School-less Friday

Today, at school, it was the day that they got report cards.

Having only been here for three weeks, I don't have a report card. So the teacher said that instead of coming for forty-five minutes, I didn't need to come to school at all.

Instead, my mom took me to Allenby Street, which is in the heart of Tel Aviv. It's mostly got a combination of clothing stores, some fancy and some not, and other designer stores. We walked along there for awhile, pausing to go into a few shops. Then we reached Nachlat Binyamin Street, where every Friday there is an artists' market. After passing the security guard, we bought some backpacks for me and my brother in a small shop near the end of the market. When we finished, the market was mostly up and running for the day. There was a collection of things that you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else - handmade clay flowers that looked real, all sorts of jewelry, small figurines of all kinds, stained glass, wood crafts, fabric, hairpieces, leather products, cuckoo clocks in all kinds of shapes. We met up with my aunt and went to a café with a very nice outdoor area to sit in. My uncle joined us as we were reading our horoscopes off of a newspaper that was left on our table. I got a hot chocolate as well as a chocolate croissant. This is a very Tel Aviv-y thing to do - sit in a café on a Friday morning, read the newspaper, and have coffee (or hot chocolate, I suppose). The artists' market is located in old Tel Aviv, which has beautiful, albeit fairly run-down, buildings.

After the café we went back to Allenby. We passed the Carmel market (on Carmel Street), which is mostly full of food, and the Betzalel market, which is mostly clothing. There were more stores, but we kept walking. Close to Betzalel market (or Shuk Betzalel as it's called in Hebrew, "shuk" being the word for market), we passed a juice stand, where they were selling strawberries. Here it's strawberry season right now, so we bought one kilo strawberries and two juices - I got a strawberry slushie made from fresh strawberry juice.

After that we continued to Dizengoff Center for some electronics, then caught a bus and went to my grandma's house for what is called in our family "Friday meal," when the whole family comes for lunch. My cousin was telling hilarious stories about the army and the rest of the family telling stories about anything that came up. I don't think I've laughed more in my life.

Cups of tea: 39