and once again

it didn't occur to me that what the voodoo priest told me at the beginning of my trip would hold true at the end. Just as it would take four days for my trip into the crazy world of developing countries to truly begin, it has taken four days for my exit to really let me go. I spent the first few days here in Israel in a little bit of a haze. Yuli would catch me washing dishes and ask me why I was washing them by hand when there was a dishwasher. I was boiling water in a pot for my endless cups of chai and she reminded me that they had kettles here. I rummaged through Dani's clothing till I found her shirt that read, "sab kuch milega" ("everything is possible" in hindi.) and I drank cup after cup of chai that will never taste as it did in india because we westerners have a nasty habit of pasteurizing our milk. damn damn damn.

So as the voodoo priest warned I spent the first day saying again, "what the hell have I just left behind?" the second saying, "what have I gotten myself into?" and the thrid simply still in shock just asking "really?" or as they say in hebrew: walla? So yesterday was the fourth day and things began to shake up or shake down for me, whatever expression fits. After studying hebrew with my lovely and yet challenging "hebrew with pleasure" book, and some yoga I went off to get lost in jerusalem and thats exactly what I did. I got lost, and found that I knew enough hebrew to get by, that there are enough people here that speak enough english that I dont really need that much hebrew and that when you get lost most of the time thats when you learn how to get found. But enough bad prose.

I was worried that I had lost all of my travelling lessons, the being joyful and open, the sense of adventure and ease at which life dictates its story to you, instead of working to pull one from its gritty teeth. I've made some new friends, some brits some israelis. I've spent time with my cousin yuli and efat, who are both excellent company and always down for a drink and a laugh not necessarily in that order and I've begun to accept that I may not be able to travel in Israel as if it were India but that maybe thats not bad, and maybe what it is, is even better than what I can think of. Hell, after literally one night here I've already made it into the big newspapers, I'm the one on the left with the mohawk, Yuli is the one on the right who I think looks like me. If I'm already in the papers, things can't be that bad, can they??