Weekend in the J-ru

I just got home from a sweet weekend in Jerusalem. Thursday was a good friend of mine’s birthday, so a few of us went out to dinner. From there we hit up some hookah bars and went to a fun dance club. One thing I love about this country is how standard it is that pretty much every bar you go to comes with a free/ really cheap hookah right on your table.

Friday we walked around all day looking at shops on Ben Yehuda Street. It was a nice relaxing endeavor until - Continued...

we almost got jay-walking tickets!! Apparently we crossed a cross walk during a red light in front of a cop car or something. Opps. These two cops caught up to us on the street with their pens out ready to write us up tickets! Thankfully the stupid American card worked quite nicely and we also took out our volunteer cards to seal the deal (which have often gotten us out of sticky situations).

My friends and I also walked down to a marketplace, which unfortunately was more veggies then clothes. We did see this really odd ad. At first we thought someone had graffiti it, but then realized that it was showing too much skin so it was blacked out with a pen!

Later, we went to the old city again looking for some cheap clothing. It was a lot more fun now that I kinda figured out most of their tricks. We were in and out quite painlessly and all got some more cool pants!

The one problem with these weekends off is that the entire country closes down for Shabbat. I have never seen anything like it. Jerusalem becomes a ghost town, which is a neat novelty once, but every time you really have some time off and you cannot go shopping or out to eat, much less travel anywhere it starts to become a pain. What really boggles my mind is that most Israelis only have one whole day a week off. They usually only get half of Friday off and then all of Saturday and then it is back to work on Sunday. This means that their only day off is also everyone’s only day off, so – no movies, shopping, traveling, or anything like it. I mean it is literally a day of rest! That’s all you get to do. For the secular crew, it can really be a burden.

So rather then bum around a dead Jerusalem, I went with Jeramie to her host family here. They have a pool by their house, so we had a really nice Shabbat dinner and then spent the whole next day by the pool until the buses started running later and we could travel back to Be’er Sheva. Guess I’m not going to complain about a day by the pool!