Rosie's Travels: Arrived in Tel Aviv!

(HA! Get it?!)

I arrived in Tel Aviv Thursday morning and so far so good! Eric and I have had a great time exploring the city and hanging out with Eric's family friend, Ron, and his family. On Thursday we headed into Tel Aviv in an attempt to keep ourselves awake for as log as possible (in order to get ourselves on Tel Aviv time as quickly as possible). Once Ron dropped us in Tel Aviv we walked down Sheinkin St., passing tent cities, small clothes and jewelry shops, restaurants, and cafes until we hit Carmel Market. The market had TONS of people and almost everything ever thought of to buy. There were tables full of underwear, clothes, sunglasses, handbags, menorahs and other jewish paraphernalia, candy, fruit, bread, cheese, spices, toys, sports equipment, kitchen supplies, and much more, I'm sure. In the market they also had places with cups filled with cut up fruit and you could pick one out and they would stick it all through the juicer for you right there (I didn't do this but need to go back because I've been thinking about that juice for days!) After walking through the whole market we headed down to the beach where we stuck our feet in the water and sat down for a bit. Even though I was extremely exhausted by that point, the heat stopped me from falling asleep on the beach so we decided to try to get back to Ron's house. After buying a glass of lemonade (in HEBREW!-- props to Eric) we set out to look for the right bus, number 55. After finding about a million other buses we finally asked one of the bus drivers if he knew where the 55 stop was (well, we actually asked where the "five five train station" was before switching into english). After asking 5 or 6 bus drivers who claimed to have never heard of the 55 bus we finally found a driver who said his bus could take us to the 55. After some confusion about the fare, the correct stop, the correct direction, our bus transfer, and where our final stop was, we finally made it back to Ron's house. I showered and then slept for 14 hours. It was awesome.

On Friday we went back into Tel Aviv and met Eric's friend Sam, who is studying at Tel Aviv U this semester. We walked forever. (Or what felt like forever in the heat and humidity). We went to a park, walked along the beach, went to a huge, confusing mall, had falafel for lunch and then once again tried to manage the bus system (slightly more successfully this time). We had a lovely time and got back to Ramat Gan in time for shabbat dinner with Ron's whole family. It was a crazy dinner that reminded me of dinner at home with all the loud conversation and teasing going on. After dinner everyone separated to go out for the night. Eric and I went with Ore to a lovely pier in Tel Aviv.

Today (Saturday) we had a calm day by the beach. Not too eventful which was a nice rest before we head off to Turkey early tomorrow morning.

This is a view of Tel Aviv from the beach (Thursday). The water of the Mediterranean is ridiculously warm, and much more bearable than the outside air. Today I even went in all the way!

A bunch of the parks here have work out stations with all sorts of work out equipment (stationary bikes, bars for chin-ups, and a bunch of things I cannot define or describe). This is Sam, Eric's friend from Tufts on an elliptical-like machine.

Tent city. I didn't get a chance to talk to anybody (it was pretty empty during the work day) but I might go back to see if anyone will talk to me about what they're doing.