Starting Our Last Week In Israel

Our next to last Shabbat in Jerusalem. A clear, sunny day, but still cold. Gabriella and Toby spent the morning making a music video with Shanie and Meshi.  Pretty funny stuff with some break dancing moves thrown in (Very cute, but I don't think the break dancers in Flatbush, Bed Stuy or South Central have anything to worry about).

The Old City remains a magnet for us on Shabbat.  It is interesting to see the emphasis and attention shift towards Christmas and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as December 25 approaches. It is also really nice to not have the constant, commercial drumbeat of an American Christmas season - there is no Black Friday and X number of shopping days left!! here.  The focus is religious, as it should be. I will definitely miss that.

Where is that antique?

So we wandered through the city to the Kotel, paid our respects and ended up at our favorite falafel restaurant in the Muslim Quarter. The shops in the Old City are 90% overpriced tourist traps, but some of them, you suspect, have buried treasure - it's a question of can you find it and would you know it if you saw it?

Why are they smiling? (Because they go home in 8 days.)

Still have snow on the ground and our central heat is basically non functional.  So we bundle up in layers at night and the kids fight over the hot water bottle (instead of the kindle fire).  The new family theme song is 'Steam Heat' from the musical Pajama Game, with the lines:

"I've got a hot water bottle,
but nothin' I've got'll take the place of you
holding me tight"

In the mornings we have had to scrape frost from the car windows.  I showed the kids the credit card technique - they thought that was quite the innovative use of a cc.

I know it's here somewhere

And basically capping our Israel adventure was the near miss bus bombing outside Tel Aviv today. Or as Gal told me, "Welcome to the Middle East".