The Adventures Continue!

Yesterday was a pretty great day. I woke up and killed some time before going over to HUC to take an "off-campus" tour of Jerusalem. Basically, Leslie showed us some great shortcuts, some of her favorite cafes and restaurants, and how to get to important places like the shuk.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures during our tour.

Luckily, I'll be going to all of those places again. So you'll still get to see them, just not today.

During our tour, we were over in the Ben Yehuda area, and we got falafel at this DELICIOUS place called Moshiko. Actually, we were standing there and they brought us out freshly-fried falafel samples. It was even better than being at costco during sample time. The thing about falafel is that it needs to be a really vibrant green color inside for me to like it, and the Moshiko falafel was, in fact, the perfect color. And in Israel you can get it in laffa, which is superb. It's basically like having a falafel burrito. Unreal.

So after we enjoyed our falafel (with harif, the only way to eat it--harif is "chili-type hot sauce, eaten with falafel. Also refers to anything spicy" via http://www.gemsinisrael.com/e_article000039495.htm) we headed to the shuk.

Now, for those of you who have never been to the shuk, or who don't know what that is, it's kind of hard to explain without photos. Basically a shuk is an open-air market, but the big shuk in Jerusalem is called Mahane Yehuda and it's partially covered and partially open. There are tons of vendors selling only the freshest fruits and veggies, as well as random home wares and textiles and just a million billion random things. I promise the next time I'm there I will take an excessive amount of photos, because it's truly a beautiful place to be. It's like foodie paradise. You walk around and you can sample this season's freshest cherries (you haven't had cherries until you've had cherries in Israel. I promise.) and there are dried fruits and nuts and fresh juices. It's seriously an incredible place.

After an exciting but exhausting hike around with some of my classmates (I say hike because everything is uphill in Jerusalem. You can walk uphill to the supermarket and your walk home is somehow also uphill.) I came back to the apartment and awaited the internet technician.

I would tell you about my internet fiasco, but I won't. It isn't exciting. Basically, I don't know enough computer vocabulary and the people I was talking with didn't speak much English at all. After a few moments of blank stares, exaggerated gestures, and teamwork, I have great internet in the apartment. If you have an ipad/iphone/ipod touch/macbook/etc with FaceTime, then please feel free to add me to your contacts because FaceTime totally works. And is awesome.

So anyway back to my day. After a quick (ha...2 hour) nap after the internet guy left, I met up with some classmates and we went down Emek Refaim towards the German Colony for gelato. In Israel, there's a gelato place with several locations called Aldo. At Aldo, you can get gelato by Max Brenner.

Max Brenner is one of the most brilliant chocolate restaurants ever. In NYC, sometimes the Meshuganotes would go to Max Brenner's Broadway location (sample menu here). If you love, like, or are even lukewarm about chocolate, you should try a Max Brenner location. Nom. Anyway so luckily you can get Max Brenner gelato etc. here. I opted for lemonana (lemon and mint, my very favorite flavor combo) and blueberry gelato. And was too excited to take a picture. Whoops.

Yum yum yum.

After our trip down Emek Refaim we went over to the Gimbels' apartment for Nana (mint) tea and some schmoozing. I am absolutely loving getting to know everyone. Even though we've all done different things so far, it's nice to know that we've got at least SOMETHING in common since we're all going to the same school. It's pretty great.

This morning I got up and went to the supermarket first thing. In Jerusalem, everything shuts down for shabbat. This means that if you want to get groceries for the weekend, you basically have until early afternoon on Friday. So I took my shuk cart (pictured below--a brilliant invention) to the store and picked stuff up. The shuk cart is really an incredible thing. I feel like I'm doing a lot more schlepping than normal here in J'lem, so the cart really helps. A lot of them look like the same sort of tartan material you might find on Minerva McGonagall, but the previous tenants in our apartment left us this really cute blue polka dotted one. If you're not totally clumsy like me, then these carts are very easy to navigate. I, however, manage to step on mine like every 10 steps. It's fine.

Tres chic shuk cart

Tonight, I'm hosting a few of my new classmates for shabbat dinner; we're having chicken stir fry. Don't worry, I'll include pictures in my next post. I'm really looking forward to share shabbat with everyone that's coming over! I think it'll be a great opportunity to get to know people a little bit better, plus it'll be an adventure in trying out my kitchen.

Also, as a sidenote, in Israel they have chocolate with poprocks. It's no pow-pow-cacao, but it's pretty epic. The "Elite" brand chocolate has little cows on each piece in the chocolate bar, so when I was younger I used to call it cow chocolate. It's everywhere here and it's really awesome. The label for the poprocks one translates roughly to Milk Chocolate with Jumping Sugar. THAT TOTALLY RULES.

Milk chocolate with jumping sugar. Are you kidding me.

...moooo...

Another sidenote: we have 4 chairs at our kitchen table, but I'm hosting 5 people tonight so we need more chairs. We have this closet in our apartment that I'm pretty sure is actually the room of requirement. Earlier today I wanted an index card, walked into this little storage closet, and found index cards galore. I was trying to figure out the chair situation, walked back to the closet, and found two folding chairs. It's really unbelievable.

Alright that's it for now. I hope everyone has a lovely, lovely shabbat!

Breakfast with Andy Bernard.