel we stopped at a shop called, Kookai. I got a satin, pewter jacket and a tank top with flowers on it and my mom got a shirt as well. For dinner, we went to a place called The Kitchen. It was pretty good but not as good as breakfast. We had dinner with another fulbrighter from Oklahoma named Elizabeth. She didn't bring her family to Israel with her but was still a very nice lady. After dinner we got gelato again :) Our first full day was definitely an exciting one!

Traveling

While tons of families were celebrating Christmas, we were traveling across the globe to Israel. First we flew from Portland to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Tel-Aviv. All of this took a grand 20 hours. After arriving at our "bed and breakfast" at 7pm we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood and maybe down to the beach. The Eden House, our bed and breakfast, isn't quite what we expected. It is a very different type of building, the walls are rather beat up and it looks like the tile floor was put in when people first started coming to Israel. On our walk we got gelato. :) it was yummy. After gelato we walked around some more and then when we decided to go back the Eden House we got lost and spent around 45 min looking for it. Paul went all boy scout on everybody and tried to read the map logically and couldn't figure it out and kept yelling at my mom and me. He wasn't trying to yell though. We finally went into another little hotel to ask for directions, but because we didn't know our street or address, the man who was trying to help us couldn't. After another few minutes of wandering I finally said just give me the map! After my dad finally decided that I might be helpful, he gave it to me. I figured out where we were and because we had the Eden House marked on our map, I figured out where we had to go. Within 10 minutes I found the way back to the Eden House. Our first day in Tel-Aviv was definitely an interesting one.

Packing....

In this past week, packing has been the overwhelming majority of what has gone on at home. I really wanted to bring everything possible but my parents told me not to bring to much and that Israel has quite the shopping. I'll see how true that is when we get there. We leave in around 19 hours and I'm almost done packing. Today we also dropped Mr. Gryff, our cat, at Camille's house, where he will be staying while we are away. I was sad to say goodbye but he also looked quite content at the Fairbairn house. However. the hardest part of leaving was definitely saying goodbye to all of my friends.