Too much of a good thing?

Now, the first surprise of the week shouldn't have been a surprise, really. Jordan is not the height of organization, and so when you ask if a bus runs on Mondays you should never expect the answer you get to be 100% correct. Because, just for future reference, the bus from Irbid in Jordan to Nazareth in Israel does *not* run on Mondays. When we arrived at the hotel in Irbid where the bus departs from, I watched Daphna's face turn from normal to red to some shade of purplish-green that I didn't know existed outside of cartoons as the same person that had told her the day before that there would be a bus recanted. I was glad that I was outside, behind glass doors. We were lucky, though: Halil and Emre (our infallible "Turkeys") were with us, and they somehow decided that our trip into Israel was their top priority for the day. They each made several phone calls, inquiring with their friends about ways across the border, and finally Emre convinced a Palestinian friend of his to travel with us to the Israeli border by cab. We felt a little baby-sat: we've taken cabs before, walked across borders before, the whole shebang. They would not hear of any resistance. So Emre's friend sat up front and Emre (all 6'3" or so of him) crammed into the backseat with us (Halil had already stayed so long that he was late to meet a friend). They even called us an hour after they dropped us off to make sure that we'd had no problems at the border.

Oh, Turkeys. Why would anyone ever eat them?

Sorry. This is a vegan blog, after all.

The rest of the crossing proceeded little better than the beginning, only without the help of passionate friends. We were fined at the Jordanian border for over-staying our Jordanian visa (our permitted length of stay had been explained improperly), and then, at the Israeli border, the patrol looked at my passport (water damaged since our 2003 stint backpacking throughout Central America), went to her supervisor, and returned to tell me that it was the last time I'd be entering Israel on that passport. No biggie - I'll just be a security threat this one last time, right? And hey, it only took us one more taxi ride and one more bus ride to get to basically where we would have been if we'd been on the Nazareth bus in the first place.

It is amazing, though, what a couple of kilometers can do for you. There is no doubt that Israel is a different country from Jordan. Somehow, in a way that I don't truly understand, it literally is greener on this side (I blame the pine trees). And women don't all wear head coverings (or, when they do, they don't cover nearly enough hair by the Jordanian standard). What's more, walking around Irbid, even when I try to fit in, I've been taken for Arab few enough times that I can count them on my fingers. Walking around Israel, even in shorts with a camping backpack on, people have walked up and asked me for directions in Hebrew ("No, no, of course I live here - I just get depressed if I don't walk a forty pound bag around the block several times a day").

The culture shock reached its apex at Jackie's wedding, which was beautiful. The bride and groom glowed, and were so excited to be together that he turned bright red (and I'm still not sure if his feet touched the ground, though Daph just claims that's because he was jumping up and down) and, well, Jackie's make-up had to be. . . um. . . touched up after the first time she saw him. They were wonderful together.

But we had walked out of Jordan and right into a group of rather conservative American-Israeli Jews, many of whom live in the West Bank. We got a wide range of reactions to our activities, ranging from, in essence: "Wow, I'd love to do that," to "Well, you know, Bibically-speaking you were actually in Israel, so it's OK" to "My son in the army kills terrorists every day" (I'm still working on how I should have responded to that. My favorite idea came from my mom: "Oh, no! Really? I've got to call Ahmed!"). Towards the end of the night we were told that American Jews only have months to leave with all of their possessions before Obama, it seems, creates a Nazi-like state (I still don't quite know how I should have responded to that one, either. Any ideas?).

The height of culture shock, though, might have happened on Thursday. We are staying at Yael's (Daphna's sister) apartment in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. Her roommates found a vegan restaurant in Tel Aviv, which we walked to, but it was closed. So we went to another vegan restaurant in Tel Aviv. The restaurant, Buddha Burgers (http://www.buddhaburgers.co.il/english.asp), had amazing sandwiches and burritos and a raspberry-chocolate mousse-coconut pudding-chocolate cake-dessert that, well, promoted Israel out of the "Land of Shawarma" category, to the point where I can no longer talk about it on this blog. Look for updates on the far less controversial: Vegans in the Land of Vegan Desserts, due out next week. The worst part (and note the sarcasm here, please) is that, as we were leaving, one of the workers said, "You know, if you like the food, there's a buffet tomorrow from 12-5."

Let's just say that three-and-a-half months of no tofu, of sub-par vegan items and subsisting off of appetizers in restaurants were obliterated in a two hour smorgasbord of vegan whole wheat crepes, tofu lasagne, wraps, pancakes, salad bar, so many different types of latkes that I couldn't count accurately, chocolate cinnamon cookies and (try to stay seated, folks) homemade mango-apricot soy yogurt with fresh fruit and homemade chocolate granola. It's twenty four hours later, and I'm almost able to move again.

And Israel doesn't only have vegan food. It's got beaches and sun, and we found out the hard way. Yael and her roommate Rikki took us sunbathing after our first lunch at the restaurant, and it was as if we'd gotten the chance to play basketball with the Nuggets and thought it was really fun until we both tore an ACL. Ya and Rikki are daily beach-goers, and Daph and I are on the Disabled List until our sunburns go away (It's OK - we've got enough of our bodies not burned that there's a position we can both sit in without pain). The beach was amazing, though -- perfect water, clean sand, no vicious sea urchins. . . . like Aqaba without all the unpleasant parts. But you try going straight from "cover everything you're in Jordan" to "don't cover anything you're in Tel Aviv" and see if you don't look like a slightly oblong heirloom tomato.

We hate to say it, but we kind of like Tel Aviv. That was a shock, really - we've never loved it in the past and we've started to wonder if it's because it really is a cool city (you have to admit between the wonderful beach and the cute cafes and the ridiculous amount of stuff going on, it has something going for it) or because we basically came here from Irbid, which has none of the above and could make a cow barn seem like an epicenter of activity. It's also been a jarring look at the political situation, a further reminder of how everywhere in this insane conflict there are people. People (those wonderful, beautiful individuals with incredible dreams that blossom everywhere from Irbid to Tel Aviv), and people (those same passionate, stubborn, complex individuals that know how the world works and exactly what is necessary to make it better).

I love so much more about the Middle East than I did before we left on this trip. More about the land, about the people, their warmth and generosity and vision. I have less optimism, though, than I have had before. This is not merely a conflict of governments, as much as the people here want to be done with the fighting. There is stubbornness and fear and pride in this conflict, down to the individual, and it is not only about bending the will of political leaders to work together -- it is about reconfiguring the way that citizens of these many countries think about the land, about each other, about the possibilities of the future. One could say that there is excess of everything here, and not just in the land of milk and honey. And, once again, I don't know what the proper response is.

Your Arabic/Hebrew phrases of the week:

Different cultures -- Tarbooyote sho-note (Hebrew) -- Thiqaaffat muchtalifah (Arabic)

I'm vegan (English) -- Ani Tivoni (Hebrew) -- La akl lah-me, halbon, beyed, ah-sul, o semek (Arabic, literally "I don't eat meat, dairy, eggs, honey or fish" as there's no word for vegan in Arabic)