Day 13

Leslie, Tel Aviv in the background 

Leslie in the Alleyways of Old Jaffa

Old Jaffa

Its freeday, freeday, gettin down on freeday. If you didn't notice that was a play of the lyrics from that tacky Black song. We got up early for breakfast but didn't have plans until ten. So I some what read my Judaism book's until we were ready to head out. Oh your wondering what our plans for the day are? I guess I'll tell you. Ha. That is the point of a blog. About fifty of us have been working on a plan to spend the day in Tel Aviv. At ten we all got into our multiple vans, hit up Aladdin's (not pronounced like the disney movie, like all-ah-deens), and drove the forty-five minutes to the city. Once we got there we all changed into our swimsuits and pretty much ran to the beach, set down our stuff, and ran to the water. Our original plan was to walk around the city first, before getting in the Ocean. But that obviously didn't happen, because we all just saw the water and had to get in it. It is soo hot here. I have never sweat so much in my entire life, it is the norm to soak your shirt through here. So the water was the perfect place to be. Even though the water was really warm as well. The salt was irritating my skin, so it got all blotchy in a couple spots. And multiple people told me it was blotchy so I dried off and tried to cover it with my hair. It eventually faded. But I felt like I was covered in salt the rest of the day. After swimming for a while we walked over to Old Jaffa. Which was a thirty-five minute walk. We actually had additional rules for being in the different city, we were required to have a group of five with at least one boy. But the boys were being lame and inseparable so six of us girls just walked over ourselves (no worries we called the center and they changed the rule for us). Jaffa is the oldest port in the world. We walked around the whole city for a few hours, it is full of narrow alleyways with cool little art shops and old buildings. We ended up separating into just a group of three of us Melissa, Allison, and me. Because the other girls that were with us has signed up to leave at five on the earlier bus. And the three of us had signed up for the much later bus at ten-thirty (when I say bus I mean prescheduled van set up by the security men for us). The girls and I walked around Jaffa for a few more hours then made our way back to the beach because we couldn't get ahold of any of the other kids that were staying later. We were exhausted when we finally got back to the beach. And the other kids wanted to walk up to Jaffa because they had been at the beach the whole time! We pretty much did the opposite of them all day long. Instead of walking back to Jaffa with them we had a late lunch/early dinner of Falafels. I have decided that I really love Falafels. I feel like its pretty much what I would eat at home. After our meal, we went and sat on the beach for a couple hours while the sun was going down. I listened to Allison's entire life story pretty much the entire time. It was a really long story, she's a chatter box. We then walked around the city, but everything was pretty much closed. And we ended up in a sketchy part of town, so we headed back to the beach and met up with one of the other groups of kids. They all had their towels out and were just laying down in the dark, so we joined them for a while. Oh I forgot to mention about the swimsuits here. Men either wear speedos or just their straight up underwear. It is really gross. And while we were all just laying on the beach some weirdo man came by on his phone and just lapped us a bunch. And he would just stand right by us, oh I forgot to mention the fact that he was dressed but his pants were pulled down in the back so he was mooning us the entire time! Ewww. We weren't quite sure if he thought it was socially acceptable or what, but luckily he eventually left. A couple more boys from a group came over with us, Matty and Iszac, so we went to dinner with them. Because at this point we were just waiting for the vans to come get us. We walked over to a pizza place and ordered our food. Our waiter was really great he spoke a bunch of languages (Allison speaks french, Melissa arabic, Matty spanish) and talked to them each. Once we finished eating we went outside to wait for the vans, because ten-thirty proved to be a really long time. And this van full of orthodox jews pulled up playing really loud music and they hoped out and started dancing on the roof and all around. So our boys of course, Matty and Nick, ran over and danced on the roof with them. It was actually really funny, those two boys are pretty wild. They are both BYU-H and are total beach bums. But they are some of the cuter boys and are way fun to be with. Our van came right after that and those two boys and Melissa and I were all sitting on the back row together. I was super tired, but everything they said just seemed to be soo funny. We got back late, took quick showers then crashed for the night.