If this is Saturday, this must be Ram'allah

Made it. Taxi driver on the Ram'allah side of the checkpoint hadn't a clue of where to go, despite my map and having a phone number for this place (his phone couldn't make the connection).

So I once again experienced the hospitality element of Arab/Muslim culture. The taxi driver stopped a dozen times, asking random passersby for help/directions, and people went out of their way to help. Not just because ooh, look! an American! but because a person needed help--and even taxi drivers are considered people. At one point, the driver stops a guy walking along the street, and he can't help, but he knows of someone maybe who can, and this first guy didn't leave until the next person was able to help--until some stranger from another country got the right directions for where he wanted to go.

At one point, the driver asked a group of three guys if they knew the directions, and they conferred among themselves for a minute, and then replied along the lines of, "Sorry, we don't know this area very well, as we're from Lebanon. But if you go up the street to that grocery store, maybe they know."

Maybe I'm belaboring the point, but I just don't see this type of thing happening in the U.S.

By the way, the taxi driver turned out to be a money-grubbing jerk (note: if you ever ask a taxi driver how much the ride cost, and he simply says "you pay me what you think is fair," that's code for "I want to gouge you, but make you feel like you deserve it"), but the accomodations here at the guest house are very nice.

Enough of that; it's lunch time and I need felafel.

Hot Dog and a Pepsi

So, I'm leaving Jerusalem and going to Ram'allah tomorrow, so I can stop playing tourist and start playing researcher. Ram'allah is about 12-15 miles north of Jerusalem, but the bigger issue is the Qalandia checkpoint: following the 2000 Al Aqsa intifadeh--a Palestinian protest/insurrection movement spurred by Ariel Sharon's assertion of Israeli rule over the Temple Mount--and subsequent suicide bombings in Israel, the Israeli government decided to seal off the Palestinian population in the West Bank by building a wall/fence around it. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm going to leave it at that for the moment because my point is trying to get through this barrier--which, depending on where you are, is fence, 24-ft tall concrete wall, and/or border crossings with tighter security than you find at the airport--is a pain. Not so much for me, but for whomever is transporting me.

I've arranged for one cab to drop me off at the Qalandia checkpoint, then I walk across, and will pick up another cab (hopefully) to take me the rest of the way to Ram'allah--or, specifically, to the Episcopal Technological and Vocational Training Center guest house, where I'll be staying for the next five weeks.

How does this have anything to do with the title of this post? Well, after talking with Mary, I decided to go on a quick shopping trip in the "New City" area of Jerusalem--the part of town on the exact opposite side of the Old City from where the Mount of Olives (and my hotel) is located. And rather than tromp through the Old City crowds and congested, convoluted streets, I walked around the Old City, to an outdoor shopping mall I had seen a few days back. That trip was a total bust; the only places open on a Friday afternoon (post-noon is the Muslim sabbath, while sunset on Friday marks the beginning of the Jewish sabbath) were restaurants and one art gallery. So I turned around and headed back, only to find a hot dog stand. The guy running it had what I like to call a "desperation ponytail," so naturally I assumed he was an immigrant from America. He wasn't, and so he didn't understand (nor had the ingredients to make) a "Chicago style" hot dog. But that didn't matter much--it's not every day that you get to have a hot dog in Jerusalem on the sabbath, and so I very much enjoyed my hot dog & pepsi.

Today: hot dogs in Jerusalem. Tomorrow: felafel in Ram'allah.

Inshallah