Purim in Tel Aviv

Wow... I suck at keeping the blog current. Purim was Feb 28th! Oops. The truth is, it takes so long to upload the photos onto the blog and the formatting sucks. What I see in the edit window is different from what I see on the Preview, which is different than what I see on the published blog. The whole process is such a hassle that I always feel like I can't be bothered. Today, actually, Blogger refused to even upload the photos, but I figured I'd take the time to type all my entries to get myself up to date, and worry about the photos at another date.

So, Purim in Tel Aviv. Purim itself was on Sunday, which is a work day in Israel, so everyone celebrated Friday night and Saturday. I decided to go to Tel Aviv... and, as it turned out, so did most of the English speaking people from the Ulpan. I left on Friday with Sasha (18, Holland) and Elinor (19, Sweden) and spent the afternoon with them relaxed in Tel Aviv. That night Sasha had plans with family friends, and I went over to my cousin's for dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousin's family. It was a nice early night, which is always appreciated these days. No one sleeps much on the Ulpan...

Saturday was rainy, so we relaxed inside and watched a movie on my laptop. The morning (er, early afternoon...) was nice though, so we went to a cafe for breakfast. In the evening, after the Shabbat was over, many people came to Tel-Aviv for the night. A group of about 15 or 20 of us got dinner together, bought drinks, and then celebrated a bit in my apartment before heading out for the night.

It's been a while since I've been clubbing, but I clearly remember hating standing in lines. Well, Purim didn't mean lines, it meant MOBS! I didn't care enough to push and shove to get into a club, so I quickly admitted defeat and looked around for a friend who would give up with me. James (26, San Diego) was also uninterested in clubbing so we turned around, found a shawarma joint, and sat down for a while. He had just broken up with his girlfriend that morning and needed a friend to talk to - which, in my mind, was a way better way to spend the night. While I was not at a club, I've stolen a picture from facebook to show you all what it was like inside. Everyone seemed to have a great time.


We spent a while talking, and then I got a call from Yaron (18, Holland) that him and Sasha didn't get in and he'd like to join us. After they finally found us we decided to head to Rehov Florentine for a street party. By this time it was already 1:30am and I knew any bars in the area would be packed, but I wanted to be in the atmosphere. I briefly got to meet up with Gil (a soldier from my birthright trip) before he had to leave as he had work in the morning. The situation crazy! And to add to it, we randomly ran into Marcos (22, Uruguay), an amazing guy on our program.















After an hour or so of wandering through the crowded streets, we decided to head back to my apartment and call it a night. The rest of our group, who had made it into the clubs eventually, all trickled back and passed out wherever there was space...

While the night all in all was pretty uneventful, I thoroughly enjoyed it! I then got to see my grandmother for a couple hours Sunday afternoon before heading back north to Ma'agan Michael. It's always nice to get out of the kibbutz for a bit and remember what real life is :-P