Two men in Tel Aviv

Sam got invited to do a workshop in Tel Aviv, Israel, and though I really wanted to join him, we both knew that taking a fifteen- or twenty-hour flight with a nine-month old was the very worst kind of madness. So we decided Abe could go with Sam instead. Everyone who heard about it said, "What an amazing opportunity for a 15-year-old!" And they were right! It was amazing. Abe was so excited.

I decided I'd write a couple posts about the trip (even though was not I technically...present) because if I don't, who will? And someone ought to. Sam and Abe did write to me every day, and they told me about all their pictures afterward, so I feel like I know something about it! I edited Sam's pictures to look way better, too. How lucky he is to have me! Ha ha.

While Sam was giving his workshop, Abe amused himself by doing his Rubik's Cube, helping carry things, playing games on Sam's iPad, reading, and going running in the 90-degree heat (why? why?). But that was only for two days, and they had eight days total in Israel, so that gave them some free time to see the sights!

Tel Aviv is right on the Mediterranean Sea, and it's a big modern city in a lot of ways. This picture was taken from Jaffa, looking back at Tel Aviv. I have always liked looking at the pictures of Jaffa (which used to be Joppa) in the back of the LDS Bible. Jonah went there before going to Tarshish. Peter raised Tabitha from the dead there. So interesting!

Sam and Abe said there were cats everywhere! If their ears had been clipped you knew the city had vaccinated them. This cat looks very Egyptian to me.

The people who organized the workshop were so great to plan out some fun day trips for everyone to go on. One day they drove out to the Dead Sea. It makes me hot and thirsty just to look at these pictures. The landscape is so, so dry!

Here they are overlooking the Dead Sea. The lines you can see out in the sea are delineating salt...mines? Not mines. Salt plants? Places they extract salt from the sea. There are some of these in the Great Salt Lake, too.

It was cool to hear Sam and Abe describe what it was like to float in the Dead Sea. Sam is NEVER able to float. He hasn't tried it in the Great Salt Lake, admittedly, but he always just sinks like a stone. But here, he said, he wasn't just ABLE to float: he said he'd be walking along, not trying to do anything, and suddenly he would find himself floating on his back wondering how he got that way! It was hard to do anything BESIDES float. But he loved it. He said he was so comfortable just floating in the water that he fell asleep!

That made me wonder whether the Dead Sea was saltier than the Great Salt Lake? If you, too, are curious, you can find out here. (Hint: they are pretty close.)

I happen to float anywhere and everywhere, so that made me curious about what would happen to ME in the Dead Sea. Would I float right out of the water? Above it? Maybe I will never know. But it sounds so fun! Sam said the water was lovely, too, and bluer and less...yucky than our Great Salt Lake. And the mud on the shore is supposed to have healing properties. Sam said he rubbed some on his dry arms, and they felt nice and smooth all day! And if that single data-point of anecdotal evidence doesn't convince you, I don't know what will! :)

Dry! So dry!

They toured the fort of Masada, up on a plateau above the Dead Sea. I had heard of it before, but wasn't sure what it was (I felt vaguely like it had something to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls). Sam said it was built as a fortress and palace by Herod the Great, and after the 2nd Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, a splinter group of Jews fled to Masada. Then in 70 AD the Roman army laid siege to the fortress. You can see the walls of some of those Roman camps below the plateau. The story is that when the Jews realized they weren't going to hold out against the Roman army, they all killed themselves rather than be taken captive. Only a mother and her baby hid and survived to tell the tale. Such a sad story!

But such a cool place to see.

The other thing that was really interesting about the landscape out there by the Dead Sea is that the whole area is sinking! The groundwater is all draining out, apparently, and it leaves huge sinkholes all over the place, ruining towns and swallowing up buildings. You can see one of the sinkholes in the picture above. A few nights after Sam told me about that, I had a dream that all my mom's neighbor's houses were getting swallowed up by sinkholes and we were frantically rummaging through her house trying to decide what to save before it got swallowed up too. Very alarming.

Back in Tel Aviv now. And here is something that surprised me very much: Sam said the food he ate in Israel was better than anything else he'd had in Europe! This is quite a claim and I am not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, I was very happy that it was all so good for them. On the other hand, I wish I could have tried it too! The things we ate in Italy and France and Germany were all SO good, and SO glorious, that I really almost can't believe Israel could have been better! But Sam said it was all just so interesting and fresh and delicious. He and Abe particularly liked the breads and the different sauces and hummuses (hummi?) they tried. But they said EVERYTHING was good. (The picture above is of baklava for sale at an open-air market.)

Food at the breakfast buffet at their hotel. Sam never usually feels like eating breakfast on the days of his workshops—he is too keyed up and focused on getting ready to speak. But he said here in Tel Aviv, the breakfast was SO good that he couldn't bear to miss one day of it, so he ate a full plate of food, and he didn't regret it a bit!

A restaurant just for hummus! That is my dream.

Abe picking out gummy candies at a street market. They brought some of these home and they were, indeed, very good.

I loved seeing the pictures of just the streets and buildings in Tel Aviv. There were street markets and the same sort of narrow alleyways we saw in Italy and Germany, but with their own Middle Eastern character. I love the color of the stone against the sky!

It seemed like there were colorful strings of lights everywhere!

And wires criss-crossing all over the place too: over the street, along the outsides of buildings, up the sides of walls.

Such interesting jumbles of things for sale.

I love this building. A museum?

A park.

Sam and Abe stayed in a hotel right on the beach, so they could look out over the Mediterranean while they ate their breakfast. So amazing!

They got to go running along the beach.

And they said that on those hot, humid, unbearable afternoons, it felt SO good to swim in the perfectly-lukewarm water! I have always wanted to swim in a warm ocean, and I still can't imagine what it would feel like. To me, going to beach means holding your breath, dipping yourself in until you can't stand the cold, and then running out for relief onto the warm sand. But a mild ocean…heavenly! You can also see, from that salinity chart I linked earlier, that the Mediterranean Sea is saltier than you might expect. So Sam could float there too!

Abe said his favorite moments of the trip were sitting at a restaurant right here on the beach, at sunset, looking over the Mediterranean Sea and drinking passion-fruit juice and lingering over a late dinner. Even when he was little, Abe has always loved to be part of the "real" conversations the adults are having, and here in Israel he was just treated as one of the grown-ups, talking with everyone, having his opinions asked for and his contributions appreciated. No wonder he loved it so!

Sam and Abe also loved their day in Jerusalem, but I will write about that in the next post!