Mini-Israel
Mini-Muslims,
originally uploaded by Becky Bloom. After resisting for many years, I finally gave in and allowed my family to take me to Mini-Israel. What, you may ask, is Mini-Israel? Well, pretty much, it's all the big things in Israel, made smaller, arranged on the park grounds in the shape of a star of David. Yeah, I know.
So, we went, and it wasn't that bad. We saw a mini-Bahai temple in mini-Haifa, a mini-Kotel, and a mini-Masada (complete with a mini-camera crew filming some mini-Roman soldier re-enacters). Meta, yeah?
I was curious, and eventually asked my cousin, why the praying Muslims were inside a plastic case. Of course, as always, he had an answer. Apparently, there's some sort of mini-war in mini-Israel, and the mini-Muslims had been stoned (by real-sized people, by my guess). Wow, that's real big, throwing stones at miniature plastic figurines. You go, guy.
And now that I'm on the topic of things being stoned (the actual hurling of rocks, not the result of drug-abuse), it surprised me to learn that it's often an actual, legitimate, realized fear around here. For example, if one were to drive a car on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year), and one were spotted by an orthodox Jew, one runs the risk of said car being stoned. The same goes for Yom Kippur, the day of atonement; even though no work is supposed to be done, some orthodox allow the stoning of passing cars. Because, really, what's the day of atonement without judging the action of others (insead of looking back at your sins over the past year), and punishing them according to your rules? Right?
Ok, I'm done with that now, back to talk about food. I had a falafel today, and it was delicious. Now, my stomach hurts real, real bad. All these beans are really doing a number on my system. Over the last few days I also spent some time in Tel Aviv, ate a few meals on the beach, bought some bikinis that are only to be worn in this country for tanning purposes, said bye to Susie (who is probably back in Chicago now and snuggling with her doggie and kittie), and ate nutella ice cream (OMG tasty).
Some guy fell in love with me today, and then accidentally called me the dog's name. I think that pretty much sums up what I've got going for me in my life right now.