It's the final countdown: Tuesday

Nadav dropped me off back by the Dizengoff Center where I met up with Anna and Jen, who were shopping. The rain that had been predicted was finally beginning to come, especially in Jerusalem, as Hayley reported. Instead of waiting for a bus, Jen and I sprang for a cab to get back to Mayanot. Taxi from the Tachana to Mayanot: 34 shek. Not needing to stand in the rain: priceless.

Tuesday morning. Officially one more week until I leave to go home to the States. I woke up to a surprise, an email from TW, letting me know he was in Israel, asking if I was still around; always a surprise on Facebook. In the evening I met Yiftach, with whom I had studied in Berlin. I felt bad that he lives less than 20 minutes walking from where I have lived the past five months and this is the first time that we are seeing each other. Five months may seem like a long time, may seem like enough time to see everyone, to know everyone you are supposed to know and meet, but it goes by surprisingly fast. He is such a surprising combination of ideas; as radically left wing as he is seen as being in many ways, such as his tshirt with a Palestinian flag, which reads (in Arabic) ‘free Palestine,’ and on the other hand, he works at Yad Vashem, does work internationally in Holocaust awareness and education, and asked me whether I had met a nice Israeli while here, particularly commenting that if I had called him when I was first here, he has parties sometimes, and he knows many nice guys. Politics regardless, everyone is a Jewish mother.