I'm baaaaaaack.

back on the kibbutz until mañana in the morning. i then go to jerusalem for the weekend.



Well, it’s been an interesting week of adventuring.

I think the best part (minus, of course, my time in the Azrieli Center if Oz is reading this…and speaking of random shout outs to specific readers, “Hi Abraham!!!”) for me was a certain moment in Haifa. I was totally bored as fuck, as frequently happens when you spend a week with no one but yourself, so I decided to go to the mall. I love that I still haven’t checked out the Bahai place, or the immigration museum, or that fucking enormous Beit Dagon thing, and yet I’ve been in basically every mall in Haifa. (I looked into what the Beit Dagon thing is, cos I figured something so fucking enormous must be really exciting. Turns out it’s like the history of grain or something like that. Wow. I guess they were running low on museum ideas?)

So I’m walking through the mall, window shopping. I can’t really buy Israeli clothing because a lot of it is really weird. I mean that in a nice way. I like Israeli clothing, I just don’t think I could pull it off in the US, and since I’m going back to the US for at least two years I don’t wanna look weird. So I’m walking and looking at things, at people. And I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, guy selling candy, woman with a weird bag, lady cleaning floor, Ewok-like guy that I recognize working at that bar, group of soldiers chatting, woman—wwwwaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiitttttttttt.” So then I spent like two minutes trying to figure out who I know that looks like an Ewok, and then I was like, “Holy shit, that guy was a soldier in my Birthright group.” Once I remembered the connection, the name came back to me instantly. I then spent the next five minutes trying to decide if I should go up and say hi. Part of me was like, I don’t know that guy beyond his name and I know he doesn’t know my name, so this could potentially be extremely awkward, but the other part of me was like, fuck it, I’m leaving this country in a week and I doubt I’ll ever see this guy ever again so I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I feel like, no matter how awkward. And besides, I was really early for the movie and had time to kill.

So I ended up going up to him and speaking to him in Hebrew.
Me: Uh, your name is Dani, right?
Him: Yes….?
Me: Ummmmm……I was on Taglit with you.
A shocked expression on his face, and then a surprisingly pleasant and not-unbearably awkward conversation followed, during which I learned what he had been doing for the past few months and his post-army trip plans (which, come to think of it, is ALL I know about this person since beforehand I didn’t know/remember even the most minor detail about him besides a mineral water-related story), and I talked about what I had been doing in Israel. The BEST part though was when he said in Hebrew something like, “So how did you know I was here?!” At which point I wanted to grab his head and bash it into the bar, yelling, “No, you idiot, the point is that I DIDN’T, that’s why this is so weird!” But instead of doing that, I just blushed because I thought maybe he thought I had actually gone out of my way and had tracked him down. No, no dear, if I absolutely had to waste time tracking down someone in Israel it’d maybe be Yehudah Levi, but it definitely wouldn’t be you since I only just remembered your very existence two seconds ago, and I’m pretty sure the same can be said vice-versa.

Anyway, I just thought that was weird. During my one week on Taglit I bumped into someone I knew from Northwestern in a huge crowd in Jerusalem and met someone who is actually a neighbor but who I didn’t know before, but during my 4 ½ months in Israel on this stay this was the first time I randomly bumped into someone I “know.”


Right now I’m trying to make a video, and I’m calling it, “In a time when…..” and nothing happens. Remind me. I can’t do it here in Israel cos it requires too much coordination and I need internet access and a place where I can listen to the same songs over and over again, and I don’t have both in the same place here. Whereas when I’m back in LA for the week, I can just do this in my room once my parents have gone off to work (because, let’s be honest, what parent wants to hear the soundtrack to “Kingdom of Heaven” on repeat?)


Another joyous moment from my grand tour? Maimonides’ Tomb in Tiberias. I went on Shabbat since I had nothing else to do and I dressed appropriately and all that jazz. So I cautiously went up the path to the tomb and I sat on the women’s side of the tomb for a few minutes, reflecting and all that jazz. During the second evening of Birthright the rabbi took a couple of us who wanted to see the tomb, and I remember how I thought it was so cool and all that jazz. So I’m just sitting there, remembering various memories I now have of Israel and feeling very calm.

I get up to go, but before I leave the tomb complex I decide to have a pee. But the bathrooms are locked because OBVIOUSLY people don’t pee on Shabbat. So I turn around to head out the door, and then I notice for the first time that there is a homeless guy passed out in the middle of the pathway. Like seriously, I must have been really concentrated on something else when I came into the complex cos this guy was like RIGHT there. Sprawled out. Totally caught by surprise, I let out a blood-curdling scream. I thought the guy was dead, the way he was sprawled out like that. And suddenly the homeless guy’s head pops up, his eyes all bugged out, because apparently my screams can bring people back from the dead, and he starts screaming a less-than-manly shriek. Which, of course, sets me off on more screaming. I’m absolutely petrified, screaming like someone is simultaneously stabbing me, kicking me in the head, and giving me Indian Burns on my arms. So the two of us are just screaming and screaming, and finally I just turn and start sprinting down the path out the door. On the way, an orthodox man came running and asked me if I was okay, but I just kept running in the other direction.

I finally get out of the tomb complex and I stand there just catching my breath. I look to my left and there’s this orthodox guy about my age just standing around near the entrance and an awkward conversation ensued.


What is it with me and screaming? On the way back from Tel Aviv today (which time? I woke up in Tel Aviv this morning, went to the kibbutz to get something, went back to Tel Aviv, came back to Jerusalem, then went to the kibbutz again) I thought of a different time I started screaming at an unfortunate moment. I was driving a U-Haul truck in the middle of winter in Chicago. I had to pick up stuff at IKEA for a show I was working on, and I specifically aimed to do it on a day that clear (not snowy) since I had never driven a truck before, since I had never driven in snow before, and since I had never driven in Chicago before, only LA. So I’m on the fucking highway somewhere in Chicago, hurtling along at 60 or 70 mph or whatever, and my passenger and I are just chatting along. And then, all of the sudden, it starts snowing. Not just snowing, but SNOWING. Like, the road gets slick and we can’t see. And of course, my immediate reaction is to just start screaming. And so my passenger starts screaming. The two of us are just hurtling down the road, screaming. I yelled to my passenger, “I’M FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, I’VE NEVER DRIVEN IN SNOW BEFORE! WHAT DO I DO??!?!?!” And my passenger yells back, “HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW, I’M FROM CALIFORNIA, TOO!” And we basically screamed all the way to IKEA. It was great.

Yesterday while I was sitting outside the Azrieli place thing, those Nachman guys were doing their thing. I was sorely tempted to join them, but I thought it might be a little bit weird. I was really excited because I had heard so much about them but had never actually seen them in person….

I fucking love the Welsh national anthem. If I didn’t like the Star-Spangled Banner or Hatikvah so much, I think I’d run off and join a Welsh independence society or something. (Did I tell y’all that in high school I wrote my senior paper on Welsh independence? Hahahahah)


Also, I suppose I should talk about the RNC seeing as I’m a Republican. Sort of. First of all, I just gotta say that when McCain announced Sarah Palin was his pick….I totally cried. Totally lost it. I was just so proud.
I thought that Sen. Thompson (sorry if I spelled it wrong) was the best man to tell the whole McCain story the other night. His voice makes me think I’m sitting on some southern porch listening to an uncle or grandpa or something sitting in a rocking chair, telling us some Tall Tale. It was pretty badass. And then Lieberman came on. I totally forgot from 2000 how constipated Lieberman sounds when he talks.

You know what I’m gonna miss about Israel? Agorot. Maybe this is just me being a fat, hungry American, but I always think agorot are edible. They look like Chanukah gelt. On more than one occasion I’ve tried to pick at the sides of a coin just to double check that it is not, in fact, a piece of gelt. I don’t even really like chocolate too much, but still, it’s always a little disappointing. Just you wait, when someone gives me gelt during Chanukah I’m gonna try to spend it.

Another exciting trip story? I had an allergic reaction to my pants on the way to Tiberias. Okay, that was kind of a weird way to put it. I’m allergic to laundry detergent though. Like, it won’t kill me, I just get welts on my skin where it comes into contact with it. Usually when I wash my clothing I get most of it off, but since this summer I’ve had to do my laundry by hand (with gloves), sometimes things like jeans still have the residue on it. So I’m in the middle of the bus ride to Tiberias, which is a couple hours, and I start itching my legs like crazy. So basically I spent like two hours looking like a total pervert.

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of caves in the sides of mountains in Israel, and I’m wondering if the CIA is investigating these as potential hiding spots for Osama Bin Laden. I mean, if I were an Extremist Muslim Terrorist, I think the FIRST place I’d try to hide is Israel, because sure as fuck no one would look for me there.

One thing I won’t miss about Israel? (Besides breaks during movies, although I’m now told and I’ve now seen that modern theaters don’t do that.) The fact that some bathrooms make you pay a shekel for the bathroom. I understand that this is like, what, a quarter? Yeah, it’s just a quarter, but that’s a quarter I could be spending on jellybeans or gumballs or something in those little machines they have next to escalators in malls. You know what? This girl refuses to pay for peeing and parking. In LA I used to park like a mile away from my destination if I knew there was free parking a mile away and I would have to pay if I parked at my actual destination. Normally I’m not a cheap person—I normally blow all my money on worthless crap, I enjoy spending money on friends, etc etc….. But when it comes to paying for peeing and parking, I just get irritated.

That is all. Right now I’m just listening to a shit ton of country music, since I’ve been way from my collection for like a week now.