Off to the mall

I walked to a large mall this afternoon to see if there was anywhere good there to chat to people to practice my language skills.


From the house here, it was downhill for about 15 minutes to the bottom of the valley, up hill for about 10 minutes, and then down hundreds of steps to get to the mall in the next valley. Did I already say that Jerusalem's not the place for people with bad knees? (The house I'm living in here started as one storey years ago, then was expanded to two storeys and then later again was expanded to three storeys. The house across the road has four storeys. I saw a house down the road where the machines were chiselling a new basement out of the rock. That's the way houses expand here -- up and down -- not out.)


West Jerusalem here seems to be mostly residential with houses all the way up the hills and hundreds of apartment buildings. All buildings are required to be lined with Jerusalem stone, so the buildings themselves are a pretty colour, but the solar hot water tanks and satellite antennas on the rooves spoil the view.


When you see how the houses are built one above the other on the hills, you realize how it came to be that David came to notice Bathsheba having her bath on her rooftop. Of course, the king's palace would have stood above the other houses.

Anyway, there was nothing for me at the mall. Just hundreds of people all busy doing their own thing. I did see one girl texting on her phone so that was a first here in Israel.

So I went back to my little fruice juice stall, and the aunt of the owner was working in it and she was nice and chatty so I had a good practice time there. It's encouraging to be able to guess more of what people are saying as my vocabulary slowly expands.

I'm off north again tomorrow for the archaeological dig. I bus up mid-morning to arrive early afternoon and won't be back to Jerusalem until next Tuesday. I don't know if I'll have Internet up there, so my blog might go quiet for while -- we'll see.

On cellphones

It just dawned on me today what's different about cellphones here in Israel: people talk on them. In the Philippines, most people use the mobile phones for texting (i.e., sending SMS messages). It's very popular there (in fact some call the Philippines the texting capital of the world) and I'm amazed at how fast some people's thumbs can work, not to mention their highly specialized vocabulary of abbreviations.

But here in Israel, it seems like every second person walking along has one arm attached to their head and they're busy in a conversation. I think I mentioned in an earlier entry, that our taxi van driver was talking on a radio and gesturing with his hand, also our bus driver did the same at one point talking on his mobile phone. I've seen a motorcycle rider talking on a cellphone while driving with one hand, and today I saw a supermarket operator talking on the phone while using the other hand to scan the groceries for a customer.

But apparently it's an instant 1,000 shekel fine (NZ$300) if you get caught without both hands on the wheel (or more if you happen to get the policeman angry).


It's also unusual seeing the orthodox Jews, in their costumes which seem to come from a bygone era, talking on cellphones -- a strange mix of old and new worlds.