Interlude - Tel Aviv

06/30/09 12:21 AM Tel Aviv, Israel

Here we are in Tel Aviv, in a house which is … quite the place. Meeting up with our couch surfing host here in Tel Aviv was surprisingly easy: ran into each other walking down the street in the middle of the night, really. We spent a couple hours at a bar with some friends of his. Great people; very interesting, progressive and forward thinking. None of them were religious. Probably the best comment of the night came from one of the Jewish guys on the topic of baseball in America: “It’s such a strange game, I didn’t’ understand it at all. The highlight of the game was when three wieners ran around the bases.” I then proceeded to try to inform him of the finer points of baseball, of which I believe I failed miserably.

Tel Aviv is such an interesting and different city from anything that I have experienced. Maybe the most similar place would be Barcelona and Spain, but it is still far removed from that. I’m not sure what I thought a Jewish city would be, but I think I felt it would be different from this.

From the areas that I have seen, it seems like a city of almost slums surrounding ‘gems’ of elegant high-rises. It is a very dirty, bustling, vibrant city. I don’t say these things as a bad impression. I am amazingly fascinated by this city, a city where, right next to a brand new, glass window display for a high-class dress boutique, there is a crumbling, gutted, windowless housing block. It is, if anything, a city of extreme contrasts:, reflective, I think, of the whole land itself.

It is hot here. Hot as hell. And it never goes away. It is hot inside. It is hot outside. The heat is stifling in the daytime, and still present at night. You sweat. You sweat bottles. I can’t get used to a place like this. I don’t think I ever could. I’ve always complained about living in cold places, but I guess I’m made for it. I could never live in this place, though it is nice for a visit.

Tomorrow morning we are starting our day early. Have to pack up, (hopefully say goodbye and thank our host, take care of a few items, and find the Sherut Taxi to Jerusalem. From there we take another taxi from the Damascus Gate to Ramallah, West Bank and from there we can grab a taxi to Nablus. God willing, everything goes according to the sheet and goes fine. If not, we’ll have some fun! We are still not 100% about the situation we are going into at Project Hope: how many kids, ages, English level, how long and often we are instructing, but it’s all good, we just take it in stride as it comes. We have some activities ready, and sat down at a café today to get a rough outline planned. The first hurdle is, of course, introductions and beginning to get an understanding of who these kids are and where they come from, life-wise.

While we are instructing a “photography workshop”, a lot of it is going also be basic cultural understanding and exploration. But I’m very interested in the artistic possibilities of these children. If we can get them to open up and really explore themselves and their surroundings, the extreme situation that they have been raised in could really provide some amazing inspiration for them, and me as well.