8.

Yesterday brought more aimless walking around the city, as well as a trip to Yafo (Jaffa) for dinner and the port area for the evening's fun. I found myself back at Shuk HaCarmel (a large outdoor market). This time, after walking between mountains of olives and cases of brightly colored vegetables, I walked with two friends (one from Brandeis and the other from Georgetown) down a street next to the market. I found this street to be much more interesting than the market street itself. This is where you could see the meat scraps, chicken feed, vegetable roots, and their surrounding degraded residences. It was the street that I'm guessing few walk down and I'm certainly glad we did. We noticed, immediately, the raw nature of the market. I was reminded of the types of regional and local markets from the medieval era (that I studied this past semester). It's quite the transition to walk from the Shuk to the "Superpharm shel-li" ("My Superpharm").

On the way to the Shuk, I saw a cool looking office building and asked the cab driver what it was. He told me that it was the Likud Headquarters (i.e. Benjamin Netanyahu's office). The Likud Party is Israel's far right, ~neoconservative party. I wrote a paper last semester that included thoughts on Netanyahu so it was cool to see that (quite inadvertently).

During the day I hung out with one of my friend's old pals who now lives in Israel and is in the army. Through my friend, I've met 4 soldiers, all of whom are roughly my age. We all understand that the Israeli Army is one of the best in the world, and also that it's dominated by 18-21 year olds. However, yesterday, for the first, I realized that the Israeli Army is really run by kids my age. It seems like a younger army than the American one. I think it really hit me when this soldier (a really cool kid who made aliyah (moved here) almost two years ago) left his gun in the corner of the room. The window was open and the sun was focused directly on the neon-green scope on top of the gun. It was perfectly framed by the corner of the room. At this point, to see a gun is a benign image. To see that one, though, was something new.

I'm off to try to find a Conservative-style synagogue for tonight. Thanks to all of those who have sent updates, it's great to hear from so many of you.