New Year, New Blog

Happy reading to your eyeballs!

Critique welcome - in fact, critique invited.

(and one last teeny thing. all writings and photos © captaintalia unless otherwise indicated. if there's something you'd like to use, please, just ask,)

Sometimes you have a cat, and a small semblance of a family, and then everything suddenly and quietly falls apart.
I am no longer free.
I've been made a prisoner of constructed memories and flashbacks, and I never knew the precious luxury it was to just close my eyes until that ability was taken from me.

I woke up this morning feeling I'd had a terrible dream. I realised that it wasn't and in all it's triteness, 'never had no one ever' crept its way into my head.

All of a sudden I have no idea how to fill my days or how to breathe or how to not want him to come tearing my door down and begging for forgiveness

I think that maybe, just maybe, this is a quarter life crisis.

Two nights ago, mostly out of curiosity and somewhat out of a desire to prove my skepticism either right or wrong, I went and had a reading with a psychic. I tried to remain as neutral as possible and not give anything away with body language or responses, and I watched out for very general sentences or 'cold reading'. He really didn't indulge in any of that and was 98% spookily accurate.

I won't go into every little thing he told me, though I probably should as a record so I can check back on it one day. He mentioned something in passing that has stirred my mind. I keep turning it over and over and trying to make it sit comfortably. He said that my age is a difficult one, because it is the last time in one's life that the soul changes. After 25, 26, you are who you are and your soul will not change again. You'll learn things and probably adapt a little, but your core will remain. To begin with, I have enough trouble with the concept of a soul. But I feel as though some last chance at improvement is slipping away from me. And it's making me look, maybe a little too hard, at the things about myself that I do not want to keep forever.

I would like something meaningful and resonant to happen to me. I would like to feel like all this is for something.

Something regarding Israel, again.

7th July - Wednesday

Last day of the program

We leave Dimona and start the drive towards Tel Aviv. We stop for a few last activities - mostly historical/educational stuff that most of us just can not handle anymore. I almost fall asleep at the Independence House - we have been sucked dry. I sit with Adam on the bus and we swap music.

Our last stop is Rabin Square, the place where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. A pretty sombre note to end on, but there's a busker playing the song of peace on saxophone, and it's kind of nice. At the bus station we all say goodbye, and Cathy is in tears. She's 6 foot 2 and the only one crying - it's too sweet.

*

We arrive at our apartment and when I find out that the "third bed" is a couch, I'm ready to kill somebody. I'm so freaking exhausted and the idea of paying $500 that I don't really have to sleep in a lounge room makes my blood boil. My anger makes me even more tired, and like a spoilt kitten I fall asleep for the night.

8th July - Thursday

Spend the morning on the beach with Tara, her sister Lisa, Yael and Daniella. While everybody works hard on their tans, Daniella and I head up to the Carmel Market where we spend a few hours. In an ethnic haze, somehow we both come away with harem style onesies - even though I swore I'd never own harem pants. When in Israel...

Felafel for lunch and then we stop for fresh lemonade where we get talking to a couple of Americans who are at med school here. They invite us to a party and Daniella gives them her number, but we never hear from them. Americans are Americans, even in Israel. There's no way two Israeli dudes would have let that go.

After the markets, an afternoon nap, then in the evening we head to the flea markets in Jaffa. We get there pretty late and it closes at midnight, so we dash around like madmen checking out the thrift and junk. I buy some crystal doorknobs from an old man ("I am happy when I sell things, and I am happy when I don't sell things").

Neta and his girlfriend Sarit come to meet us, and we all end up back at out apartment playing dice. I love that all the women have curly hair here, and they wear it.

9th July - Friday

Our morning ritual of iced coffee and beach. We pay 12 shekels for beach beds and lie there for what feels like days, while Israelis walk up and down taking orders from the beach cafe. Flocks of green umbrellas flutter in rows. I make sure to lock the image inside my mind for a time when I'm no longer here.

On Fridays the Carmel Market has an art/jewellery section, so after lunch at a cafe on Dizengoff st (where the waitress simply tells us "no" when I ask to modify one of the menu items, "because it is our kitchen, not your kitchen") we do a brief market run before everybody packs up for Shabbat. It's very strange to be in a place where the country just shuts down for Shabbat.

At the markets we meet a girl called Roni who sells brain puzzles, and she invites us to a party but we can't go because we have to get to Asaf's for dinner. Who just invites two random girls to a party after knowing them for five minutes?! Bloody Israel.

Seven of us are invited to Asaf's, so we take taxis to his house in Rishon LeTzion. His mum has cooked a feast, and we eat more than anyone should. His dad and sister are there too - it's nice to meet his family. I make some comment about how teachers all over the world get paid like shit, forgetting that his mum is  teacher. Somebody shoots me a 'shut up' look. I am the queen of putting my foot in my mouth.

After dinner we play dress ups in Asaf's army clothes, and he gives me a pair of his army pants and two of his badges. I feel like telling him I'll only take them if he promises not to die, but I don't. 

We leave for Jarryd's party at the port in Tel Aviv - Tara, Tim and I in Asaf's car. Riding on a foreign highway, Israeli wind beating me in the face, it's bizarre to be listening to familiar songs on the radio. When we arrive at the club, everyone proceeds to get drunk and dance. The music makes me want to tear out my ear drums, so I retreat outside to write a bit. What a party animal.

Outside we meet some young Israeli boys who are arrogant and obvious. They try to pick us up and act almost pissed off that their tricks are not working. They switch tirelessly from sweet nothings to insults, unsure which strategy to stick with. I've seen the likes of them a thousand times, and the typically good looking one, who is probably only used to hearing "yes", gets the shits and tells me I have my nose in the air. I think my nose is right where it belongs, and it's not my fault if they fall so far below it.

Mali has come to meet us with her friend Ben, and we go in the car with them back to our apartment. Ben has to stop and ask for directions a couple of times, and it's quite funny the way people answer him - Israeli strangers talk to each other like they've been friends for years. It's about 4am when we get home, and soon after I escape to sleep.

10th July - Saturday

We spend the morning at the beach again. Did I mention the beach umbrellas? A school of parasols, rippling fins as they swim through summer. I watch the people and think that when I am old, I want to put on stupid sandals and a floppy hat and trudge down to the water, surrounded by and unaware of bodies younger than mine.

Yael, Tim and I go to Herzliyya to meet Dalia. She takes us down to the marina for lunch, to a beautiful seafood restaurant where I feel too appreciative to mention that I'm vegetarian. Dalia gets the guy walking around with an accordion to sing happy birthday to Yael, which he makes sure to do in Hebrew, English and Russian. He makes me feel very sad.

After lunch we return to the apartment for a nap, but not before arguing with a bunch of taxi drivers about the price. We sleep away the afternoon.

We wake hungry, and taking Inbar and Asaf's advice, head to Florentin st for pizza. We find a crowded little pizza place on a side street full of bars, and sit and eat there. This whole street reminds me of New York, of being happy in the LES. I think if I could live autumn and winter in NYC, spring in Paris and summer in Israel, life would be perfect.

Tara, Lisa and Daniella then meet us at a bar on Florentin, and shortly after the rest of the Taglit crew join us. Asaf comes with some of his Israeli friends and they are nice but there is more of this friendly insult banter that I'm quickly getting over. I look at our big group and feel somewhat frustrated to be hanging out with a bunch of Aussies. I'm itching to get away, meet new people...

This city is a strange one. The smell of piss and homeless people permeates. I am tired and irritable and need some time on my own. Travelling for me is about exploring, discovering, connecting, but so far I just feel like I'm being pulled by the hand into non-adventure. I feel sometimes like I'm wasting time and missing whatever it is that's waiting for me here.

John says:

nothin to do

nowhere to be

a simple little kind of free.

Something obsessive compulsive.

OCD wins again, and I have decided to transcribe the rest of my Israel journal, even though it's almost redundant now. I don't think I'll be able to keep blogging otherwise, with that unfinished thing itching at the corner of my mind. I've been back just over a month, and if it weren't for my journal and the 40 new friends on my facebook, I wouldn't believe I'd ever been. Feels like a dream...

5th July - Monday

The last day with the soldiers. We start by "climbing" Mt Masada in a cable car - most of the boys got really drunk last night and Gennady vomits everywhere. We hang out on the top of Masada for a while, listening to Daniel tell us about the history of the place and taking stupid photos with the soldiers. While everybody goes on a mini tour, a few of us sit in the shade of the original ruins and reconstructed buildings. Adam and I talk a little bit about our shared musical tastes.

I've come to like the soldier girls so much and will be sad to see them go - not to mention Asaf, who has become like my best friend and annoying little brother all in one. We rib each other the whole day through. Yael has set him the challenge of giving us each a non-sarcastic compliment before he leaves.

Next we are taken to Ein Gedi, where we are supposed to do a short hike and then have a swim. The hike is actually about half an hour and it's brutally hot in the sun. Tzlil and I walk together and are losing our minds in the heat. I feel better about how much I hate the hike when there's a soldier next to me feeling the same way. When we finally reach the top, a few minutes behind everyone else, we are greeted with the sight of them all turning to head back down the path. It turns out that Daniel has just wanted to show us a waterfall, and the swimming hole is actually halfway back down. Tzlil and I both look like we are ready to kill somebody, and Yael laughs at my torment.

The swimming hole, when we eventually get there, is really beautiful - complete with a little waterfall and all. They try to send the men and women to separate swimming holes but it doesn't last.

Reluctantly we leave for the Dead Sea and it's nothing like what I expect. The water is HOT, like a bath, and supremely uncomfortable. Floating on actual chairs is pretty amazing, but I can't spend more than five minutes in the water. My skin starts to feel scaly and weird.

All day Inbar doesn't swim, which makes me realise that no matter how beautiful the woman or which side of the world she was born in, we all have our insane insecurities.

Tonight we're staying in Dimona (Asaf: Dimona? It's like someone took a big shit in the middle of the desert), and on the way we stop in a park so that the soldiers can talk to us about how the program has affected them, and we can talk a bit about how they've affected us. When we get to Dimona we say our goodbyes and Asaf tells me quietly, "you're the smartest girl here". I think that's his compliment. I don't know what he tells Yael.

As soon as I get to my room, my head hits the pillow and I'm out for the night. Not even dinner can rouse me.

6th July - Tuesday

I spend most of today sitting out the activities - I am beyond exhausted and even more contemplative than usual. When they take us to ride camels I consider doing it for a moment, but it's more because I'd feel like an idiot for passing up the opportunity than because I actually want to. I decide to sit in one of the Bedouin tents instead, and spend the time talking to the two rabbis and to Inbar.

Inbar tells me about why she can't dance or drink this year - she is mourning. We talk a bit about it and I can see the tears under her sunglasses. Have you ever met one of those people with such golden hearts that light just shines out of their faces? I have known only two or three. They make the world brighter.

When the others get back from the camel rides, we sit and listen to a Bedouin man tell us a bit about how he lives - that he is not Jewish but he is Israeli; that the way he lives means there is no hospital nearby; that there are camels instead of cars - he is funny and insightful. Maybe it takes a simpler life to master these simple qualities.

Then to Kibbutz Revivim, where we eat the vegetables they grow there, and make our own pita bread. I abandon Marc for a little while on the bus and sit with Joel, who is leaving early tomorrow. Joel has been an exercise in learning for me - he is one of my favourite people on the program and the complete antithesis of everybody I'm friends with back home. He's Jewish, plays football, works for Coca Cola, goes for daily runs, and has $400 Prada sunglasses. A lesson never to judge too early.

At night everybody wants to go out for a drink, so our very accommodating rabbis try to find us a bar. Because we're in Dimona, everything is closed, so they take us to an all night supermarket where everybody (except for Yael and I, it seems) buys alcohol. I spend some time on the walk over talking to Margarita, who I really like (really is underlined in my journal), and then Adam and Joel. When we get back to the hotel most everybody gets very drunk, and I retreat into my mind and the computer. I spend two hours making a blog post and then the Internet crashes and I can't post it.

Sleep.

Fallout Boy says:
why why why won't the world revolve around me?

Something's missing.

Now that I'm back, I'm not sure if transcribing the rest of my travel journal is redundant. My OCD tendencies are telling me to finish moving my words over to this digital format, but I'm not sure. Any of you who would read it probably already know about the rest of my trip...

I feel new, and it's not wearing off. After mum picked me up from the airport, I drove home and the shops and clubs that litter Oxford St looked like familiar sores on an ex-lover's face.
I'm committed to moving to a better part of the world.

Here are my legs.

Photo by Simon Taylor.

Something frustrating.

What is there to say, when John Mayer has already said it all?

http://jhnmyr.tumblr.com/post/855941804/bed

It's usually nice to read/hear somebody's words and think, 'my sentiments exactly', but it becomes kind of unpleasant when the idea seems almost taken right out of my brain, and I can't even sit down and eat food with the thinker who thought it.

Either my writing needs melodic accompaniment and I could sell millions, or it's already been written and I should just throw my pen away.

More real life kindred spirits, please.

Something sleepy, something controversial.

4th July - Sunday

Everybody was exhausted so there was a subconscious collective sleep in. We start the day late with a seminar on politics, geography and whatnot in Israel and the Middle East. I think my brain has had all the information it can take at the moment and I don't really absorb anything, just sort of space out.

Our bus rides between places take us through endless sparse terrain. The land is brown, rocky, sandy; the sea is blue, and the mountains seem to stretch on forever. Our first stop is the City of David, where we start by eating felafel, and Inbar shows Yael and I her favourite tree - the pomegranate.

"Sisters! Come, I want to show you my favourite tree... It's like a crown."

Yeaaah... we are in a tree.

Everyone then heads indoors to watch a short movie on the history of the place, and I stay outside with the soldiers (me: informationally exhausted, them: just exhausted).

They are very easy to get along with, even though they're all (obviously) different people. Asaf is a clown and we get along like a house on fire, or some other more sensical metaphor; Tzlil and Adi are more shy but super sweet, and Mali reminds me a little of me in some ways, but then again she is a shooting instructor (!!!).

 Asaf + Inbar

Mali

 Adi

 Tzlil

The city has an underground water system, kind of like a shallow tunnel of water in a very narrow cavelike passageway. We are supposed to walk through it - it takes about 45 minutes and I am really reluctant. It's supposed to be very claustrophobic, and I am somewhat anxious. Inbar tells me it's amazing and refreshing - she is really trying to convince me, so in the spirit of being an Israeli, I decide to brave it.

actual darkness

It's very narrow and low at times, but walking through the cold water is beautiful, and afterwards I'm glad I did it. I think being so small helped in making it not so scary.

The bus rides pass in a blur as I continue to nod in and out of consciousness, dozing against the window. Marc is so tolerant of his sleepy bus companion and has taken to calling me 'sleeping beauty' when he talks to Tim and Yael.

We ride in an armoured bus to the city of Chevron, and the bus driver asks us not to stand because the little windows at the top are not bulletproof. Weird.

Chevron is a holy place to the Jewish people because it's (apparently) where the forefathers and mothers are buried, but of course there is some kind of political dispute about who owns the land, so we are escorted by an extra guard aside from Inbar. Our tour guide also carries a gun. It's a very strange place, old and stony - it kind of gives me the creeps, and not in a good way. The only people we see are religious people praying, and we have been asked to wear long skirts and cover our shoulders which totally shits me.

I suppose a place like this will always be dangerous, for as long as it remains rooted in belief. There will always be those willing to kill to attack it, and there will always be those willing to kill to defend it.

Only a few days later do we find out about the huge controversy our trip to Chevron has caused - we are the first birthright group to EVER have been allowed to go, and it turns out that the approval we were given was an oversight. We find out that Chevron is actually in the West Bank, and that there is now media from all over the world contacting our group leaders for statements and information about our trip there.

A video of our group, accompanied by a sort-of article.

At Chevron, we discover the beauty of the continuous shooting setting on my camera.

(I have so many sets of these silly things... I must learn how to make gifs)

Saturday was supposed to have been our night out, but because of our tour through the Kotel tunnels it has been changed to Sunday. Daniel and Yonit are super helpful in organising a fun evening for us, and I feel kind of bad when everybody starts whingeing that we have to be back on the bus at 11:15pm. Yonit and Daniel argue with our grumpy bus driver and eventually organise it so that we can take taxis home.

(we sit on the bus being beautiful while they sort it out)

Mali, Adi and Tzlil mention that there is a waffle shop nearby so I walk with them to indulge my sweet tooth. Apart from the fact that it's still strange to walk around streets where everybody is Jewish, it's even stranger to enter a waffle shop and see people eating desserts and chilling next to their rifles.

Because of the kosher factor here (no mixing of meat and milk), some places have non-dairy icecream and such. This was one of those places, so the girls decided to go elsewhere. Yael, Tara, Daniella, Inbar and I walked the shopping strip for a while and haggled with some Israeli shopkeepers, then went and found everybody else at a bar down the road.

Tania, Tania + Margarita

With only an hour or so, everybody started drinking and getting into the free hookahs - I was just happy we found a dance floor that played some Weezy. While some people got a little loose, most of us were just happy to actually be out in the world.

I sit outside for a little while with Joel and Adam (who is one of the most with-it 19 year olds I've met), and feel pretty good about being social instead of overanalysing it and getting cynical. At midnight, we Cinderella it back to the meeting point and take a taxi home. Our cabbie is Arabic and laughs at Tara's drunken attempts at Hebrew. It's funny how in Australia I feel like it's really unusual to randomly encounter somebody Jewish, whereas here it seems strange to encounter somebody who isn't.

 
Daniella, Yael, Tara and I manage to haggle the cheapest cab ride out of the group. Back at the hotel, most continue drinking. I eat some cereal and talk nonsense with Tara and Asaf, then bed.



(brand new says:
everything that i own starts to pile up like bones)

Something Jewish.

3rd July - Shabbat Saturday

Tara

Yiscah + Yael

Spent most of the day lounging around in the sun and attending talks about Jewish law and spirituality. It still sits much too strangely with me - especially the sexist stuff - but it's at least somewhat interesting. It turns out that people with tattoos can indeed be buried in Jewish cemeteries (this must be a lie some parents made up once to deter their Jewish children from getting tattoos...). A note from the future: I would have known this all along had I been to Tel Aviv earlier - EVERYBODY has tattoos here, and EVERYBODY is Jewish.

There's still far too much I don't buy, like the idea that a husband and wife can only touch each other two weeks out of the month, as the other two weeks (surrounding her menstrual cycle) the woman is not "pure". My skin just crawls when I hear this nonsense.

Later in the day I check my emails and when I find nothing from Christopher I get pretty down... it's unreasonable because he doesn't owe me anything and I'm having the best time here regardless, but I watch people getting cosy on the bus and I miss the arms that feel like home. All the Israelis keep telling me I'm like an Israeli girl, and I'm still not sure he can handle the intensity that brings. When we catch each other on Skype in the afternoon, talking to him makes me feel a lot better, and as usual I realise that 90% of the darkness I live in exists only in my head.

On the bus we pass kids of no more than ten dressed in black coats and hats with their hair shaved short and their peyot grown long. They look like little rabbis in the thirtysomething degree heat, and they're eating icecreams like any other kids, and I can't help but think of Dawkins describing religion as a virus. These kids have had the virus of orthodox religion transmitted to them, and they will suffer it for the rest of their lives.

Evening

Shabbat ends, and we head back to the Old City of Jerusalem. We take a short break - some eat pizza, some eat ice cream, and we all take in our postcard surroundings.

(Look closely, that's all Jewish stuff)

 Tara + Daniella

 Inbar, me + Dominique

Surrogate baby brother Adam + wonderful Joel

At the Kotel (Western Wall) they give us some time to write notes and place them in the cracks of the stones. I felt a bit phoney writing a note to nobody (a wall? God?), but I did it anyway.

There is something weighty about placing my hand on the smooth rock of a 3000 year old wall. Especially when I have to make my way through hundreds of crying women to get to it.

  Kotel tunnels

What baffles me is that after we come out of our midnight tour of the Kotel tunnels, it's about 1:30am and there are still so very many people there, praying and weeping. Is it always that way, every minute?

sisters + Asaf

(sidenote: as i write this, we literally drive past five camels just chilling on a mountain.)

Something that already happened.

1st July - Thursday

On the bus, we race the shadows of clouds. The motion soothes me and I fall in and out of sleep. Makes me wonder if the calm I feel when being driven around has anything to do with the fact that mum used to put me in the car and drive to get me to fall asleep when I was a baby.

We leave the north of Israel for Jerusalem. First stop of the morning is to pick up six of the Israeli soldiers who will be spending the next five days with us. Asaf, Adi, Tzlil, Mali, Itay and Neta. Avi joins us later. The bus then takes us to the grottos at Rosh Hanikra.

Caverns made of rock hollowed out by waves that branch out into pools. Years and years of water lapping at the rock. Such a bizarre natural phenomenon - one of the few times nature really gets me.

We then visit an old prison that was discovered under a palace. I'm sure they gave us more information than this but as usual I am living mostly inside my own head. It seriously looks like the setting for Assassin's Creed.

Tara wonders what made them dig underneath the palace in the first place. "How do they know where to dig? I never dig!"

 (Yael + I accidentally both wear stripes and everybody makes sure to comment.)

 

 Best looking couple in Israel

John says:
we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this if belief is what we're fighting for.

2nd July - Friday

Yiscah + Ben

This morning we are at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. I am sitting in a room where a gentleman has just told us his story of survival. He was a young boy from 10-14 or so during the war, and was taken - amongst other places - to the Lodz ghetto and to Auschwitz. I wish I had words to describe what an incredible speaker he is. His English is good, slightly broken, and like a poet he calmly recites his story to a room full of young people. He talks of the last time he saw his mother and brother ('their eyes I can see even now'), of Mengele with his hand in his jacket signalling life or death, of kicks like presents and a boot to the head. 'I was on my own like a sinking stone'. He explains that for 50 years the survivors of the Holocaust did not talk about their experiences not because they wanted to forget or were ashamed, but because their were no therapists to tell them how to deal with such a trauma. They were told instead that in order to move on, they needed not to speak of it. I can't help but think of when I went to Auschwitz, set foot on that soil in that cold place. I am overwhelmed to have had the choice to leave when it became too much, unlike so many before me.

After Yad Vashem we walked to the cemetery at Mt Herzl where many of the Israeli soldiers who have fallen are buried.

 

 Daniel

All seven of the soldiers with us and Inbar, had friends buried there and spoke to us about the people they had lost. Inbar spoke a bit through her tears and I wanted to crush her with love. I find it so amazing that these women are shooting instructors or tank mechanics and are ready to die, but can then put on dresses and cry unashamedly. To watch Inbar holding a rifle and being emotionally vulnerable at the same time makes me realise that women are the same everywhere. We should never be told our feelings are too much.

It's been pretty spectacular to meet people who lead such starkly different lives to us. On the one hand they really have seen nothing of the world - they come straight out of school and into the army, they're still kids when they become soldiers. On the other hand the army seems to quickly turn boys into men and girls into women... the soldiers with us are between 20-22 years old, and really, they're badass.

Mali + Asaf

Asaf, Avi + Neta

Sometimes I imagine what they'd be like had they grown up in Australia - sitting around drinking overpriced beers and wearing dumb pointy shoes and talking shit. I'm glad they are here instead, being strong and far less full of shit.

Sombre part of the day over, we take a bus to the market and spend a frantic 45 minutes buying candy, checking out the junk shops, and finding little presents for our "shabbat-o-grams" (which is basically the Jewish equivalent of that Christmas thing where people buy a secret gift for someone in their workplace or whatever). Daniel, our tour guide, pulled out my name and bought me the besssst halva. Lucky guess - I love that stuff! The best part was the card:

Dear Talia,
Halva great shabbat.
You rock!
Daniel

The only thing I would have wanted more than halva was a good pun.

We all got into our Shabbat clothes and walked to the Western Wall. There was singing and dancing and soooo many people - thousands and thousands. Men and women are separated which drives me crazy because of the reasoning for it. It's something along the lines of 'man has an animal nature so for him to focus on praying instead of sex he can't be near a woman or hear her sing.' There are actually some super orthodox rabbis walking around with ear plugs in so as not to accidentally hear a female singing.

I felt pretty uncomfortable after a while (even though the spirit of the evening is pretty amazing, forcing a dance feels weird), and Mali had a headache so we went and sat away from the crowds and talked a bit about our very different lives. When the group was done, we all walked for 45 minutes (!!) to an empty synagogue where we had dinner. Pretty cool. Everybody was asked to say a small something about their feelings regarding the trip... it was a good night.

At about 2am (rabbis know how to party), we walked back to the hotel (another 45 minutes). Somehow we ended up on the rooftop, where everyone was drinking and dancing to music that made me want to put screwdrivers deep inside my ears. After a while I commandeered the iPod and subjected the remaining few to some Lil Weezy. Sat with Avi + Dom + a few others until about 5am when almost everybody went to bed.

Dom, Asaf, Avi and I then sat and talked until the sun was well and truly up - Avi in broken English, me in non-existent Hebrew, Dom translating back and forth. We spoke about the differences between Israelis and Australians, and even though they are men in some ways, when they talk about women they still sound a bit like boys (perhaps that never changes). Avi's English is super limited, and my favourite part of the evening was when they were telling us about their different jobs in the army. Asaf explained how he is a commander, and is sometimes responsible for up to 3000 soldiers. Avi then said simply, in perfect English and with a mad grin on his face, "I kill people for fun."

It's funny how some languages are universal, like smiles.