We then got our first real taste of our tour guide, Ya'ara. First thing she does is drops this bomb on the group by making a big deal about how she only has one arm. The other arm is a prosthesis. I hadn't noticed before then, but for some reason, this became a big deal and totally explained her personality. Then she read us some poems or something and gave us more stuff about how meaningful it was supposed to be. She was really pretty cool, but SO overly sentimental. Throughout the trip, myself and many others got increasingly annoyed with her constantly reading poems to us at each stop and telling personal stories about her life and what the locations meant to her, and asking probing questions of us. Several times during the trip, she also dressed up like a historical character and acted out a monologue as someone from history. They were heartwrenching (i.e. so disgustingly sentimental and melodramatic, with terrible acting, that I couldn't decide whether to cry at how embarrassed she ought to be, or laugh at how ridiculous it was).

Then they took us to some street to get lunch. I saw a Jerusalem McDonald's, which was very interesting because it was also made out of Jerusalem stone. I found out that Jerusalem building codes dictate that ALL buildings have to be finished with Jerusalem Stone (mined from quarries outside Jerusalem). So, they all have the same golden yellow stone exterior, which looked very funny on a McDonald's. Here I also got my first glance at American products with Hebrew and Arabic labels, such as Coke and Sprite. Fanta is very prevalent in Israel as well. For lunch (my first meal in Israel), I had schwarma for the first time. Schwarma, along with falafel, is all over the place in Israel. Seems like everyone eats either schwarma, falafel, or pizza for lunch.

Schwarma goes like this: They have a huge hunk of lamb rotating on this mechanical spit. When you order it, they take a piece of pita and cut it to make a pita pocket. Then they rub some hummus (which I now like) inside the pita, then carve some lamb off and put that in the pita, then they ask what else you want on it. I got mine with "salad" (chunks of tomato, cucumber, and maybe some lettuce) and some spicy sauce. Then they finish it off by putting french fries in the pita with all the rest of it. Then you eat. It's very good. It was also my first experience paying in shekels. The meal cost like NIS 28 with a can of Coke, which is around $6.

Also pictured are a ridiculously long bus, and, amazingly, a DVD vending machine. Yep, it's a rental vending machine. You pay for the rental, then return the DVD to the machine in a couple days. So cool and ahead of the US.

After this, on our first day in Israel, when we were all so tired after the flight and all, they took us straight to the holiest spot in the world for Jews and it was supposed to be a big deal to us. We visited the Western Wall. To get there, we had to walk through much of the Old City, which was very cool. We got to see some cool shops and some interesting people.

To get into the Wall square, everyone had to go through security. They don't want anyone blowing it up, I guess (or the people praying there). Understandable.

The Wall itself was daunting, if only because it is so meaningful to so many people. My group wasn't very religious, but everyone seemed to be very affected just being in the presence of the wall. I think Pink Floyd's version is better, but this one was still pretty awesome. I wrote a prayer on a little piece of paper, and stuck it into a crack in the Wall (pictured). The prayer was something like, may it never again be forgetten that my family is a part of the Jewish people, and yay for my ancestors! It was a bit more poetic and meaningful (God likes that fruity stuff), but you get the point.

When you approached the Wall, if you weren't wearing a head covering, you had to take a paper kipa and put it onto your head. This was a bit gross, since other people had been sweating in them all day. Oh well. I also committed a big faux pas at the Wall (two if you count taking a bunch of pictures). Apparently it is custom to never turn one's back to the Wall until one is a certain distance away (fifty yards or so seemed to be the standard, although some people walked funny all the way across the square to avoid doing so). I didn't know this, so I, of course, turned around after putting my prayer in the Wall and walked straight away. I got several dirty looks and finally someone yelled at me and so my leader came over and was like, "What are you doing, dude?" And then he explained the tradition to me.

A note about the kipa (skull cap/yamulkah/hat): The reason Jews wear the kipa is as a sign of respect to God. The idea is that if your head is uncovered, you are making yourself equal to God. You cover your head in order to separate yourself from Him, acknowledging that you don't deserve to be in his direct presence. I'm not sure how well of a buffer those silly little hats provide, but it's an interesting fashion that I am now privy to.

After the Wall, we finally went to our hotel, The Regency Jerusalem. It is a five-star hotel, though it wasn't really that great. Very nice pool, though. I roomed with my buddies (seriously, we were on the buddy system), Yair Reimer and Jake Weisman. They were both awesome. Great roommates. The drinking started pretty promptly the first night, and was to continue through most of the trip whenever anything was available.

At some point we had a lecture by some pretty dynamic professor from Hebrew University. I can't remember the full topic, only that he talked a lot about the Gaza pullout and how it was a good thing.

The next day, we went back to the Old City of Jerusalem, for a more extensive tour. Notice the Israeli soldiers. They were hilarious. Most of them were very, very sexy. The guys and girls were stylish, fit, and just generally very hot. I thought a lot about why they seemed so hot, and I reached the conclusion that it's the uniforms. When a bunch of people are uniformed, then it is much easier to see each one's unique beauty. It also lets each person's personality come out more in the way they choose to accessorize and such. And the soldiers accessorized A LOT. I'd regularly see female Israeli soldiers walking around in a uniform with the sleeves rolled up, shirt halfway unbuttoned, bangles and bracelets on their wrists, dangly earrings, really stylish designer sunglasses, pink streaks in their hair, Puma sneakers, designer backpacks, and an M-16 rifle. Very strange.

All Israelis are required to serve in the military. Three years for males, two for females, and then reserve duty every year after that. But it isn't like military in the US. Most of the Israeli soldiers get to go home every night. Most of them get weekends off. They let them dress like I mentioned above because they want it to be cool to be in the military, and it is. The danger of being in the Israeli military is probably a whole lot less than the US military, and so the armed forces are like year-round summer camps for 18-25 year olds. Plus, as I said, they're all so sexy.

Also of note in these pictures are the prominence of European cars that we don't see in America. You almost never see Ford or GMC vehicles in Israel. They mostly drive small, efficient cars, either French makes like Renault, and Peugot, or other Euro cars like Fiat, or Volkswagens, or else the same kind of random Asian cars we have all over the place here. But the French cars are quite different and they were fun to see. Another interesting thing: all the cars in Jerusalem are either white or silver. Not really all, but a big majority. Maybe because of the sun?

On Friday night (the start of Shabbat, the time of rest), we took a walk through an orthodox neighborhood. It was really cool to see, but I couldn't take pictures (operating electronics is somehow not resting). I took some on the way to and fro, but I missed some really good shots in the neighborhood. See, they block off the streets (driving isn't resting), so all the neighborhood's children come out and play in safety. It is a densely populated neighborhood, so there were tons of cute little orthodox children running around, and lots of great shots to be had, if I didn't mind being stoned (and I don't mean from weed).

Next day, we went to the Israeli National Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Yad Vashem. It was amazing. We happened to go on the same day as Laura Bush, which made it super crowded, but it was still amazing. Weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I took a few anyway because it was a very photogenic museum. I cried through most of the museum. I kept thinking of what my grandmother had gone through fleeing Antwerp with her family. And then I kept thinking of what all of my relatives that hadn't managed to flee had gone through. Nothing breeds solidarity like shared suffering, and I don't think I ever felt more connected to my Jewish ancestry than I did right there. It's harrowing to realize that no matter how Jewish or non-Jewish I feel, and no matter how I decide to identify, to the Nazis, I would have been unquestionably a Jew, and worthy of extermination. Knowing that makes one feel a lot more connected to the rest of the Jewish people.

Several of the pictures are from the Hall Of Names, which contains a whole bunch of volumes filled with the accounts from relatives and friends of people killed in the Holocaust.

On a lighter note, I thought it was hilarious that Windows had crashed on one of the computers driving a projector in one exhibit, so we got a Windows error message in Hebrew plastered on a big wall in a really somber part of the museum. It just opened a couple weeks ago, so they're still working out the kinks.

We went a couple times to Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, which is a big shopping and eating place. It's in a nice district, and was generally very chill. I smoked a nargila (hookah), which I'd never done before. It was pretty nice. Very smooth and easy to take. Still didn't taste that great (it was just okay), but at least it didn't leave me hacking and wheezing for an hour like smoking a joint or pipe has done every time I've smoked pot. A whole lot of people bought hookahs in Israel. They're very cheap, and decent quality. These people then smoked their hookahs pretty much every night the rest of the trip.

One night, they gave us a tour of underground excavations of the Kotel. We got to see the Kotel at night, which was cool anyway, but the underground tour was awesome. The part of the Western Wall that you see above ground and in pictures is apparently just one third of the original height of the whole wall. Contrary to popular opinion, the Kotel is not one of the temple walls. Rather it is one of the walls of the temple mount. The temple itself sat in the middle of the temple mount, roughly where the dome of the rock is now.

Our tour guide for the underground part of the Kotel was so funny. I laughed harder than I have in a year at least when I saw Jake's face at one point. The tour guide had her whole speech completely memorized, including accompanying hand signals for emphasis, and pauses for questions. At one spot along the Wall, really close to the point on the Wall closest to the Holiest Of Holies in the original temple, she pointed out this stone used in the wall that had a dark area to it. "It doesn't take much imagination to see this dark spot as a map of Israel. Here this small depression is the Red Sea, this hole is the Dead Sea, here is the Golan Heights..." While she's saying this, and pointing at the most random dark spot you can imagine, Jake is looking at her trying not to laugh. I see him, which looked something like this: I took a picture of myself, just so you could see how ridiculous this was. He looks absolutely enraptured by what she's saying since he's trying not to laugh, which I think is hilarious, and I start laughing uncontrollably, really loudly, and I was right next to her the whole time. I laughed for like a couple minutes, really loudly, and she wasn't even distracted from her practiced speech. So funny.

Also, check out the difference between the Jerusalem stone in the Old City (really worn down), and the new Jerusalem stone in the overlook park at the beginning: