01 August 2008 -- Back in the Saddle

Yeehaw! I'm home! I left the Holy Land on the last day of school: July 11th. That still gave me enough time during the past month to attend my first Israeli graduation and my first Israeli wedding, both of which served as further evidence that I wasn't in Texas anymore. My patchwork itinerary from Haifa to Houston included a multi-day stopover in Berlin, but I'm not going to post those pictures or stories here for the sake of narrative coherence. Perhaps I'll upload my Germany photos to Facebook.

I thought I'd close out my HolyLand Hijinks blog by sharing what I will and won't miss about Israel. That should provide an adequate framework for reflection and closure. I hope you've enjoyed this chronicle of my life's most unusual detour so far, and I hope that when I re-read this page five years from now, I can appreciate the experience despite its abundant challenges.

To all of my dear readers, and to all of my Israeli friends: Shalom!

I WILL NOT MISS my cramped, dark, threadbare apartment. The bright side is that now my little house in Houston feels like a mansion!

I WILL MISS the super-strong Israeli sense of family. Here I am with Noga and Itamar, the kids in one of the several families that did their best to make me feel welcome. A side-effect of living in such a culture was my decision to invite my parents to move to Houston, which they have decided to do. By October, I will be living in the same city as both my mom and my dad for the first time since eighth grade.

I WILL NOT MISS the Israeli approach to roadway courtesy. This is a very typical scene: a car audaciously parked with its ass hanging out into a busy street.

I WILL MISS the ubiquity of all things historical. That's something that just can't be approximated in Houston (or almost anywhere else in this hemisphere).

I WILL NOT MISS my bus stop. Well, I guess the stop itself wasn't the problem, but rather the unreliability and unpleasantness of the bus that picked me up there (if I was lucky). That said, I do have a newfound comfort with the idea of public transportation, and I have actually taken the bus more than I've driven to my new job -- which may not seem remarkable to you non-Houstonians, but it's just not how most people here roll...so to speak.

I WILL MISS my students (or some of them, at least). I came to realize that many of the problems I faced in the classroom were due to cultural and institutional norms that the kids had internalized, so I was reluctant to be too down on them even when they acted in ways that struck me as profoundly inappropriate.

I WILL NOT MISS the ridiculous polarities, inefficiencies, and travesties that plague Israeli politics and government. Luckily, I've returned to a place where such things don't exist...

I WILL MISS the food, and in particular the falafel. I've had falafel twice since returning to Houston, and it just doesn't come close. I admit it: I'm a falafel snob.

I WILL NOT MISS the middle-aged-woman-with-ludicrously-unnatural-red-hair phenomenon that truly is epidemic in Israel. I lived there for a year, and I never got used to it.

I WILL MISS the hospitality on which Israelis of all ethnic backgrounds pride themselves. This is Wasim, a Druze security guard at Leo Baeck, who greeted every student and teacher with a handshake and a prayer in the mornings, and who regularly asked me to join him for a cup of tea. He represents the Israel about which many Israelis so often boast.

I WILL NOT MISS hanging my laundry outside to dry. It was always such an ordeal because of weather or competition for the clothesline or bugs. When I got back home to Houston, I wasn't nearly as excited to see my car as I was to see my dryer!

I WILL MISS my colleagues, who strive to serve their students despite sub-professional pay, deplorable working conditions (by American standards), and a virulent disrespect for teachers on the part of the Israeli public.

I WILL NOT MISS the smoking. I couldn't stand it at the beginning of my sojourn, and I still couldn't stand it at the end. Look closely at the booty up for grabs in this coin-operated claw game. Yup, those are packs of cigarettes. Baby Party, indeed.

I WILL MISS the beach. Okay, so I'm not much of a beach person, but the Mediterranean has an allure even for us land-lubbers. If Galveston had fine, clean sand (which it doesn't) and warm, blue waters (which it doesn't), it would still be hard-pressed to deliver the ruins of a Crusader castle overlooking the shore.

I WILL NOT MISS Leo Baeck in general. While I became close with many of its people, I never felt like an integral part of the organization, and I was no less skeptical of its educational approach in July than I was in September. (By the way, in case you're wondering, this is a wooden statue of the Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck "ministering" to one of his students. Progressive Judaism sure is...progressive.)

I WILL MISS the sincerity of so many Israelis' efforts to better their country. Eran, who (as the legend goes) brought me to the Holy Land, is one of countless people who work diligently to secure the future of a nation whose history has been one of tragic insecurity. I wish him and his compatriots the very best in their endeavor to bring peace and justice to Israel.

a Haifa sunset

a Houston sunrise

01 July 2008 -- The (Almost) Home Stretch

June was filled with all kinds of events and excursions interspersed with occasional teaching. The highlight was undoubtedly a visit to Istanbul over Shavuot, but I fit in some interesting mini-outings, as well, including a trip to Jerusalem for the gay pride parade. It will be easier for you and for me if I relate my adventures (photo)graphically, so...

Our first stop in Istanbul was Topkapı Palace, for over 400 years the heart of the Ottoman Empire and the home of its ruling families.

This is a room in the Harem. It didn't take long to see the patterns in Ottoman interior design -- if you have tiles, washbasins, and countless nooks of all shapes and sizes, you have yourself an Ottoman room.

Here is an entrance to one of the treasury rooms, whose contents I was unfortunately not allowed to photograph. On display were such relics as hairs from Mohammed's beard and a walking stick used by Moses. For real.

I want a golden gazebo when I grow up!

Our next stop was the underground cistern, an unlikely tourist attraction that was nonetheless highly touted by friends who had been to Istanbul. My assessment: kinda cool but overrated.

Up the street a bit is the Ayasofya, which was the biggest building in the world when it was built in the 6th century on the acropolis of Byzantium. When Islam swept through the region, Ayasofya was converted into a mosque. If you look closely, you can see a Mary-and-Jesus mosaic in the apse between the two huge circles of Arabic calligraphy.

I thought it was odd at first to see a recurring tulip motif in public art until I learned that this flower is a Turkish native and wasn't brought to the Netherlands until the 16th century. Friggin' Dutch, taking credit for everything.

We stayed in the Bahaus Hostel (which was excellent, by the way), and almost everyone we met was a real-life backpacker having just come from Bulgaria or Greece or some such place.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of staying at a hostel is the shared bathroom, but the Bahaus tried to limit the filth factor by installing this ingenious device. Pull that lever and the plastic sleeve on the seat is sucked into the compartment on the right, replaced with (presumably) fresh covering from the other side. Okay, it's still a little sketchy, but at least they tried!

This guy is doing his best mythological-cow impression and starting his day with a dip in the Bosphorus.

Okay, so it's early in the morning and I'm walking alone down an empty seaside street in a foreign country. A group of several young men approaches me, each of them armed with a rusty pick-axe. Why don't I panic? They're wearing uniforms. Uniforms make everything seem legit. And see, I lived to tell about it!

This train station used to be the eastern terminus for the now-discontinued Orient Express. I wonder why it stopped running. Murder, perhaps?

It was the Era of the Empire. It was the Century of the Sultan. It was the Decade of the Dominion. It was...the Day of the Soup.

Here I am in front of the famed "Blue Mosque." I expected that Istanbul's premier sights would be impressive, but I was pleasantly surprised by the bustling beauty of the areas between the tourist magnets. Incidentally, if you're ever in the mood for a rousing game of count-the-minarets, Istanbul is the place to be!

This is the shoe-removal area of the Blue Mosque. Some visitors seemed to have a great deal of difficulty with this concept.

Yup, Ottomans love(d) their tiles!

The holy vacuumist is doing his duty.

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar is supposedly the oldest and largest shopping mall in the world. Suspicious superlatives aside, I was disappointed by how tame and clean it all was. Shopkeepers gave only half-hearted attempts to push their wares, if any at all. We found better prices and a more authentic feel in the uncovered market out back.

Turkish delight is everywhere. It's also addictive, so beware.

I'm totally going to contact Houston's postmaster and get my house's designation changed to "Address of the Deliciousness."

Say what you will about the Turks -- they have one kick-ass coat of arms!

Istanbul's Archaeological Museum is absolutely awesome.

Grrrrrrrrr!

Hermaphroditus: the best of both worlds.

This is what I want my coffin to look like. Hell, this is what I want my bed to look like.

Childhood dyslexia is hilarious in any language!

Okay, so it's expensive and touristy, but how many chances am I going to get to see a "whirling dervish" show?

Whirl, dervishes, whirl! (Actually, they needed no encouragement. They just whirled for about thirty minutes, and that was it. Just whirling. Well, there's something to be said for truth in advertising...)

We took a commuter ferry up the Bosphorus just to see the shore, but we became unwitting spectators of a nautical protest. Hundreds of small boats went by, all decked out in banners we couldn't read. We cheered, anyway.

The banks of the Bosphorus are lined with enormous mountains and quaint fishing villages. These homes have boat garages. I want one, too.

Coffee, shmoffee! The real Turkish beverage is tea. It's everywhere! Here I'm enjoying a glass of the good stuff on the boat. It cost half a lira -- 40 U.S. cents. Gotta love it!

This is where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea. It's much prettier in person.

We climbed up to this Genoese castle overlooking the Black Sea. Why? Because it was there.

That's Doug. He's my friend from ulpan. It's much more fun to travel with someone (even if he's from New Hampshire).

Topkapı Palace just wasn't opulent enough for the 19th-century Ottoman sultans, so they moved into Dolmabahçe Palace. Who knows what their 21st-century abode would have looked like if the Empire had lasted long enough?

Leisure time in Istanbul takes many forms. You can stroll the trendy Istiklal Caddesi, with its three Starbucks and three Gloria Jean's, lest you walk ten feet without a caffeine kick.

Or you could relax in a sea of beanbags at a local tea-and-nargile bar.

Or, if you're on the go, you could grab a simit, Turkey's rather bland answer to the bagel, from a street vendor.

Or, if you really want to rub elbows with the locals, rent a fishing pole and spend a few hours angling from the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn.

Whatever you do, rest assured that good ol' Atatürk will be staring down at you spookily from some monument or other. Well done, Kemal. Quite a nation you've built here.

In completely separate news, the Jerusalem pride parade was interesting, but a bit underwhelming (until one remembered the setting, of course).

It was more of a march than a parade, but the rally at the end was lively enough, I guess. I suppose I'm just used to America's over-the-top party atmosphere. Perhaps I should have gone to the celebration in Tel Aviv.

Thank goodness the violent protests of years past never materialized this time. The police-to-protester ratio was about 100:1 (literally).

For the most part, pride swag looks the same everywhere, but there were rainbow kippot (yarmulkes) on sale. I passed. When do I ever wear a kippah?

Miss Thing on the left was the mistress of ceremonies. That's her diva-in-waiting at her side.

While I was in Jerusalem, I thought I might as well do something holy, so I visited the Israel Museum and saw the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They sure are holey, all right. Get it?!

This is a scale model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. The reappearance of this edifice will usher in the apocalypse. I assume it will be full-size.

The teachers' committee invited all school staff on a year-end outing to Yafo/Jaffa. Here's the gang standing around some pretty interesting public art. Yup, that's a real orange tree growing out of a suspended iron "seed."

Just about everything is on sale in Jaffa's artists' quarter.

I'll close this photo-licious entry with a view of the Tel Aviv shoreline. I'll miss you, Mediterranean!