January 12, 2007
Israel, Last Day
Today was our last day in Israel so we decided to make it as long as possible -- we have a really early flight tomorrow and would have had to leave for the airport at around 3 in the morning anyway, so we thought we would try to stay up at the bowling alley until then (its open until 2am). We'll see if we last that long (if not, there's a place to nap in the office). Its almost midnight here now, so there's not all that much longer to do. We've already bowled three games tonight but there's internet accesss and a pool table so we should be able to entertain ourselves pretty endlessly.
Today we got up in time to see Tomer off to the army (and of course I'll be posting photos of him in his full uniform once I get home). Then we picked up Hila and the three of us explored the Old City, buying lots of baklahva and having a fantastic lunch of more hummus and falafel. We stopped and had tea and sweets in one place and found ourselves sitting under a series of photos of Sadaam Hussein and Arafat so Hila wasn't sure we had made the best choice of place -- and besides, the baklahva there wasn't so great and they dropped the first glass of tea. As we left lunch it started pouring rain (again) which cut our visit short a bit, but it was a great experience to wander through the city and see all the people and crazy things for sale in the market. Afterwards we went back over to Hila's parents house and hung out there playing backgammon (Shachar and Hila) and ping pong (Dido and me) and drinking more tea. From there we went back to the house and packed up our bags, swung by Hila's house so she could change shoes and we could pick up her husband Amit and then we drove to Safta's for a big family dinner. Shachar and I left from there to pick Shimon up at the bowling alley and delayed there a bit because it was too busy for him to leave. We met a really interesting family and dropped the Dad off at the checkpoint down the street so he could move his car. They were an American family from Colorado, the Dad is working for Shevet Achim, a non-profit bringing children from Iraq for heart surgery in Israel. The family had just relocated from Jordan and their car still had Jordan plates so they were stopped at the checkpoint and walked the last 2 blocks to the bowling alley. It was their oldest son's 16th birthday, so the family was bowling to celebrate. From there we joined Safta, Rikki, Yair, Sari, Sharon, Ran, and Hila's brother for a wonderful stuffed chicken dinner (photos to come later as well).
Goodness... at midnight a huge crowd of people just came into the bowling alley, so we're going to try to help out. We'll be flying all day tomorrow and hopefully will be back online from home late tomorrow afternoon California time.
Updated from Ben Gurion Airport at 6:20 am (the flight boards in about 10 minutes), so more will be added later:
