sunsets on the sea

so im sitting here drinking a nice mug of 18 sheckel white wine, winding down my perfect day.

so lets see it all started after work last night when nicole, lyndsey and i all went out to dinner with leore and her mother. the restaurant was trendy verging on chic and served traify seafood, not to mention some strong wine. the food was good, the conversation sensational. her mother is quite possibly the most sincere individual ive ever met. im currently loving meeting everyones parents and im loving that the people that raised the people i love are also so loveable (not so surprising when you think about it in those terms). i was having such a genuinely nice time i just kind of let the time slip by not unintentionally and missed the last train back to beit shemesh. i probably could have caught a bus but i just wasnt really in the mood and it didnt take too much convincing for leore and lyndsey to get me to walk back to lyndseys place and stay there.

the three of us (plus lyndseys boyfriend shlomo) settled in and watched some sex and the city (the dvd had something like 35 subtitle languages to select from, technology!) drank a beer and headed to bed. i had a real bed, in a real room, alone! so nice. slept in until noon, missed my volunteering (wasnt like distraught over it). took a nice hot shower and sat on the porch reading for about an hour letting my hair air dry in the cool sea breeze while i waited for lyndsey to get home from the gym. once she rinsed off and got dressed we hiked through the city all the way south to neve tzedek (the first jewish development that sprung from yaffo) which has become pretty bourgeoisie and artsy, mind you not so bourgeoisie and arsty that is isnt still absolutely adorable. sat down at a french themed boutique hotel (as i said, bourgie) for lunch (chicken salad and a cheese plate selection with these olives i almost died over). the meal of course chalked full of fun and flirty conversation. we obviously worked out our respective life plans, to include settling on some antique furniture and an adorable puppy with two different colored eyes while the two of us shopped around at some over priced boutiques all bursting with outlandish outfits constructed out of single pieces of fabric cut so that it hangs, twists and ties in ways i'm certainly not imaginative to comprehend (this damned israeli fashion).

after a little over an hour of that lyndseys feet were killing her in her cute new boots so we decided to wrap up and head down by the sea to walk home. we stopped to chat with this local artist who yelled down to us from the roof of this amazing home he lives at. his grandfather built in in 1907 (41 years before the state of israel was declared if you were wondering) it stands alone in a parking lot now, neve tzedek behind it and the sky scrappers of westernized tel aviv directly across the street to the north. he invited us to come watch him blow glass this evening at his workshop and to meet some famous israeli sculptor/painter (whos name eludes me). we unfortunately never made it there i had to get back home but it was just one of those "only in israel" moments.

after we finished talking to him we kept walking towards the beach just in time to catch the sunset. we settled in on some rocks near the sea and shlomo met us. it was one of those rare moments that even while happening i knew i would always remember. so cheesy, i know, but ive had a turn around as of late and ive been happy and right here concluding a really wonderful day (that ps was punctuated with all of the best music playing everywhere i went all day) was a picture of how im starting to really see israel. i looked around and to our left was a young arab family, to our right a native israeli guy fishing and behind us an ultra orthodox couple and there we sat, two white american jewish girls listening to her boyfriend playing the harmonica watching the sun set. and looking out over the water thinking about how amazing this place really can be sometimes, trying to soak in all of my surroundings my mind faded to nothingness while gazing out at the rays of sunlight spilling out onto the water, suddenly i realized why people paint. it was so striking and vivid. ive seen the sun set countless times and been places with beauty uncompromised, but ive never noticed colors like that before.

im the kinda gal that likes ending on a high note so i pardoned myself, appropriately of course, grabbed my things and a cab and headed on home.




now who would have guessed this very same day that was so wonderful for me only, brought me closer to why i love this place, was so horrific for the rest of the country. i learned later this evening that for the first time in a little over a year a suicide bomber attacked israel. two men strapped with bombs headed to a mall in dimona, one detonated his load killing one and injuring 11 while the other was shot down before he had a chance.

my thoughts of course are with the families and with the people stuck with the impossible decision of what to do now.

Anne