06 December 2007

From the Ancient to the Modern...

...From the Old City to Modi'in

Today was a great day! I ran into a friend on the way home from school yesterday, who said he was going to the old city today for some searching around. I joined Mike at 8:30AM, and got some cool shots of multiple Torah readings at the Kotel. See below!

Self-Portrait: The Old City

Welcome to the Kotel...

Sweet view of Torah reading at the Kotel -- girls in jeans on chairs, faces all up in the men's side? They didn't have this when I came to Israel in '99!

After traipsing through the Old City, Mike, Johannes and I walked to downtown, for Sufganiyot, coffee and then to the buses to school. Hebrew class was fun today, as I got to play "Waitress" when we were working on our conversation skills!

After Hebrew, I went home so I could travel to Modi'in with my roommate and our neighbors, to have dinner with our professor from JTS and his family, as they made aliyah last year. It was wonderful to hang out with the whole family, lighting the menorah, and having a really terrific dinner with Davidson people! I got to see some of my favorite children, from teeny-tiny baby to elementary school math genuis. It was fun to hold a tiny twin and equally cool to read Isaac Bashevis Singer stories to my bilingual pal in Kitah Aleph. It was amazing to pull Stories for Children, a book by Singer, off of the bookshelf, remembering it as the one book I got for Hanukah that I still read. Babysitter's Club books were fun, but Jewish folk tales last forever...and we agreed that the fools of Chelm really are foolish.

Our cab ride home was something else. Allison nearly lost it when I called our driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr, Jr, like our crazy driver from Egypt. This Modi'in cab driver got seriously lost in, um, I think Haifa? Seriously, this part of Jerusalem was so nowhere near anything else. It was nuts!

Day 3, with the Davidson Chevre

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are there any pictures of the Sinclair family? I want to see how big the kids are now!