A Typical Day in Jerusalem

This morning BigSis woke us up in an exceedingly bratty "squeaky" way. When we were finally all ready, we walked to the King David hotel to get a taxi. The plan was to go to "Hamashbir"-- a department store near Ben Yehuda with Arsen and meet El and Ar there at 12:45. At 10:15, BigSis, my stepfather and I got into one taxi to go right there and LilSis and my mom got into a cab to pick up Arsen at Jaffa Gate before meeting us.

To make a long story short, we never found them and stood for an hour in the sweltering sun asking people who only spoke Hebrew if we were in the right place. Finally, at 11:30 we got fed up and headed back to Aunt M's. Her brother and sister-in-law were there, but we only stayed a few minutes. My stepfather walked back to the hotel to take a nap and BigSis and I decided to go for a walk through the Old City.

We walked along Christian Quarter Street and down near Damascus Gate, but turned right instead of left (as if we were going out towards the gate). We walked past all of the butchers and back to the road that leads to Jaffa Gate. Neither of us bought anything, but we did see a really annoying American "teen tour." We ended up back at Jaffa Gate where we "people-watched" for a while. I got a sunburn. Then we headed back to Aunt M's for lunch at 1:00 PM.

She made stuffed eggplant and squash. It was SO good. We saw my mom, LilSis, El, Ar and Arsen back there and they said that they were looking for us too. After lunch, everyone else hung around, but my mom and I left to go to Bethlehem. We got a taxi at Jaffa Gate, picked up my stepfather at the hotel and were off.

Bethlehem is now under the Palestinian Authority, so we had to keep the same cab driver with the yellow "Jerusalem" plates to wait for us. The cars form Palestine have green plates and can't go into Israel. We had to stop at a military checkpoint on the way. It's crazy though because the people that live there can't take a ten minute drive to Jerusalem. They have to go some round-about way that takes and hour and a half!

Anyway, at Bethlehem, my mom didn't come into the Church of Nativity. It was only me and my stepfather. We went down to see the place where Jesus was born and there were all these people in there from all over the world singing Christmas carols and kissing the star of nativity. We also got to see the place where St. Jerome translated the bible from Hebrew to Latin and the tombs of several martyrs and saints as well as remnants of the original manger. It was really cool.

Afterwards, my stepfather ate shawarma outside a gift shop and my mom and I had lemon ices. My mom had some crazy story about how the old man who worked in the gift shop remembered Nanny from when she got left behind by a tour bus thirty years ago.

The taxi took us back to Jerusalem but we didn't have to meet the others until 6:00 PM. So, we walked the Via Dolorosa and went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. My mom and stepfather weren't allowed to go in because they were wearing shorts, so I went in by myself.

The whole place was drowning in incense and there was some kind of ceremony going on. The nuns and monks were singing beautiful Eastern chants. The church was so wonderfully cool too, compared to the pounding heat outside.

When I came out we walked back to Aunt M's and met the rest. The little boys were playing leapfrog in the courtyard. After we sat down for a few minutes, it was time to get going again.

We walked to the hotel where Li works (all the kids, my mom and stepfather) and we surprised her at work. She was really happy to see us. We only stayed for a few minutes, though, and then my mom and stepfather came back to the hotel and the rest of us started walking to Nana's store.

We sat there for a while and then they closed for the day and she and Aunt H took us for pizza (olive pizza). After dinner, we took a taxi back to Nana's and stayed there for half an hour. She played us some tape that my dad and mom made before they were married when my mom was studying for her law exams. My dad spoke forever in Armenian to the whole family and to "baby Robert" and he and my mom sang some song together.

Anyway, after that, we walked back to the convent and sat there for a little bit. Oh-- on the way to Nana's we met an old friend of my dad's-- Jacob. Anyway, my mom was talking about how she saw American right wing Jewish settlers carrying machine guns for "self-protection" from the oh-so dangerous Arabs. El said that the Israeli government encourages everyone to carry guns (all Jews) to protect themselves and always supports Jews when there is a conflict. They also said that to put the Palestinians out of work, the government brought in a lot of Romanians and Filipinos... not even Jews! And she said that the Romanians drink constantly and sleep in the streets. They did the same with Russians earlier, but the Russians were educated and wouldn't put up with bad treatment, so they all moved back.

Anyway, at 10:00 PM we left their house and came back to the hotel. Tomorrow we have to wake up early to go to Tel Aviv and then Ramallah...