Musings during 3rd TLV weekend

Before I head out to hear mass at Jaffa which also ends my relaxing (read: lazy) third weekend here in Tel Aviv, I wanted to post these pictures before I forget. So the heat is of course oppressive as usual (If humans can melt, I probably would have melted already) but in any case, we just had to attend the World Refugee Day celebration held at Levinsky Park yesterday near the Central Bus station.

My friend Karin came all the way from Haifa to see Tel Aviv for the first time and we met up with Daniel, a fellow HLS student who is based in Jerusalem, interning for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel or ACRI. Yadin, the legal director and my supervisor at Gisha, brought his kids to the park as well. After a bit of an effort trying to bring everybody to one spot, I introduced Daniel to Yadin as “this is Daniel, I just met him today but I’m sure we’ll be friends in the future” (I mean, what else could I say? It would have been awkward to call someone a friend after having met him five minutes ago!) So after an hour or so at the park, the three of us headed out to Jaffa since both of them have never been there before. I became an accidental tour guide of some sorts.

We ended up eating and having a good conversation till quite late at Aladdin restaurant at Old Jaffa which has a magnificent view of the Mediterranean. The picture below is supposedly of Yael Naim (?) singing during the Refugee Day celebration and a picture (taken without flash) of the three of us.

 

Today, Karin and I met up with another soon-to-be friend (hopefully) Orit. She and I have a mutual friend from Harvard. The three of us had the traditional Israeli breakfast (3 eggs+green salad+various cheeses+tuna/tahini+bread+hot & cold drink) at Cafe Mesulash along Dizengoff st. Of course, being the only carnivore, I’m the only one who ate tuna. Both Karin and Orit replaced the tuna with tahini. We had interesting brunch conversation about work/life balance for women in Israel and elsewhere, Israeli politics (of course, how can we avoid this topic?) and general musings about Tel Aviv.

 

After which I  gave Karin a brief tour of Ibn Gvirol st. and Rothschild Blvd, including a brief stop at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. We ended up at Cafe Hillel an hour later (it felt like an eternity with the heat) for some frozen lemonade and ice cream.

After this, she had to take a sherut back to Haifa and I went to the corner coffee shop and finally finished (yey!) Louis Menand’s Metaphysical Club.That deserves to be the subject of another post. But for now, I am going to end my weekend by going to mass at Jaffa and watch a DVD at home with my roommate later. Too lazy to go out in this heat. Suddenly, my question “why am I here” has taken a more practical sense. And I never thought I would utter the words “I love the Cambridge winter” but I just did. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of so many realizations swimming in my head. They are best addressed, however, not in a blog.