izzy

'm sitting on the sand. The waves quietly caress the edge of the beach 10m in front of me. An old guy has just caught a fish the size of my hand. My laptop informs me that if I were sitting a little closer to the restaurant 50m away that this beach would have free wifi. The sand here is that extra fine type that gets into everything forever. The weather is just about perfect for beach sitting and the water is not too cold to swim in. A guy just walked by wearing a sweatshirt but he's an anomaly. Tel Aviv looms behind me. I can see 6 people from where I sit. So far Israel and I are getting along just fine.

Getting here though was not as uneventful as I'd hoped. My host in Rome gave me a ride to the airport and I was there nice and early. No more missing flights for this guy. At checkin I learned that to enter Israel without a special visa or an Israeli passport one needs to have booked a return ticket. A return ticket? This is a foreign concept to me at the moment. Why would I return to where I came from when I can go somewhere new instead. Furthermore I am waiting on a number of things know where I'm even going after this. Thinking fast I find an internet connection and manage to have my credit card declined on the cheapest flight out of Israel (it knows when it's an emergency and does not work at those times). The flight was going to Belgium. Low on hope I made my way to the ticket office of the company I was flying with and told them "I need to change my flight or find the cheapest flight out of Israel some time in early December. Don't care where." The lady at the ticket counter, being not in the mood to do so much work asked me "Why don't you just make a reservation?" "What does this involve?" I asked having no idea what she was talking about. "Well" she explained "you don't pay anythin-" "Sign me up." I answered before she finished. In the end having given her only my passport I walked away with a piece of paper (that I could have printed myself) suggesting that I had possibly thought about leaving Israel on Dec 23rd. It was good enough! So I, with an army of people who's average age must have been about 75 'speedily' boarded the plane and were off ahead of schedule.

The interrogation begins the moment you're off the plane. As you leave your gate a team of people are there to ask you questions. The first time is like a practice for passport control. The questions are the same so you can get used to giving the answers. "why are you here? where are you staying? for how long?" I confidently said that I'm flying out on Dec 23rd and said that I'm staying with friends who's last names they did not even ask for. Then you walk by a fountain that reminds me of the king from the Mario Brothers movie (I'm certain nobody is getting that joke). And before you're free you get the 2nd round of questioning from passport control. This round also involves "Have you ever been to Israel before"? And when you politely ask them not to stamp your passport they give you the eye and ask again "are you SURE you've never been to Israel before?" It's at this point that you realize that you could have bullshitted the entire process.

One of the most uncommon things that you see in the streets are not just the large quantity of people in their army uniform but the fact that some of them are not just carrying but wielding their pistols as they walk around. "They are ready to shoot you" said Pavlik the guy I'm staying with "well not you but you know..."

The people are generally attractive especially coming from Italy where the average girl you see on the streets of Florence finds themselves somewhere between 'eh' and 'ugh'. Rome was better. The average around here goes somewhere between 'huhm' and 'M!mn'. 'Huhm' being that uncommon kind of look that you're not sure what to think of immediately but grows on you after a few minutes, or doesn't. Strangely enough in Italy the tourists were the most attractive while here the tourists are mostly elderly.

There are three official languages written on the street signs, Hebrew, Arabic, and English and the non official language of Russian which is found in stores and spoken widely. For the most of the locals' places though, there is only Hebrew. It makes things difficult. Whereas European languages that I don't understand I can at least read and try to sound it out and guess. Hebrew may as well be Chinese as far as my chance for understanding it goes.

The people I'm staying with so far are awesome and I think we'll have a few more nights of good times together. It's time for me to find where the rest of this beach is.