Missing Post 1 - December Trip

Here's the first of several posts I never got around to putting up from my trip to Israel back in december.

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Thursday (12/29)

limor goes off to dimona for fieldwork, and i wake up fairly late. it was really nice out, but i thought i should get a little work in on the website before heading out. however, i'm so behind i end up staying for several hours struggling with some retarded javascript.

limor comes home around 3ish, and i make a small sandwich for breakfast, which limor finishes for me because we are in such a hurry.

we rush downstairs to catch the only bus that would take us to limor's perach kid's apartment. it ended up being late anyway, so we stood around outside for a while. once there, we went upstairs and i met most of her family - her mom, some younger siblings, and a pair of nice indian neighbors with their little kids. i guess it was girls night out or something, because asides from a small boy sitting on his mother's lap, i was the only male in the apartment. everyone was very nice, and from the way the indian women were acting i could tell they were very friendly. limor says they were talking to her like they'd been friends for years.

we ate a light snack of "fricaseh" in honor of hanukah instead of souvganiot (thank you). fricaseh is a fluffy fried dough sandwich with tuna fish, hard-boiled egg, some veggies, and a spicy sauce. nothing that oily can really be called a "light snack", but it was tasty. i ate two.

as the conversation winded down - or rather the perach kid (mor) got bored - limor, mor, and i left the table so limor could help mor study. i read a book during the hour they were working, and then we thanked the mom and left downstairs to take a cab to a nearby shopping center.

the cab driver was very, very chatty with limor as we drove over, but apparently didn't really make much sense - it was more like blabby. anyway, we got there and spent about three hours browsing different shops. beginning with an outdoor/military supplier, we went on to several shoe stores and "mega-sport", where i spent an agonizing twenty minutes debating on whether or not to spend 500 nis on a new pair of shoes. i eventually decided to wait til i get back home to spend that much money, and we left the disappointed sales clerk behind to go to a romantic dinner at "spagettim".

i decided that this dinner with limor at spagettim, a moderately fancy italian restaurant, would be the "halfway" mark in our relationship. the last dinner we had together as a "full-time couple" was at spagettim, a year and a half ago when i visited her the summer she went home. so, this dinner would be the last we'd have together as a "part-time couple", and the next time i come back to stay with limor for good i thought we'd go again to spagettim to celebrate.

we had a very nice waitress with about twenty piercings in one ear who was happy to practice her english for me. we were seated at one of those tables-for-two where the couple sits across from each other, but until our food came i went around and sat on the same side as limor. we both prefer to eat that way - i'd rather be sitting next to my girlfriend in constant contact than alone across the table. i guess some people think it's more romantic to gaze in to each other's eyes, but really - how romantic is it if you throw a loving look across the table, only to see a mouthful of spaghetti dangling from your partner's face? we decided they should have more tables for couples like us, maybe wider and shorter. we were wondering what term would adequately describe our condition when the first thing that popped out of my mouth was "homo...sidal?" as a measure of how great a couple we are, limor first laughed at my unintentional pun before telling me what a retard i am.

limor then presented me with the birthday presents she'd been saving up (for a month) - she had planned on making me something nice and then buying me something expensive. her made present involved the five senses, although she hadn't completed them all. "sight" was a nicely framed picture of us from when we went on a picnic during her visit, "sound" was supposed to be a cd of israeli music (which she hadn't gotten around too), "smell" was some relaxing incense sticks (which she had difficulty choosing because she knows i don't really like perfumes and such), "taste" was the dinner, and "touch" was still to be decided (shut up you perverts). i thought it was lovely, and that pretty much brought my birthday to an official close (a month later).

then the food came - limor had a slightly dry lasagna, and i had the same bolognese w/ cream dish i ordered the last time (because why mess with something good?). i made the same mistake i did last time, and that was to confuse the very flavorful israeli parmesan cheese with the bland american parmesan cheese, and i overdid it a little. i thought the result was great, if a little too salty, but limor immediately grabbed for water.

dessert was equally nice - after choosing from several displayed on the dessert tray, we went with a cream and berry dish, like fluffy cheesecake. so good i had to take four or five pictures to get it right.

on the cab ride back i think i offended the driver when i rolled down the window, even though it was cold. i couldn't help it though, because even though there was a large "NO SMOKING" sign emblazoned on his dashboard, he was puffing away like the majority of israelis. he asked me something in hebrew that i understood to be rhetorically asking me if i was cold, to which i immediately replied "i'm allergic to smoke." it's not really true, but it sounds nicer than "it pisses me off to breath your ash." i guess we got one of the rare breed of nicer drivers, because he immediately flicked his cigarette out the window (well, not completely nice), and so i rolled up mine.

at home, we tried out the incense, which i'm sure combined with the dinner and the cigarette smoke earlier to make us really, really sleepy, and we fell asleep.