Mal left Julie for the day and went to a trauma crisis
intervention centre, which does a lot of work with recently arrived immigrants
who have suffered other traumas when they get to Israel. Eg a family from Ethiopia who is struggling
already with adjusting to a new country and then suffers a son getting beaten
up and head injured. There is a heavy
reliance on volunteers in this country, much more than in Australia where such
services rely on government funding.
This visit helped make clear how Israel was born out of the
strong desire for a home and refuge for Jews everywhere and how the society
takes very seriously looking after their own even if there is little government
funding. In the afternoon he did a photo
montage exercise of filling in a blank sheet with pictures ripped out of
magazines etc, or doing artwork, to illustrate the theme of “resilience”. He attempted to lighten the mood by
deliberately mishearing the words as “Brazilians” which led to some slight
hysteria at times as his colleagues attempted to find suitable pictures for him. Back to the hotel by 4.45pm
Julie's day started by again waving good bye to the
psychologists, and then heading back to the room to Skype with Laura and the
kids, and catch up on the normal side of things. Then she headed off to explore the shopping in
this part of Tel Aviv. To say that she
wasn’t impressed is an understatement, but if you are into markets and little
knick knacks there is no shortage of them.
She walked in a big circle and was interested to see the different
areas, so she was very happy to get to a shopping mall for a sit down and a
coffee. The mall was not particularly
large, but she spent a bit of time browsing.
She was amazed at how many of the people in the shops did not speak English
compared to Jerusalem. She arrived back at
the hotel a few minutes before the others.
Then we had about an hour before we were on the bus to the
Tel Aviv university for dinner, and then to do some Israeli dancing. We had hoped it would be a dance class but unfortunately
even though we were assured it was for beginners it was clearly not – it was way
over our heads as many dances were done just once. Lots of turning and stepping, and sort of reminded us of
square dancing or line dancing on steroids. But it was like being taught 12 Hebrew songs by
going through each one just once, and about as satisfying. Mal had had enough after 5 minutes but Julie soldiered on well. This is a picture of many serious dancers on
the main basketball court.
Day 11
Today was sleep-in day.
The group met up at 9.30am and walked south down the beach for about a
half hour to the old port area of Jaffa. This featured some nice views back
down the beach to our hotel area.
At Jaffa we
heard about the Greek legend of Andromeda set on the rocks off Jaffa. Fans of
Greek legends will recall that Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, the king
of Jaffa, and Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia's hubris leads her to boast that
Andromeda is very beautiful, Poseidon
sends a sea monster to ravage the town as divine punishment. Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice
to sate the monster, but happily is saved from death by Perseus, her future
husband. The rocks are where the white water is, but sadly had no
beautiful lady on them:
We poked around the area for a while, seeing where Simon Peter
is reputed to have come to live, then looked in a pewter craft designer studio
with magnificent specimens. Here are a
few examples, the first being a representation of Jerusalem.
We didn’t even bother to ask what these
creations might cost. Then we walked to this piece
of public artwork: an orange tree growing out of a massive suspended seed.
Lunch in a falafel café, then back down past the hotel to a
nearby flea market with massive crowds as they all get into a shopping frenzy
before Sabbath starts later on in the day and then the whole place shuts down
again until tomorrow afternoon. It was
not pleasant pushing through all these people, but there were some interesting
stalls in the food area, such as this baklava stall.
Back to the room for relax and blog typing before we head
out by ourselves, unless we bump into people, for a quiet dinner, assuming
there is any restaurant open as the Sabbath is upon us!
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