June 29th 2008, Tel Aviv with Kate!

I picked up Kate at the airport that night and ate a huge McDonald's KOSHER burger which is delicious. If you don't believe the use of the word huge I believe there is a picture in my facebook of a time I got this burger and it's about the size of my face. I guess you could say it's tradition for me to get a burger there now... delicious, healthy tradition.

We went to sleep soon after but woke up early to head off to the dead sea. Just as we were leaving, my cousin, Ophir, walks through the door. Awkwardly having to say goodbye immediately as he arrived we headed off to a beautiful day of sulfur and mud baths, sunbathing, floating in the dead sea, ice cream and more. It was an unbelievably long ride home. It took about 2 hours to get there in the morning... We left the dead sea somewhere around 2:30 and got home after 7. I'm not really sure what happened but we literally had to stand on the bus ride for at least an hour at one point because of how crowded the bus got. In Israel there's no such thing as not having seats left... they will just let you on the bus regardless.

The next day we had Shabbat and visited my cousins at work which was awesome. After Shabbat started it was kind of a quiet time again. Just relaxed. Shabbat morning we woke up around 6:30am to go to a Sephardic service. It was pretty awesome and reminiscent of my bar mitzvah in Israel. They threw so much candy at this kid and continued to throw it throughout the service at random people. It was wild but hilarious.

The rest of the day was just sleeping and playing cards. That night, however, we went out to the bars with Ophir. Tried to get into a bar that was super packed but then just hung out at an extremely loud bar and a brewery. The brewery served us barley like they serve nuts or pretzels. They tasted like goldfish.

Today Kate and I met Rob Schlissel in Tel Aviv and hung out on the beach for a really long time, walked around, ate good food, saw The Bank Job and came home. It was a pretty awesome day and I had a great time. There's a game on right now between Spain and Germany... soccer... Spain was winning by 1 last time I checked... just thought it might be important... like documenting history in my blog.

The plan for the next few days is to see The Zohan, go to Jerusalem and talk to everyone to figure out our plans for the next 2 months and chill on the beach!

TTYL
Omz