Happy 64th

Wednesday has come and gone, and look at that, no new post! That, my friends, is because Wednesday night (when I usually write these things) was taken over by a community wide celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, or Israel's Independence Day. As a tribute to its 64th birthday, I'm going to tell you this week about some experience I've had with buses in Israel.

Israeli drivers are crazy. My teacher (who shall remain nameless unless he asks me to credit him) once joked that the Israeli car is built around the horn, and then parts are added until it moves. The same is true for buses. On TRY (high school semester abroad program. Definitely check it out: here) we rode around in a tour bus.  To start with, the buses there are so much cooler than the ones here. They look like bugs, and they're colorful, which is fun. Speed limits exist in Israel, but I've never known what the standard is, because no one pays attention to them. 

Once, we were in the North. We were going to a kibbutz on a mountain that shared its border with Israel's national border with Lebanon. We were in the region of the country that used to be in Syria, and there were still land mines in the fields on either side of the road. It was absolutely beautiful. At this point in the trip, we had already been there for three months, so we were pretty used to going much faster than is safe. What we weren't used to was doing switchbacks up a mountain in a tour bus at 100 kilometers per hour.  People were holding on for dear life. I thought it was fun. 

Another time we were coming back from Gadna. Gadna is a simulation of what basic training in the IDF is like. For five days you work with your tzevet (troop), learn about IDF ideology, and how to handle weapons and the responsibility that comes with it. At the end of the 5 days, you get to shoot an M16 at a target about 70 meters away. There is an hour of free time every day, where you can shower, grab a snack, get ready for bed, etc. The guys on our trip decided not to shower at all over the course of the week, and most of the girls only showered once or twice. Basically, the trip back home was not the most pleasant thing my nose has experienced. Naturally, we got stuck in traffic. Israel being Israel, many people on the highway got out of their cars and went to the bathroom on the side of the road, a few from our bus included. Some drivers had the brilliant idea to turn around, and drive the other way on the shoulder of the road, causing another traffic jam going the wrong way. after about an hour of beeping and confusion, we finally got going, and about two hours later, we were home and in the showers. 

Public transportation is a whole other story. Maybe I'll talk about it next year. Until then, happy birthday Israel, and may you have many more.

Mona Lisa

Art is a wonderful thing.  Museums are dedicated to it around the world.  Here in Cleveland, I can think of two withing walking distance of each other alone.  I pass them both whenever I ride the Healthline (how's that for a segue?).

The oddities that occur on the bus have become so common that they almost seem normal, and although even today a man was yelling and trying to sell bus tickets simultaneously, I'm going to tell you a story of something truly unusual that happened a couple months ago on my way to school.

The bus was fairly vacant that morning. I was sitting in an open area, with two other girls about my age in the vicinity.  We got to a stop, and the population of the bus practically doubled. A man and a girl got on, talking to each other. I assumed they knew each other.  As they sat down across from me, I realized that the man was doing most of the talking, and the girl didn't seem to know him, or how to react in that situation. She wore an elephant hat.

Out of his giant bag resting in the middle of the isle, the man pulled out a sketch pad and pencil.  He started sketching the girl, and talking furiously, about something of apparently no import.  Skeptical and curious, the other onlookers and I watched him draw, expecting it to be terrible. Surprisingly, it was a very good semblance of the girl. I was impressed; the man obviously had some kind of untreated mental illness, but he also had talent. On my iPod a song came on that I'd gotten as an iTunes free download of the week that I'd never listened to before. It was called "Mona Lisa" by Atlas Sound. Usually I skip it, but the coincidence was so funny I didn't. It's actually a decent song.

 His stop came just as he finished the drawing. As he was fumbling to put his stuff back in his giant bag, I caught a glimpse of the contents. Inside the bag was a giant tank of propane, or something in a similar container.  The doors opened, he wrote his number on the corner of the drawing, told the girl to come in to his studio for a free drawing, yelled at the bus driver to keep the doors open, and got off the bus.