This Is the End

Finding placement on a kibbutz/moshav/farm/whateverwantsme is taking longer than I thought it would. I am waiting on many different people for many different things. I feel like Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, watching the ceiling fan turn, smoking a cigarette shirtless in bed, sweating, waiting for an assignment. Literally, I have done this. It was certainly a forced situation to cement the parallel in my mind, but there I was.

Ben and I had a great time zipping around Israel at a rapid pace. Two nights in Tel Aviv seeing friends, one night in Jerusalem running between holy sights (Ben was getting a bit overwhelmed watching a Greek Orthodox monk chant evening prayers to a shrine built in the very spot Jesus was crucified... reportedly), zipped to the Dead Sea for some great hiking, swimming floating, back through Tel Aviv to get a car to drive up North to the Sea of Galilee (sitting deep in the water on plastic chairs sipping on beers and a bottle of vodka, a gift from Daniel, who owned the beach), hiking around the Banyas, Nimrod's Fortress, some beautiful things, then back to Tel Aviv to send Ben home.

My pace has downshifted significantly. Last night was my fourth night in Tel Aviv since Ben left. I spent the first couple staying with friends, then these last couple in a hostel. I have an insane man of about 45 in my room who sometimes wakes in the night to yell down at pedestrians from the balcony. He thinks it's hilarious to tell people they're going the wrong way, repeating himself like a psychotic broken record (or a Books song): "You're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. You. You. That's not the right way. You. You're going the wrong way. That's not the right way." He'll keep this up for minutes and follow it up with some maniacal laughter. Last night he exclaimed to the world below "I don't give a shit about anything! I get that from my mother. She died. She's why I'm like this!" He'll then come back inside and have a quieter conversation with himself, during which I fall back asleep. This is the second insane older gentleman I've had the pleasure of sleeping next to since leaving the US. The first was of a calmer variety, but also an incessant talker. He lives in a van in Gainesville, FL and travels the world on a trust fund his mother left him that can't be spent on regular living expenses. These guys and their moms. He kept me up late one night while I wasn't feeling good (a reaction to my typhoid vaccine, I eventually decided), going on and on about his problems: "They tell me I have a personality disorder or schizophrenia or some shit. I just think I'm lazy." How laziness could be confused for schizophrenia I'm not sure, but he seemed pretty convinced the docs had it all wrong. That night I was up all night with horrible fever delusions, mainly about our rental car not being arranged properly (you know, one of these horrible dreams that has you going over and over through some nonsense bureaucracy and every time you close your eyes it's the same problem again, unsolvable...) but also about this rotund man from Gainseville deciding he's interested in what my insides look like.

I have a bunch of pics that I'm organizing, should be posting about them soon.

Tomatina!

Yesterday was Tomatina, a freaking MASSIVE tomato foodfight that goes down in Buñol annually. Not willing to miss such an event while so close by, Ben, Nicole and I fought our way in there. Thousands and thousands of people crammed into this small town, the action went down in the main square and the streets leading off of it. The local residents had lined all the buildings with huge plastic tarps, and were on the roofs with hoses and buckets of water soaking everyone below. There was a long time to wait until they drove the six or seven trucks of tomatoes through the streets, during which the main activity was to rip other people´s shirts off and play wet t-shirt dodgeball. As soon as a small gang of shirtless guys began tearing off shirts I took mine off, stuffed it in my pocket and joined them. Wet t-shirts hurt when they´re tied up in knots, soaking in water, and pegged at your face. The stakes were high.

In the main square is a greased pole with a ham at the top that people are meant to try to get. Many tried, I don´t think anyone succeeded.

Then the trucks came through one by one and dumped over 150 metric tons of tomatoes on everybody. SO MANY TOMATOES. The streets were calf deep in tomatoes in places. The atmosphere was like a big jolly mosh pit, people were looking out for each other in a situation where it would have been reeeaaaaallly easy to fall below and get trampled.

On the way out of town the locals took great pleasure in hosing down the tomato fighters. The old men especially enjoyed hosing off bikini clad hotties. They did a decent job of getting us clean, but tomato had found its way into every crevice. I´m not sure my shoes will ever not smell like tomatoes. I also have some mysterious red dots (along with a number of semi-explainable bruises and scrapes) on me that are hopefully not a terrible skin disease.

Getting into Barcelona tomorrow, any tips?

Feeling Better, Sleeping In a Cave

My fever´s gone! Yay! Still have a rough throat, but it seems like the worst of my illness is over.

Spent the afternoon at the very impressive Alhambra (as seen in the pic of the last post). Drove out of Granada on some really awesome mountain road through the Sierra Nevadas and ended up in the town of Guadix, where over half of the population lives in caves. And so tonight, my friends, I sleep in a cave.

Down and Out in Grenada

In Grenada now, seems like a great town. But I wouldn´t know ´cause I´m sick as a dog! Fever, phlegm, yah yah yah. Starting to feel a bit better, yesterday morning I wouldn´t have been able to form sentences. Thinking it´s a reaction to the vaccines I got right before I left. That´s better than the alternative. Como se dice ¨swine flu¨ en espanol?

Ben is my acting nurse, taking good care of me. His most given piece of advice is to take a cold shower.

Driving through the Spanish countryside is really nice, the landscape is dotted with little castle towns. Getting into the bigger towns that we´re visiting can be a bit stressful, though--skinny streets, a lot of restrictions on turning and such. The drivers are good though, so that helps.

Tomorrow morning we´re going to check out the Alhambra, the main attraction in Grenada. Hope I´m feeling up for it when the time comes.