Twelve hours from Atlanta to Tel Aviv! The plane was about one-fifth full, so I grabbed a bank of three seats to myself and gathered up six pillows which, when combined, had the comfort-creation capacity of one real pillow. I lied down for the bulk of the flight, sleeping about half of it and reading the other half.

We landed at 5pm. When I got my luggage, my messenger bag was wrapped in tape from Israeli security that said it had been found open. I ripped the tape off. Inside, I found three unpaired shoes and a bottle of vitamins that belonged to someone else. I glanced around to see who was watching and then put them on the baggage conveyor and made it someone else’s problem.

I scored a cab outside. While she was busy ripping me off by driving me well out of my way, I was following along on a map, monitoring her deception. Should I have argued? I kind of wanted to argue. I probably should have argued. But, in addition to being exhausted from the trip, I was feeling unnaturally timid, so I let her keep the extra $10 or so that she cost me. She dropped me off at my house-swapper’s sister’s house and I petted my first ever Israeli kitty while I waited for them to pack for a kibbutz.

They tried to impart some tips about Israel, but mostly they mentioned names of places I had no chance of remembering. Strings of gibberish syllables don’t tend to stick in my brain for very long. They did warn me about Yom Kippur. It happens from sundown on Wednesday until sundown on Thursday. Apparently it’s illegal for anything at all to be open, so you have to stock up on food and movies. And no one drives! No cars at all! The streets are just filled with people wandering around. I asked if you could ride a bicycle and he said people often refer to it as “the bicyclist holiday” because you can cruise down the roads without fear.

Once their bags were packed, they drove me to the house where I’d be staying, arriving around 7:30pm. It’s not the fanciest place but it’s super huge. The first thing I did was turn on the stereo. Lil Wayne came blasting out, talking about his “milli”, as he often does. I was so excited that I just started chanting “USA! USA! USA!” As I often do.

I got some food and came back home to work for a little bit. I’d taken the day off, but there is too much to do, so I ended up working for a few hours anyway. By the time I was done, it was 2am. I was totally tired and could’ve easily gone to sleep, but I decided to make myself go out.

Tel Aviv is legendary for being a 24 hour city (in the way that NYC claims to be but isn’t). So I tried to head up to the port where most of the big dance clubs are. It was about a two mile walk. I was prepared to duck in anywhere along the way if I saw something fun. I made it about six blocks before meeting some people on the sidewalk who invited me to hang out with them at bar called Ha’Minzar. My house-swapper sent me an email with a list of places to go and he said this was “one of the best bars, maybe the only real locals bar in TLV”. He sent the email while I was already there drinking, so I guess I did pretty well for myself on my first night.

One of the two I met was completely wasted. I don’t know much about him except that he kept lovingly screaming about how other guy was “A MOTHER FOCKER” for making him drink so much. The other guy lived in Haifa but claimed he comes into Tel Aviv almost every day that he doesn’t work. The’d met during their compulsory military service. The more sober one was studying US History and wanted me to quiz him on state capitols and Presidents. I said I only knew about five state capitols and couldn’t get past three in the list of Presidents. (Washington, Adams, Jefferson! God I’m good.) He showed off anyway. He was also very excited to hear I was from SF because he loves the Brian Jonestown Massacre, saying Anton Newcombe was “the Bob Dylan of our generation”. Um, okay. Oh, also he says Obama is too inexperienced to be President? I wasn’t expecting that. He was pretty much in love with the United States and especially our culture. I agreed that, yes, in fact, we are the best and every other country sucks.

He knew the bartender, so he kept getting us free shots of Arak, which is some anise-flavored liquor. It was pretty tasty. Around 3:30am, the drunk guy had fully fallen asleep at the bar and his friend was tending to him. I was talking to the bartender and she told me the bar is open on Yom Kippur, although probably without the outdoor seating so as to keep the profile down. So she told me to come by and mention her name to get in. HOLLER. I love finding afterhours clubs, but in a city that doesn’t have a closing time, I suppose this is the equivalent. By 4:30am, I’d moved to another table and was talking to some girl who briefly lived in Las Vegas and San Diego. Once again the table seemed in love with the US. I got invited to some invite-only dance night on Saturday by one of the girls at the table and again was told to name-drop my way in. I’m telling you this so that you understand exactly how Israeli-hip I am (very hip).

Around 6am that table left. Wandering over to the bar, I found myself next to a guy who really wanted to fight me about how I had no right to call my country the US because we stole it from “the Indians”, etc. In between shouts that were 1/3 good natured and 2/3 drunken rage, I tried to explain that we don’t use the term “Indian”. He wasn’t getting it. He seemed to think Native Americans and Indians were the same race. He and the US History major ended up yelling back and forth about it in Hebrew for twenty minutes. Every once in a while, one of them would pause the argument and switch to English to fill me in on how stupid the other was. Then they’d go back to yelling in Hebrew. I sat through it for about fifteen minutes, listening to the cadences and tones of argument that transcend language.

I finally bailed out of there around 7:30am and headed home to make some drunken Skype calls to people who live in earlier time zones. Around 9am I finally passed out and slept straight through until 5pm. Whee! This apartment is really good at keeping the light out. I’m not sure if that’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing.