Who's Druse?

I totally lied about where I was going for the birthday celebration...it was at the Technicon aka the MIT of Israel. It surprisingly had a very nice pub located in the student center where we spent the evening listening to bands play- celebrating birthdays- being the obnoxious group that spoke English which overpowered all other conversations- and for me learning some beginner Hebrew. To be fair to us though, a Saturday night bar scene should have been pretty poppin', BUT then we all remembered that Israel starts their week on Sunday so a deserted bar on Saturday is rather normal.

The guy on the guitar was the bday boy and his friend is to the left...the other one is a guy from a previous act who just stepped in and started making it more of a jam band session...I was completely fine with that because he was amazing. (plus he had the pretties green eyes ever-thanks for the warning Angela)

We got home later than expected from the pub and I had to wake up early for class which was a struggle, but I did it. 8:15 my roommate and I were walking out the door to only get the text that class was at 9:30 on Sundays...so we "carped" and got some coffee and had a nice chat on a bench overlooking the shoreline. My life is a real drag.

After enduring the whole day of Arabic class I was sure my head was going to explode. The language is not too hard to understand when spoken, but writing and reading it is a whole other ball game. The fact that the letters are all connected together and then change forms when placed in different parts of the word makes for beautiful script but one unhappy Annie.

Therefore, after school my friends and I decided to visit the local Druse village for groceries because we got a tip from a local guy that it was the cheapest place to go for anything and everything. We had a vague idea of how to get there but did not have a stop name or address...bad idea.  So, we thought it was useful to ask someone on the bus where it was- this proved to be an ineffective method and led us to a MINISCULE village that had not seen an "outsider" in what seemed like...ever. The people were all dressed in their traditional Druse garb and all over the age of 70. We were quite the spectacles to be seen, 5 young women in casual attire looking around for a market that did not exist there. We were so lost so we just went with our gut and followed a group a Druse women down a hill that then turned around and shooed us away. They were very sweet, but very serious about keeping their lives secret.

We made it to the Druse market after making complete fools of ourselves only to find that the selection of food was minimal compared to the antique-type shop collection. It was enjoyable to search through old jewelry and such but it did not make me any less hungry, so we all made an executive decision to get back for dinner and the 3+ hours of homework that awaited our arrival. Luckily, the bus system is very punctual in Israel so when we arrived at the bus stop at 6:00 we were promptly picked up at 7:30...

Homemade dinner with Annina (Switzerland) and Katie (Texas). We had to carbo load for the homework we stayed up until 1am finishing. 

Today was just another day of school, homework, gym, homework, dinner, homework, and soon some much needed sleep. TOMORROW my Arabic program is going to Nazareth for the day!!!!! You can expect pictures ASAP.

مع الحب (with love)
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