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AN AMERICAN IN ISRAEL, A JOURNAL
By Leslie Kittelberger
OK, I am just starting to relive my trip by telling my
parents, so I haven't remembered everything yet! Every
day was just non-stop from like 6:30 AM to 9 PM, so we
were all going to bed at 9 every night! Really tiring
and no time to think about what I was experiencing, so
I have to start reliving the memories now to figure
out exactly what I did! Anyway, I figured for now I
will start my list of Israel observations. I won't
remember everything now, so I'll keep adding later...
It's true: everyone born in Israel is beautiful!
Israelis are not RUDE, they're just extremely
truthful! They don't waste time with fake politeness.
If they're mad about something, they just let you
know.
What's up with all the women wearing red pants? Did
they have a runway show featuring red pants? Why did
1/2 the women I saw have red pants on????
You know how in Ohio you see squirrels all
over the place? In trash and stuff? Just running wild
all over the place? You can't walk out your door
without stepping on one? Well, that's how cats are in
Israel!!! You can't go 5 minutes without seeing an
alley cat.
The desert is nasty and hot, even in the winter.
The rest of Israel gets cold in the winter!
Northern Israel looks strangely like Ireland! Green
rocky hills with cattle grazing. How weird is that? I
kept expecting some old Irishman to come over the hill
whistling Danny Boy or something.
All the sidewalks and stuff are really slippery,
even if it isn't raining.
Here comes the bathroom stuff...
On all the restroom signs, it says W.C. under the
Hebrew. I finally asked what the heck it stood for and
I was told "water closet"!! For some strange reason,
even though everthing is translated from Hebrew using
American English, they use the British term for
restrooms. Hmmm!
A lot of the restrooms have bright pink toilet
paper.
The toilet flushing systems are REALLY weird! You
either have 2 buttons on top of the tank or a handle
that has 2 parts...I never quite figured out the point
to a choice of which to use for flushing, but I think
one gives a bigger flush! What's up with that?
It is almost guaranteed that a public restroom
will be out of one of the following: toilet paper,
soap, paper towels. In some cases, more than one is
missing! This is why you must always carry hand
sanitizer, which I was smart enough to bring! I can do
without paper towels, but toilet paper is bad to be
without. In any case, thank G-d for hand sanitizer!
In most public restrooms, the sink is in a
separate room from the toilet. Half the time I thought
there WASN'T a sink, but then I'd find it on my way
out. Not like it mattered; it's not like there was
going to be soap or towels anyway!
The Dan Panorama Hotel in Jerusalem has the
strangest shower ever! I hated it. It doesn't have a
curtain or door, it has a little door that covers like
1/3 of the tub. Therefore, when you get out, the floor
has turned into a lake.
Enough of that for now...
I would never drive in Israel. Don't be scared of
terrorism, be scared of their driving killing you!
Those people are nuts. You hear a horn honk every 10
seconds, usually for no apparent reason. I became
convinced that they have timers in their cars and it's
like, "Ooops, it's been 5 minutes and I haven't honked
my horn! HONK!"
Everyone pulls their car out so far into the
street they're waiting to turn onto that it always
looks like the front of their car is going to get
knocked off by the other cars!
Oh yeah, you could be ugly as sin, but the Israeli
soldiers will still hit on you!
Gotta go eat now and I can't remember more right now.
I'll write more later about my actual trip, too. It
was great! Bye everyone and Merry Xmas/New
Year/whatever you celebrate.
Leslie
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