Cheerio blog

So i guess this concludes Justin's oversea Fun, and it has been fun. I've learned alot, probably grown up a bit, become more independent, met some very cool people who i'll strive to stay in contact with, met some rels, experienced different cultures and have actually come up with some pretty solid ideas of what i want to do this year and with my life. All up study exchanges get two thumbs up from me.

I've quite enjoyed this whole blog thing, so i'll probably kick up a 'justin's musings on life' blog later this year, stay tuned...

10th

Today i just steadily made my way back to London - things worthy of mention include the Australian girl who got in trouble by the bus driver on ride home for drinking beer (fosters) on the bus, and the cement trough come flower bed that we passed near Camden that was inscribed with the words 'Metropolitan drinking and Cattle trough association' Wha??!!

I met up with Emma and we went out for Indian and later on that night i discovered that i didn't actually have my plane ticket to get back to Aus, and that i'm leaving a day earlier than i thought - lucky i checked eh?! I've almost got the ticket sorted out now, so it's alright, hehehe.

9th

The day started with a relaxing walk along the wide sandy beach and a quite amble through the town. for lunch i had two types of cheese, olives, a baguette, coffee flavored moose and apple juice sitting in the main square, it really was nice. I also had fun with the language trying as much as i could to pass my self off as being French. It is so much fun, it's hard to believe people actually talk like this, it all sounds so fancy and cool - i was saying bonjour and oravwa to as many people as i could, the lady who served my crepe for dinner even said 'bon apetite' what a hoot! It's almost like they are just saying everything fancily because they know i'm a tourist and are really having me on.

8th

At Victoria coach station at 9:25 i decided with the help of the cashier man to go to Calais as it was the cheapest European destination at £22 by coach. Upon boarding the ferry at Dover i got talking to Rachel a French girl who has been working in Essex for seven years. Her accent almost sounded South African andover lunch on the ferry she told me how she was actually losing her French because she was always talking in English and how this annoyed her parents who only spoke French - what on odd concept, losing your first language.

In Calais i found a youth hostel and had a nap and then went out for tea at a Pizza restaurant. I had the most beautifully ugly pizza ever. It was a quattro fromage and had melted cheese daubed on it like a painters pallet - the moldy blue cheese looked particularly wrong, but tasted so right!

7th

My only objective today was to catch my plane to london which left at six in the evening, so i spent the first half of the day on the beach where i had a swim and checking some emails on the free internet that was available in the supermarket of all places. I left for the airport at two giving myself an hour to get there and three hours before the plane left I figured i would have a lot of waiting to do but i didn't want to risk being lat. I'm very glad i left so early. I caught a sheroot to the town station no worries but boarded a train going in the opposite direction to the airport. A very kind army girl found directions for me and showed me the right platform. Finally when i was in the airport i got pulled up by a security lady who passed me onto a pretty intimidating man wearing a black suit. He questioned me very thoroughly for at least fifteen minutes about my trip asking where i stayed and demanding receipts from the places. I got a bit nervous under this sort of scrutiny, but i soon warmed to the task and told him as much as i could in the greatest detail and even offered to let him read this journal i have been keeping. He seemed pleased with my answers but he gave my passport to another suit clad man and took my bag into some 'questioning' rooms with me following dutifully at his heals. Despite my best efforts he wasn't keen on small talk. The room had many smaller areas cordoned off by curtains - i was told to place my bags on a bench and have a seat. At about this time i started to t a little nervous again but i thought 'what's the worst that can happen? You will be strip searched and you won't have a funny comment ready to say' Thankfully nothing so tragic happened. My black suited friend came and took me into the curtained room and told me to take off my shoes. "Now I'm going to body search you" he said "Well then i'll try not to smile too much". He kept a pretty stern face and started patting me all over and swiping me with his metal detector, things go a bit more exiting when he swiped the metal buttons on my fly and asked me to undo my pants, but apart from that it was all G-rated stuff. Back in the main room i was asked to open my bag and watched two lads go through my stuff very thoroughly, checking al the seems of my jackets and pants. My wallet and electronic stuff was taken into another room to be examined and taken apart. The battery from my phone had ben taken out and replaced as had the lens from my camera. I was really impressed at how thorough they were and i told this to he nice lady who walked me around to book my luggage in, she was a great deal friendlier than suit man. Finally i was through to the departure lounge with only a couple of minutes to spare and i got chatting to a four year old girl. According to her, her parents are in Australia or Switzerland and she and her brother are going to visit them soon. She was with her brother who had a pretty deformed head and a lady who she didn't refer to as her mum, but seemed quite conformable with. As i was wondering what her story was Denise walked by so i had a good chat with her. After the five hour flight back sitting next to a nice Jewish couple and their nineteen month old child i met up again with Denise and she offered to let me sleep on the floor in her room that night. I accepted this very gratefully as it sounded a hell of a lot better than the airport bench that i'd planned. We chatted merrily all the way to her place just up the road from Alisons and i made the most of hearing her fantastic Irish accent and had to suppress a laugh every time she said a word like 'think' as 'tink'. She grew up on a dairy farm in Ireland with nine brothers and sisters with fun names like Fergal and Dermot. Brilliant!

6th

Our first full day in Tel aviv and our last day together, we started it off with a nice sit on the beach, then a stroll through the busy market place. Rhys bought some gifts for his family and i tried not to get into too much trouble with the sellers who are very aggressive with their tactics. We pottered around for quite a while, had some bread for morning tea, then got ome fantastic felafel (yup we ate alot of it!). We covered alot of the city then ambled back to our hostel along the beach. Rhys got his stuff together and made his way to the airport. He had made a great travelling companion, we talked about big issues that affect the world and small issues that barely affect us. Long distance bus rides were thought of as a time to cover another important topic, not as a time to listen to an ipod and wait to reach a destination. Rhsy wanted experiences more than seeing sites and meeting people more than looking at things, as i did and we both didn't mind how cheap and nasty the place was that we slept at. But what made Rhys such a super travel buddy was how he viewed things that happened good or bad as an experience, and stayed up beat, such as when someone stold 600 shekals from him in Jerusalem or when we needlessly changed our sheckels in to $US instead of Jordan Dinas.

So it was a bit odd when he left. I opted for the great loner chiche of walking along the beach by myself and got pleasently lost in thoughts. Upon walking back down the beach i passed a girl that i had already walked by so i smiled at her and said 'how's it goin?' She smiled back, stopped and we started talking. Her hair was dyed bright red, she came up to about my shoulder and she spoke with a pretty strong Israeli accent. We walked for a bit and she told me about her life and i did about mine, but to a lesser extent. When we were sitting on a bench she told me about her singing ambitions and sung me a verse from American Pie by 'Madonna' after building up enough courage. I told her her voice was reat and she seemed really happy. Madonna she said started singing Karaoke and despite being knocked back many times she has succeeded. So she has looked into a Karaoke bar in Tel aviv and will become a singer just like her. We then went for dinner and i waled her to her bus stop. Another interesting thing that she said to me was when she was talking about her english skills and how she struggles with her grammar, but that it isn't a major concern of hers as musicians don't follow the grammar laws. "Do you know the Rolling Stones?" she said "The song 'i can't get no satisfaction' should actually be i can't get any satisfaction". She said she was twenty two and had just been a year out of the army, but she would have passed for 16. When she spoke she seemed so innocent and naive, but every now ad then she would swear or say something unexpected - certainly coming from someone i had only just met that would make her seem older. Ashley was her name, and we swapped email addresses and she said she asked if i'd meet up with her if she was ever in Australia. She hasn't left the country before but would liked to go to the US or Britain because she thinks they are nicer than Israeli's.
So that filled on of the only gaps that i had found in this trip - that of not actually meeting many Israeli's as the Couchsurfing fell through. But talking to her and Jael and Daniel in Jordan all for solid lengths of time have given me at least a taste of the Israeli mindset.

5th

At 4:45 in the morning Allan's alarm went off and he Rhys and I got up, changed and headed out of the hostel to tackle the 2km snake path up to Massada. We didn't get far though as the big gate to the hostel was locked. Rhys noticed a rectangular outline in the tarmac and thought it might be a sensor for cars so we both jumped on it and the gate opened, we didn't actually think it'd work... We made our way up the steep track and were on top of hte 300 metre rock well before the sun had risen. Masada was the last strong hold of the Jews when the Romans invaded, it is a fortified little city ontop of a rock. The Romans had to build a massive dirt ramp to reach the door and then had to burn the door down, whentey got inside they found all 900 Jewish people dead. They men had killed their families then ten people were chosen to kill all of hte men, then one person chose to kill those last remaining 9 men and himself. We scurried back down and had breaky with the three girls who also went up Massada in the morning and found that they were doing a col walk and camel ride ane were going to Tel aviv like us. We didn't get an invite to join them so we though we'd bit the bullit and just ask - as it utrn out they were just going to bum around the hostel or that was just their excuse to get rid of us. We never really figured out there whey were coming from, seeming really pleased to see us and very friendly but a little stand offish. We said we'd probably se them on the bus t Tel aviv and headed off to a waterfall near Ein Gedi about twenty kms away. We tried hithing and wee successful! A bus pulled over for us and we payed 16 shekels for the ride (okay perhaps not technically hitchhiking but the intent was there). We saw some cool animals like ibex and hyrax (dear and tail less possum looking things) at the waterfall place, then went to wait for the bus, but it was a little late and a lady in a small suzuki pullled over and offered us a lift to Jerusalem so we took it. Then with the hel of some very friendly locals we made our way to central Jerusalem bus station, then sat on the floor of the bus to Tel Aviv where we caught a sheroot to our hostel near the beach. Straight away i could tell that there was a difference between Tel aviv and the rest of Israel - it just seemed like a big Western city. The hostel that we stayed at too was different, very laid back and social. Still only one sex per room, but as Rhys said, they don't mix their cheese with meet, so haved mixed dorms must be way out of the equation. Rhys and i were starving and decided as this was our last night together we would make it a big one. Allen had talked of sending 200 shekals in one night on booze so we thought we'd aim to try and spend a similar amount on food. We managed to spend 70 shekals on Shwarms, pizza, chocolate milk and sweets - we went crazy! At the end of the night we got completly lost. It was fun, but we were quite tired, i was really sure i knew where we were, but i was wrong, very wrong. That was a pretty solid day.