Weekend condensation

Since I've been falling a bit behind, I will condense the rest of our weekend into one entry. This is easy to do at this point because I don't remember what we did which day at this point anyway.

Naomi and spent Saturday the way it should be spent - relaxing like mad. I don't think I put on pants until around 3pm. Unfortunately, all great things must come to an end and I had to suit up to go on a tour of Yafo (Jaffa) with Udi, Shlomet and their son Etai (most likely spelled wrong). Yafo is part ancient city and part old city. The ancient part involves the sea port from which Jonah departed from in order to give a whale dyspepsia. The old city was built by Napolean. We walked around the area sticking our heads into things, climbing up things, walking around things and the general stuff tourists do that make them look like roaming cats. We then departed for Herzliya, where Udi and Schlomet had prepared a nice dinner for us. We then hit the marina at around 10:30pm, which was just like every other marina I've ever been to (because I've never been to another marina). We came home tired as hell and slept like the dead.

Oh dear god, Sunday is Monday here so I had to go back to class! Like a two year old child just learning to speak, a couple of words started to pop out at me allowing me to keep my head above water. After listening to others in the class give a rousing report on the socio-economic conditions of their cities, I was given a chance to speak about Iowa City: "In Iowa City, it's not big or small. There is a university. Iowa City IS university. There is sun, but rain. Iowa City has trees and plants." A neat summary of our fair city, to say the least.

Naomi and I decided to go back to Yafo and take another look around. We left at 4pm which isn't a great time to walk in Tel Aviv. After a sweaty 6K walk we managed to get to Yafo, at which point we decided to not look around and instead explore a cute neighborhood nearby called Neve Tsedek. More walking ensued, along with some window shopping. We finally headed to our evening destination at 9pm, a bar called Norma Jean with a large array of monastic beers from all over the world. We met Elinor and called Yoni the Great down from his celestial palace and set about trying to drink all of them. Yoni told us stories about time of old when he used to wrestle dragons and how he once swam up a waterfall just to prove he was faster than gravity. The evening was mine, however, after I conquered a beer flight of 6 beverages, each 200mL (which, since I'm American and don't understand the metric system, I read as "some" beer). It turns out it's a bit more than "some", especially with the Herculian alcohol content of monastic beer. I was hiccuping nearly the entire 3 mile walk home. We made plans for later this week with Elinor and parted ways with Yoni the Great, who was off to battle all of France until right before we leave the country.