Friday and Saturday

Friday morning I went with two friends down to the Old City in Be'er Sheva. We went to a street market that I've heard called the pedestrian mall, the Jewish Shuk, the Friday Shuk, etc.

One the way, after we got off the bus, we stopped at a fruit stand where I bought some beautiful strawberries. I love strawberries (when I was little, before we moved, we used to have a strawberry garden in our back yard) but haven't seen them in Israel, which was disappointing. Logically I bought some strawberries.

In the street market there were a lot of great stands with everything from food to houseware items to clothing to souvenirs. There were kids shouting out prices (One kid kept yelling "Eser! Eser! Eser!" (Eser=10 [Shekels] for bakery items). I bought a few souvenirs, including the first one I found that actually says "Be'er Sheva" on it. I was looking for dreidels, but I guess I was too early still. I found an actual Judaica store and they said it would be another week or week and a half.

At the end of the shops, I found a falafel stand (Falafel Yarkot) that a friend of mine told me that his professor (who teaches tourism to Israelis) said is claimed to be the best falafel in Be'er Sheva. "They" say that the best in Israel is in Be'er Sheva and if this was the best falafel in Be'er Sheva, then it could be said that this stand made the best falafel in Israel. It definitely could have been, it tasted amazing. The stand was always busy. Unlike other stands, you don't pick what goes in your falafel. Usually, you tell them what salads, chips, etc, but here they just put everything in. One other really cool thing though is that they didn't use tongs to put the fafafel in the pita. They threw it in the air and caught it with the pita. That was nifty.

Check out a video that I took of the falafel making:

(On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFVrmCxvpCY)

Yesterday, I went to my Jewish Identity Professor's home for Shabbat dinner. I got there early and joined him and his son for Shabbat evening services. I'd been before with him, but this time we went to a different synagogue called "Beit Knesset Kipah". It is older, larger, more traditional, and more Israeli. It was nice. Dinner with my Professor's family, was nice as well. We had a great conversation alongwith his wife and a few of his children.

Today, I've been working on random stuff - the blog, emails, designing a group t-shirt for the Overseas Program, stuff for DU, scholarship stuff, etc. Just taking it easy mostly. I also started watching a tv show that my Mom likes. It's called "Knight Rider" and it is on NBC. It's really good. You check it out.

I've also started listening to Christmas music. I love Christmas and Winter Holiday music. It's kind of ironic though in Israel...