One of my favorite things about living here is that it's very easy to tell what fruits and vegetables are in season. Unlike the U.S. where you can buy any kind of fruit at any time, here the vendors' stock is always different. Last week, all the fruit sellers in the old city had piles of a green, fuzzy little fruit-like things. At first, I avoided them, but then decided since everyone was carrying them, they must be worth something. When I got home, I asked my neighbor what to do with the strange little fruits. She laughed and told me it was an almond fruit and that I should eat it with salt. I did, and at first it was odd. It's not at all sweet and very crisp. But then they were strangely addictive with tiny green baby almonds inside. I'm looking forward to seeing what's on sale next week.
Is it all little family farms, or are they big commercial enterprises?
ReplyDeleteWhere DOES your food come from?
Ok, get ready. :)
Can you see the ocean? Can you smell it? Can you smell the desert?
Are you asking your neighbor about fruit in english? Can you go to the market with english, or do you need a friend? I take it you can go to the office with english, right?
What kind of electricity do you have? US plugs, british, euro, etc...? Do you know if it's expensive or cheap? How do they make it?
How do you heat your apartment? DO you heat your apartment, or does it not get cold enough often enough?
Have you seen/heard anything about Better Place, the electric car company there?
How old is your apartment? When was the building built? Do the stairs creak?
Are there stray animals (dogs/cats/other)? What about rodents? Surely it's not as bad as NYC's famous rats? :)
Are there many SUV's? What does gas cost? Everything's in metric, right? How far from your apartment to your office? How often do you travel for work?
BS, we'll see you whenever you come back through town!
Nate---
ReplyDeleteEveryone speaks at least a little english here. Jerusalem is a modern city that feels very middle eastern. Driving around is really fun because you always have to tail gate, swerve, and honk at much slower speeds. Every car is full of scratches and dents.
We are in a massive 3 bedroom on the top floor of a beautiful building with one patio bigger than a bedroom. There is also a laundry room on the top floor and you can go out on the roof and watch all the other people hanging their laundry and rugs. To clean, you have to beat out all the rugs, throw water on all of the floors of the house, and squidgy the dirt to a drain. From the balconies, we have an interesting view of cookie cutter illegal Israeli settlements slowly encroaching in to a Palestinian neighborhood. I think the architecture is beautiful because every building is covered in Jerusalem limestone. It’s a dry, hot desert most of the year, so the roofs are flat and some roofs are setup to collect any extra rain water they can.
The other two levels of the building have two other families. Normally all generations of one family would occupy the entire building. On the ground floor, they have a big black dog that always greets us, and 3 cats. There are tons of stray cats around the neighborhood. There are really no pests.
The most surprising thing to me out here was the segregation; it reminds me of the separate but equal black-white struggle in the US. The Palestinians and Israelis have completely separate buses and sections of the Old City. If you get into a cab and ask to go to the wrong neighborhood, they won’t take you. Everybody is constantly sizing you up to see which side of the conflict you are on. I don’t notice any tension out here, but whenever I get back from the old city, I feel disturbed as though the cold war between the Isrealis and Palestinians got to me. My ignorant American perspective is obvious and privileged since I have felt very welcome everywhere.