On Thursday myself and two of my roommates, Hannah and Rachel, went to Pardes Hanna to visit Hannah's brother, Eytan. Eytan is originally from Canada and made aliyah after high school. He has been in Israel for about 5 years at this point, and just came back from a trip to India. He is also a vegan.
We started our trip right after ulpan - we gave our books to other people in our class so that we didn't have to go home. We then walked to the bus stop in Ramla, and took a short sherut ride to the Lod train station. It was super exciting for me because it was the first time I had taken public transit in Israel. We then attempted to enter the train station. I say attempted because, as is everything in Israel, the train station had armed security guards. These guards wanted us to produce passports in order to enter the train station. We finally were able to go through the metal detectors when we managed to convince the guards that driver's licenses and Canadian health cards were as good as passports. Then we bought tickets and found the right platform and waited for the train for 10 minutes.
The first thing we noticed upon entering the train was how many soldiers there were- there must have been one soldier for every two civilians. So we covertly tried to take pictures on them. There were so many soldiers on the train because it was Thursday afternoon, and a lot of them get to go home for Shabbat. The train ride was about an hour, and rather uneventful. We all plugged into our iPods and dozed off.
The first thing that Eytan told us when we arrived at his house was there no one wore shoes in the house, which immediately made me feel at ease. Then Hannah and Eytan had some catch-up time while Rachel and I chatted with his house guest. We actually spent about three hours just chilling and talking before dinner. And then we had dinner! As I mentioned above, Eytan is a vegan, and he made us really good food! We had rice with saffron and carrots, baba ganoush with peppers, and a nice lettuce salad with sprouts and nuts and some other stuff. It was delicious, and just what I have been craving.
The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. We chatted for another hour or so, then walked back to the train station. We had just missed the hourly train, so we spent some time just hanging out at the station. Once we were on the train we had to fight to stay awake so that we didn't miss our stop, and we got home safe and sound, and happy and well-fed.
If you check my Flickr account (click on the pictures to the right) I have some new pictures from the trip posted. http://www.flickr.com/photos/daughterofafeminist/
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