Shakshuka, labane, kube, druze pita, sachlev, 1,000 kinds of eggplant, falafel, techina, humus with lamb and pine nuts, schug, malawach, jachnun - one of the things I love best about living in Israel is the food.

Friday we took a friend’s visiting brother to Abu Gosh. He’s never been to Israel before, and we wanted to show him how good the food can be. Abu Gosh is a large Arab town just outside of Jerusalem. It’s well know throughout the country that Abu Gosh is a great place to go for authentic middle eastern cuisine. It isn’t fancy (at least, not the place we usually go), and it isn’t expensive, but man, the food is fantastic.

Before we ordered, we were served pita bread, falafel, and seriously good olives. The first course consisted of a variety of salads, goat cheese, humus with ground lamb, and kube (ground beef with cinnamon covered with some sort of batter, fried and served with fresh lemon). Then the meat course came with skewered spring chicken, stuffed chicken, “kebab” (spicy ground beef patties), rice with lentils, and more salad. We washed it all down with lemonade served with mint leaves. After dinner, we had warm baklawa and mint tea (or, for the more adventurous, turkish coffee). Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Today, we took our tourist friend to the Dead Sea. It’s pretty cold outside here in Jerusalem, but the weather was pleasant at 400 meters below sea level. We know someone who knows someone, so we got into the spa for free. We floated around in the sulfur pools for a while (Franklin forgot to take off his rings, and his silver ring turned black/bronze), then took a stroll down to the sea itself. The Dead Sea is a bizarre place, the ground is cracked and caked with salt crystals. Today the ground looked pink, it was like being on Mars. And when you face away from the massive mountains in the background you can look over the incredibly blue sea into Jordan - hello neighbor!

Anyway, on the way back to J’lem, we stopped at the “Last Chance” Bedouin cafe. I don’t think it’s actually affiliated with the local Bedouins at all, but you get to sit on the floor on cushions around a low table, and that’s a lot of fun. Again - middle eastern food at its best. I had schewarma in a lafa - yummmm. I like it here, I think I’ll stay.

Life in Israel, best of | 3 Comments »

Really this is all your fault.

Saddened by the fact that people rarely leave comments here (not even my Mom!), I decided to upgrade my blog software.  The new version has spam filters built in, so I don’t have to approve comments anymore - making it simple and quick to leave comments here (hint hint).  But somewhere I goofed, and “upgrade” turned into “compete site overhaul.” Well, anyway, I guess it was about time.

So stay tuned as pages in the site go from one style to another.

General | 3 Comments »

We went to Netanya this weekend. The Embassy rents an apartment there, and everyone at the embassy gets a week to spend there. The trick here is this: if you invite people with you on your week/weekend, they’ll invite you on theirs, and thereby you get more time at the Netanya apartment.

It was windy, cold and rainy most of the time, but for a few hours on saturday the weather was beautiful. We all went down to the beach for a walk, to enjoy the sun and the sand and the salt air. It was perfect. Then, back to the apartment for hours and hours of lounging on the couch, scrounging for food, and watching DVDs.

And now for a game of cyber tag:

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Assistant to the CFO (Ree)
2. Computer Technician (Ree)
3. Grocery store bag-boy (Franklin)
4. Financial Co-ordinator (Franklin)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Lord of the Rings (Ree)
2. Zoolander (Both)
3. anything with Dan Erlewine (Franklin)
4. Crossroads Guitar Festival (Franklin)

Four places we�ve lived:
1. Charlotte, NC
2. Bristol, TN
3. Tel Aviv, Israel
4. Jerusalem, Israel

Four TV shows we love:
1. Firefly
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Lost
4. West Wing

Four places we�ve vacationed:
1. New Zealand
2. Italy
3. Ireland
4. Canary Islands

Four of our favorite dishes:
1. Mexican food
2. Chili’s Pesto Pizza
3. Pasta with Ree’s homemade pesto sauce
4. steak

Four sites I visit daily:
1. www.icej.org/start (Ree)
2. my mother’s blog (though I don’t know why I bother) (Ree)
3. gamecockcentral.com (Franklin)
4. FDP forum (Franklin)

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. in a 5 star hotel some place warm
2. skiing in Norway
3. Dan Erlewine’s workshop (Franklin)
4. in a parallel universe (Ree)

Four bloggers I am tagging (You’re it! Now you have to do this on your blog.):
1. Sharon
2. Mom
3. Laura
4. Charles Johnson

General | 3 Comments »

Probably, high ranking politicians in your country live far, far from where you do. Probably, they live in a big house, surrounded by a big yard, in a big fancy neighborhood. Probably, you’ll never in your life go anywhere near their personal abodes.

Not so in Israel. I guess there’s just not that much room in the country, but for whatever reason, big-time politicos tend to live smack dab in the midst of the people that elected them. Because being a politically important person in Israel carries with it a great deal of personal danger, the State of Israel does all it can to ensure that it is not possible for people with malicious intent to get near the residence of such a person, even though they live in the middle of a bunch of completely unimportant people. So, they surround said residences with security guards and block (partially or completely) all roads leading in and out.

I never really thought much about it until recently. It seems that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lives in the same neighborhood as the Embassy. In fact, he’s just down the road. You see where this is going. Actually, it really hasn’t been to bad - if you smile and are polite to the security people, they let you through. The only time we were really inconvenienced was the other night, when there was a huge media hubbub outside his house. The streets were choked with news vans, cameras, and press-people running hither and yon. All in all, it’s been an interesting experience.

On a completely different note - to curtail the ever present scourge of shopping cart theft, the larger supermarkets in the area have adopted a policy whereby you have to have a 5 shekel coin in order to use a shopping cart. Of course, they really can’t expect everyone who enters the store to have a 5 shekel coin with them (most of us are mere mortals, unlike my mother who hordes these coins so that she’s never without), so if you need a coin you can go to the service (ha!) counter, wait 15 minutes for one of the employees to decide to notice you, and hand over your drivers license. When you’re done with the coin, you just take it back, wait another 15 minutes (while your fingers turn purple from blood loss because you’re trying to hold 37 bursting-at-the-seams plastic grocery bags), and get your license back. I went to the grocery store last month, and forgot the all important last step in this routine.

You wouldn’t believe what it takes to replace a lost license here. It’s like it’s their duty to punish you - we’re talking 7th level of hell punishment here - for being such a dunce as to lose it in the first place. So I ran into the store tonight in a panic, and made my way to the service counter. Seeing that I was in a panic, the ladies behind the desk decided to give me an extra 10 minutes of waiting time in which to cool down (didn’t work). Finally, someone had mercy and listened to me. She opened the drawer, dug underneath the pens, paperclips, and general drawer detritus, and pulled out my license- hallelujah! As I walked home, happy in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to visit the dreaded Licensing Authority, it occurred to me - what exactly did I think they were going to do with my license? Throw it away? Mail it to me? Ha! No way. I bet nobody even noticed it was there. I bet that for 5 shekels, I could store my license at Mega until the end of time.

Random observation: The predominant language at the mall the past 2 times I’ve been there: Arabic.

*oh, and there are new pics in the gallery, and something new on the dream blog*

Life in Israel, best of | 1 Comment »

It started off as a lazy Sunday after a particularly lazy Saturday. Then I was struck (dare I say convicted?) suddenly from the blue about my total lack of discipline in every area of my life. I’m not exagerating here: housekeeping, exercise, time with the Lord, dietary habits, work, even this blog - I lack discipline in every single area. So now I’m trying (too hard) to make up for it - our room and bathroom are spotless, I’m making plans to start counting calories, I’ve called up friends to set up exercise times. And the other thing I always do when struck by my own slothfulness: I’m making schedules. Somehow I’m convinced that calendars and checklists are the answer. As if a piece of paper that says that I should take time out to read my Bible has one iota of influence on whether or not I’ll atually do it. I’m pretty predictable, so here’s my forecast for the future: this sudden burst of “discipline” will wear off in no more than 2 weeks, probably less. How exactly does one solve problems with self-discipline? A person with self-discipline can solve any problem by simply aplying themselves. I think I’m going to just blame my parents.

Things here are good. Laura and her mother are staying with us for a while, and that’s nice. Work is progressing well, and we’ll be able to unveil the ICEJ’s new website soon. Franklin’s year-end stuff went…well…not great, but it’s going to be OK eventually. He’s still playing on Sundays and King of Kings, and he’s still enjoying it. He had the pleasure of having a paying guitar repair client this week, and that was nice. We’re all keeping a close eye on the news to see what is going to happen with Sharon out of the political scene. Life in Israel as usual!

General | 5 Comments »