Sleepless in Jerusalem

A few of random observations and talking points from my first 20 hours in Israel (at this time yesterday, I was hanging out in the strip of land that was neither Jordan nor Israel):

1. The sport sandals that were all the rage in North America back in the mid-nineties are still unbelievably popular here. If there's a standing stereotype that you can always spot a Canadian because we have maple leaves stitched to our backpacks (this is a myth!), I'd posit that you can almost always spot an Israeli based on their choice of warm weather footwear.

2. Maybe I should keep this to myself, as it makes me sound like a total doofus, but I seriously expected that "egged buses" would be egg-shaped vehicles....it turns out that Egged is just the name of the bus company that runs regularly shaped buses...that would be my English language centrism coming out loud and clear. Don't worry, I'm also half-laughing and half-cringing...

3. If there's one thing that I'd really like to do in the next six days, it would be to find an opportunity to use the single Hebrew phrase that I've mastered: "Ata ohev(et) melafefone?", which means "do you like cucumber?" It's not exactly the most useful phrase to know, but I'm going to do my best to steer any conversations I have with Hebrew speakers in the direction of salad preferences.

I feel like it's been a recurring theme in my writing as of late, but I am feeling mighty tired today. There must be something in the bottled water in the Middle East, because it has been a long while since I've had a good night's sleep. My first night in Jerusalem involved a lot of tossing and turning, chafing against the heat and humidity (after almost a month in a mostly desert climate, the humidity here is a little overwhelming), and finally sneaking up to the roof at 3AM to snooze for a couple of hours in the cooler air and under the starry sky. It was actually kind of nice to hang out on the rooftop, and to be awoken by the sound of the church bells at 6AM (I'm staying in the Christian Quarter of the Old City), but the result is that I'm feeling far from 100% today. In any case, I've decided that I'm really not in any condition to be doing much in the way of visiting (it's on days like today when coffee is not a nice little luxury, but a necessary crutch for making it through the day), so I'm spending the afternoon planning out the remaining six days of my stay in Israel. I originally had a copy of the Lonely Planet guidebook for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, but opted to leave it behind in Paris for fear of having my bag searched in Syria, which of course didn't happen (ironically, the Israelis were very thorough in going through all fourteen books in my bag...when the guard saw them, she just gave me a 'look' that clearly said "you're insane for carrying around this many books"...every day that I lug my bag around, I'm increasingly inclined to agree with her), so it's actually kind of nice to have a day to figure out how I want to spend my time, since I'm working without a guidebook.