Shabat shalom, insh’allah

That should confuse you. “Shabat shalom” is Hebrew for “peaceful sabbath” and “insh’alla” is Abaric for “god willing”. This is my contribution to peace in the middle east.

A lot has happened in the past few days. After the Independence day party (Wednesday 7 May) and the next day of red sea & recovery… on Friday (9 May) Noam, Batsheva (Noam’s g/f) and I met up with Karen (the original party host), Katie & Mosh for a few drinks. Jerusalem has a good night scene with lots of options if you’re with the right people. And I was. The night ended up lasting 48 hours.

We ended up at a bar called “Sira” (previously “D1″), where we ran into an English-Israeli guy called Mark, who happened to be a couchsurfer also. We followed him to some roof-top party, drank too much, smoked too much, smoked too much… and came up with the idea of going to the West Bank town of Jericho in the morning.

After 1-2 hours sleep at Karen’s house in the kibbutz settlement, the Jericho raiding party (Mosh, Katie, Marc & me) got stoned again and went into town. Israelis and Jews aren’t allowed into Jericho… but Mosh & Marc lied about their jewishness and had alternative passports (Canada & UK respectively). We saw a sicamore tree that some guy apparently climbed in the bible… walked around the “old town” which is about 9000 years old… and then had humus & fallafal in the centre.

We had to wait about 40 minutes before we got a ride hitch-hiking back to Jerusalem, and ended up being picked up by some crazy Italians. In Jerusalem I moved my stuff from Noam’s house to Marc’s place… and then with a bit more weed & beer and the arrival of another half-dozen people, we headed out to a local pub that was showing the screening of “Pangia day”.

The marathon of short movies was supposed to highlight the similarities between all humans, and break down the barriers between “us” and “them”. However, for the first hour all that we learned was that technology doesn’t always work as you want it to… because the internet feed didn’t work. After the screening we headed back to Marc’s place for the after-party and a precious few hours of sleep.

After a fairly hectic few days, Sunday (11 May) was a bit more relaxed. I was planning on doing some work, but instead I did some reading, drinking and walking around town. In the evening we went along to a underground bar to watch some live music and have a few more drinks… before ending up back where the two-day session started at “Sira”.