Israel day 14 - around Jaffa

Update on the contemporary dance the other night. 
It was a show based on clips from YouTube, and they either re-enacted either before the clip or after it, either in a humourous way, or more seriously.  There were some funny ones at the beginning including a copy of a small chipmunk cleaning himself, a lesson on disco dancing, and our favourite which was 6 girls doing the "Haka" which started with slow sensual female movements and then built up to the full Haka done with lots of testosterone, and they did this before they showed the YouTube clip of the Albllacks doing it, so the Israelis wouldn't have a had a clue what they were doing.  Overall the show was better than we expected, although others' comments were that it was "undergraduate".

We tried out posting comments to the blog as anonymous users and it worked so we encourage people to keep trying!  Otherwise we are happy to read them sent to our usual email.

Quiet day today.  The reason being that Julie yesterday had a recurrence of her tachycardia (rapidly beating heart) while at a shopping mall while I was in Haifa.   She is fine now, but her afternoon yesterday was hectic with coming back to the hotel, talking to a doctor on the phone and going in 2 ambulances where she was administered the drug via cannula which kick starts the heart into normal rhythm.  Then to hospital for observation and discharge back to our hotel just before I arrived back.  She last had one of these in December last year, and before that over 20 years ago.  She was booked in to see a cardiologist on our return home which is just as well.  She didn’t tell me any of this while I was in Haifa which was good: I would have been stewing badly with no way to get back quickly.

So we skipped the group today which went to Sderot, a town of 20,000 people situated just 1.6kms from the Gaza strip and the site of many rocket attacks from Gaza.  They were spending 5 hours at a media centre dedicated to telling the world about what is going on there.  We naturally thought we could do without this excitement today.  I got a text message from the tour director saying “you missed quite a day”, so we will hear all about that later.

So we had a sleep-in, told Laura and Paul about the excitement yesterday, and while skyping Laura the siren blew at 11am for Memorial Day which caused everybody to stand completely still in their places, or stop their cars and get out and stand, which is perfectly safe because every car has stopped.  Here are a couple of shots of this phenomenon.

 

 

After that we walked leisurely along the beach back to Jaffa for a look around the old port area:

                                  perhaps checking if the fish is being prepared in a kosher manner?

then ate our rolls looking at the beautiful blue Mediterranean in 24 degree sunshine, followed by a coffee with similar view.  Back to the hotel via a gentrified railway station full of restaurants and shops, to put our feet up.  Julie is fine and reports no more heart issues.

We walk to a restaurant tonight then head to Rabin square for the Independence Day (tomorrow) celebrations.  There are so many days of commemoration so close to each other at this time of year it is hard to keep up with them all.