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Published: January 25th 2007
today me corie and audra decided that we would go into the old city just the three of us to look around and kill some time. none of us had class until late this afternoon, which was nice because is was one of the first free days that i have had since i have been here and probably one of the last..ever. A bus picks you up at the Moshav and supposedly takes you into 'jerusalem'. we got on the bus fine and the bus driver was really nice. it cost about 8.5 shekels to take the bus into jerusalem-which isnt very expensive. i met a very nice women on the bus from the next town over. she had lived there for 34 years but is orginially from south africa. i liked her accent. The bus stops at three or four towns along the way, one of them is an orthodox jewish community which is super conservative. a bunch of jewish school girls got on at this stop. at this point the nice women who i had met began to talk to one of the jewish woman that got on the bus about tupperware. the jewish woman sounded american...and i thought she must be since she sold tupperware. thats such an american thing. anyways, the next stop was at a little arab town where another woman got on and sat next to me. first she spoke to me in ..arabic..and i got the general idea that she wanted to move over. so i did. she smelled like a woman i just to work for back in the states. she started to talk to me in her broken english, which is alot better than my non-existing arabic, and asked me where i was from and how old i was and etc. she was funny because after every sentence she would say 'see, i talk english'. and i would say 'yeah'.
okay. so little by little everyone begins to get off the bus and we are the only people on, besides another jewish woman. and the bus driver asks us in a suspicious voice where we are planning on getting off and we told him at the old city. " i no take you to old city, bus no go to old city, only to new" hmmmm...interesting. because no one told us that. so we had to get off at the last stop, in the new city jerusalem, which none of us had been to ever before. he told us what bus to take to get to the new city, but we are not allowed to take city buses as a precaution. so there we were...left. alone. except for the other jewish woman who tried in her broken english to explain where we could walk to get the old city . audra thought that she was going to blow us up because she had her hold a bag of hers while she got off the bus...weird.
we had to ask about 5-6 different people where the old city was and what road we take, etc. and it took us a good hour and half to find. but we did after wandering around the new city for awhile. there is a coffee bean there..exciting.
we got to spend about two hours in the old city and it was nice because we were there early in the morning before all the tourist so the streets were not as crowded and cramped and the atmosphere was much more calm and relaxing. every shop that we went into told us that we were the first costomers of the day and they would give us a good deal. audra bought a navity, because if she hadnt this guy wouldnt have let us out of his store....hahha. he was funny. he gave us his card and told us to bring our whole group back to his store.
then we got faffels. i dont know how to spell it, but it doesnt matter because even if i spell it wrong they are still sooo good. best thing i have eaten since being here. the men who owned the cafe we ate were funny too. we were the first costomers of the day, again, and so they gave us a 'deal' on our food. it was like 12 shekels. and for some odd reason they gave audra a waterbottle..like a nalgene looking thing, but not a nalgene of course. we got to sit on the sidewalk and talk with them about stuff. they were so funny. their names meant matthew and winter in arabic..but i cant remember how to say it now.
then it was time to go back to where the bus, again, supposedly picked us up. we went and asked at the tourist info shop and they told us that we had to walk to the central bus station and that it was only 20 minutes from the old city and even gave us a map. so we started walking, and got lost again. asked someone else who told us that the central bus station was a 50minute walk. oh my. then someone told us that the bus would pick us up on Jaffa street in the new city and it was only a 10 min walk. so we walked back to the new city. and got lost. found jaffa street. couldnt find bus.
finally we decided that we needed to take a taxi back to the moshav. there are taxis everywhere here and basically they honk at you all the time to get your attention so that you will ask for a ride. but of course when we needed a taxi there were none honking at us. gosh!. i knew how to hail a cab in the states, but how to you do it here???...we guessed and just walked out a ways into the street and waited and sure enough a taxi saw us and stopped.
we told him we needed to go to Abu Ghosh . he had no idea what we were talking about and then told us it would only cost 8 shekels. thats wayyyyy tooo cheap. we figured he thought we wanted to go someone closer. so we just told him nevermind. but no one takes no for an answer here. and he kept asking, saying 'no, i take you, get in car' and then his taxi was in the way of another car which was backing out and that car was honking and then another war was driving down the road and almost hit the taxi while we were trying to tell this stubborn man that we didnt want a ride anymore. it took about 5 minutes to convince him and he left mad.
so we tried again for another taxi and this time the guy even knew where the moshav was and would take us there. of course he wanted to charge us 100 shekels. wayyyyy too much. but we told him 70 shekels and he agreed.
we finally got back to the moshav in one piece. and havent mentioned the fact that we got lost to anyone here. haha. we dont want to look stupid.
i have pictures and will post them later but they take forever to download and it is 11:30pm here and i am going to bed.
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Joe H.
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Lol...thanks for the update kelly. that was a pretty funny story. it sounds like you guys are having an awesome time. i cant believe audra thought the poor jewish woman was going to blow you guys up!