Chapter Two - You call this winter?

If you've ever had the good fortune to travel somewhere tropical during Canada's winter, you know that there is an interesting sensation that accompanies going outside for the first time at the destination. You think, "What the hell is this? Where's all the snow? Why am I not freezing to death?"

These are the thoughts that were going through my mind upon arrival in Tel Aviv. The temperature was something like 25 degrees. I hung around with Marie for a while, just enjoying the warm winds and the sound of . . . nothing. We were very near the highway, actually, but for some reason it was totally silent. There's a big difference between Israel and Canada for you. Israel is quiet. Except when it's incredibly loud, which I'll get to later.

Marie in Ben Gurion Airport. Now you can put a face to the name.

Sunset below the highway in Tel Aviv. I was experimenting with the exposure settings on my camera to get this halo effect.

While we were outside we had an opportunity to exchange our Canadian money for shekels. I tell you, that was the shadiest money changer I've ever encountered, not that I've encountered many. It was basically just a guy standing outside with a shopping cart full of money. You would never see that in Canada. He would be standing inside, and the shopping cart would be a safe, and the safe would be hidden from your view. It was pretty weird.

I am not certain how much money I actually got for my $150 Canadian. It was either 390 or 490 shekels, depending on who you ask, and I don't remember exactly. 490 would make more sense, since the exchange rate is something like 3.5 shekels to a Canadian dollar. And yet, there are those who insist it was only 390, which would have been a huge ripoff.

Outside the airport, we met Yuval the sassy tour guide. I don't recall having any particular initial impressions of him, but one of the notes in my journal is "Yuval the sassy tour guide", so I thought I had better mention him.

On the road to our first stop, we had dinner, which consisted of pita, various things to put on the pita, and meat. That seems to be all there is to the Israeli diet: pita, pita-related things, and meat. Fascinating, no?

After dinner we made our first stop, at an ancient Roman aqueduct. It was night and I had not mastered the intricacies of my camera (in fact I still haven't), so I took a number of pictures of total blackness, and several blurry pictures of people standing in front of the aqueduct. Here's one.

A Roman aqueduct. I believe the far right shadow is mine. A beautiful example of almost everything that can go wrong in night photography.

After taking pictures we walked through the arches of the aqueduct to the shore of the Mediterranean sea, where I took some more pictures of blackness. We had a little ceremony there involving terrible Jewish wine. At least I assume it was terrible Jewish wine. I don't drink wine at all, so I can't really say how this wine stacks up except by gauging the expressions of the other birthrighters, which were not at all pleasant.

The ceremony involved Yuval talking at great length about the grand Jewish history in the land of Israel and how I shouldn't take it for granted that I was able to come to Israel for free while my ancestors could not, and it prompted one of my shortest and most bitter rants. Be afraid.

Pleasant, no?

After this ceremony we headed towards Kibbutz Ein Gev, our first sleeping place. On the way I eavesdropped on another racy conversation, this one between Marie and Josh, about orgasms. I don't think I'll provide all the details here.

We rolled up at Ein Gev's tourist village (kibbutzim make a lot of money from tourism, apparently) pretty late in the evening. We divided ourselves into rooms, and I ended up with Gill and Josh, which was cool. I'm glad I didn't end up with any of the rowdy frat boys. Not that they're bad people, but I wanted some peace and quiet.

We might have played some kind of icebreaking game at that point, but I don't remember. If we did, then it was fun, and then we went to our rooms.

The rooms were actually all separate houses. It was pretty sweet. Our house was pretty close to the beach, and we had a good view of Tiberius, across the Sea of Galilee, the only freshwater lake in Israel.

The house at Ein Gev.

Tiberius, across Galilee.

Inside the house were two rooms, one with two large beds and the other with three bunk beds, two at ground level and one on top. I took the top bunk, Gill took one of the bottom ones, and Josh took the other room.

Gill's and my room at Ein Gev. I don't know what I was thinking when I composed and framed this shot. It's terrible.

Josh's room.

Having been up for some 33 hours or something, I was pretty ready for bed, but I took a shower first. At least I tried to. There were four knobs in the shower and I was either too dumb or too tired to figure out which did what. I eventually just waited for Josh, who has an engineering degree, to explain it to me. As it turns out, two of the knobs were for temperature, one was to turn on the water in the shower head, and the other was to turn on the water in the foot-level faucet.

After having fun with the shower, I went to bed.

Chapter Three