Friday 7/13

I refused to have another sleepless night so I took two Tylenol PMs Thursday night. It was fabulous. I didn’t get out of bed until around 1ish. I know that drug induced sleep isn’t the best thing in the world but I’d been sleep deprived long enough to need it badly. In the “morning” David and I went into Jerusalem to meet up with Ariel, Naom (her boyfriend) and Aaron who were all home from the army for brunch. We ended up at the same bagel place that David and I went to on Wednesday and I ordered exactly the same thing. I just can’t help myself. Brunch was great. There was a little too much army talk for my liking, but when 4 out of 5 of the people at the table are in the army it’s a bit difficult to talk about anything else. This is another situation where I love watching David interact with the people I love. This group of my friends has since become David’s friends too, but I still love seeing him get along with and enjoy being in the company of my good friends. Everything just seemed so natural having him around. After being away from him for so long I often worried that it would be too weird to actually spend time with him. Fortunately I’m finding the exact opposite.
After brunch we had to head home if we wanted to accomplish anything before Shabbat came in. We decided to take a second shot at visiting Eliran. Our friend Shevy (the one who introduced us) came with. The drive was a lot less scary in the daylight and we had slightly better directions than the night before. Poor Eliran. This outpost is literally in the middle of nowhere (It wasn’t even on a regular map). Eliran is in a tank unit so when we drove up to the outpost we got to see the tank (SO COOL!). It was a little humorous that for a group of over 60 tank soldiers there was only 1 tank. Eliran explained that it’s more of a deterrent than anything else or if they need it for a specific mission but that the mountainous terrain is not really conducive to tank battles. David said that the outpost was one of the nicest he’d ever seen (I was appalled but I guess they don’t need to be glamorous or anything). Eliran was so excited to see us! He showed us around a bit and then we sat in a shady area. Usually the guests bring cold drinks and food (we were bad and didn’t really have anything to bring or time to stop at the store to buy) but Eliran was so happy that we came that he bought stuff for us to snack on! It was really cute. We sat and schmoozed and then he took us to see the tank! He is a driver of the Merkava 4, which is Israel’s most elite tank. Most of the details were lost on me but I still thought it was pretty darn cool. I love big machinery even if I don’t understand it one bit. He showed us the inside, but we weren’t allowed to go in because I was a civilian and the stuff inside is top-secret (the others couldn’t go in because they weren’t trained in tanks even though they were both soldiers). Eliran was going to help me climb onto the tank to take pictures but the guy on guard duty likes to enforce rules and since I was a civilian I wasn’t supposed to be within 10 meters of the tank. We just went around the other side for pictures but I didn’t get to climb up ☹.
We had to head home because we’d pretty much used up all of our pre-Shabbat free time. The usual rush to get ready in time ensued. It wasn’t so bad except all of my things were a mess spread out between three suitcases and it took me about 20 minutes to find clothes to wear!!
Shabbat came in without anything exciting. I went to shul which is depressing here. The shul David’s family goes to is dying. Its mostly old men and most of them don’t seem too interested to be there. They did Lecha Dodi to one of the nicest most energetic tunes and they killed it because out of about 75 men maybe 10 were even pretending to sing. It was pathetic. Fortunately his parents are moving to Jerusalem and I’m living in Jerusalem so I’ll be able to find a shul that is younger and more vibrant!
We had a nice dinner at home just us. After dinner, David, Ari, and I walked to another part of Efrat to visit my friend Monica who was staying with friends. She was one of the ones who woke up super super early to come see me at the airport and I had been too flustered to really talk to her so I figured the absolute least I could do was visit her. We sat with her for about 2 hours which was really nice and then we came home and went to sleep because it was really late and I was really tired.