En direct de St. John's University, Jamaica, New York...

THE SMALRUS WEB SITE v. 7.0

ISRAEL 1999

Spiritual Enhancement

Trip Journal by Spencer Ross

7/17/99
Day 2 in Jerusalem. After a long, but somewhat restless night's sleep, we got up at 8, down by 9 and ate breakfast in the hotel. They had like 50 million different cheeses there and a lot of fruit and some vegatables, some cereal, but no real breakfast stuff. So I had a bowl of cocoa puffs. Got picked up by the shuttle around 9:50 and it took us to Jaffa Gate at the old city. We waited a few minutes there for the guys from the other hotel to walk over. There are a lot of little kids running around trying to sell you a pack of postcards. Finally, the showed up and we went to our first touring destination, the Tower of David museum. Essentially, this was a timeline of Jerusalem with visuals, spread out throughout the whole Tower of David, where David founded the city as we know it. That was very intriguing and very informative. We then walked from there to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was supposedly crucified and buried, but that's according to Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox. From there, we paused through Arab alley markets and went to lunch at a falafel place. I wasn't sure that I'd like it because it's made with chickpeas. However, I realized that it was more like a gyro. It was really good. So we ate that and I'm sure I'll eat it a few more times before we leave the state. After that, we broke group and headed through the Arab quarter-up and down the maze of alley shops. They have all kinds of junk-sandals, gold+silber name necklaces (all fake), t-shirts, etc...The Israeli Arab vendors are like flies on meat. Almost all of the shops are the same, and within close proximity of each other, start to repeat selling the same products. Once a tourist shows up and shows a glimmer of looking at one product hanging from the awning, they immediately are at your side telling you to come in and look or if you want the product you're looking at, they'll take such and such off. For example, I was looking at an I.D.F. bucket had, the guy pulls me in and starts showing me all the other I.D.F. hats and when I tell him I'm not interested, he says "As you wish," yet tells me to show my parents and that he'll take 10% off. And I say no and he says "As you wish" and I leave. So after our trip in the markets we see Solero Shots, so about 3 mos. after my first Solero Shots in France, I've now had it in Hebrew in Israel. Apparently, they're so new that the majority of the vendors don't yet have the shots in. Got picked up by the shuttle and went to the hotel. Short dip in the pool and then we head back to the Plaza hotel for a short meeting w/the rabbi who's going to do the Masada service mon. Then we met Orly, David, and Ruthie at the lobby but I forgot my sunglasses so we went back up to the meeting room. Went and walked a bit and I got a pic of a Star Wars teaser w/Darth Maul in Hebrew. We at dinner at a restaurant called "Link." Great food-cream o corn, soup, spaghetti w/olive oil and garlic. Big portions and great meal. Shabbos finally ended so we went to Ben Yehuda St. while shops open. First thing I saw was the shirts saying "go fuck yourself" in Hebrew and it's not translation-it's upside down in English using right side up letters in Hebrew. Then, they went in a small Judaica shop, so I went, look, came out, and walked around Ben Yehuda St. Nice atmosphere and I also bought a coke shirt in Hebrew. While they were in the store, they got me a yarmulke w/my Hebrew name embroidered in. Neat but they had to bargin. So we walked some more, got ice cream- really strong capuccino gelatto- and took a taxi home where it was already late and we're getting up earlier tomorrow. Time for bed-Another long day coming up...