I met my friend Gal on my third night in Tel Aviv, I believe. She was at a dance club with someone else I knew and when the club closed at 5am, four of us went out to breakfast. Still, I didn’t really recognize her when she shouted my name from a café two blocks from my house (excuse me, “my” house). I figured it out after a minute, as I usually do. She was smoking and talking on the phone to someone else I knew, and she passed the phone to me to say hello. After that brief encounter, I saw her pretty much constantly. Apparently she was actually working at the café and, in fact, works there six days a week, in addition to working three night shifts (midnight-8am) at the local convenience store which is literally next door. Between these two jobs, she works an astonishing 72 hours a week.

The little café is on Sheinken Street, a boutique- and coffee-filled avenue just a block from where I’m staying. I walk down it several times a day because it’s generally the quickest way to the beach and several other parts of town. So when she’s not busy, she waves me down and we sit and drink tea. Afterwards, she angrily refuses payment and tips. (I learned my lesson after I tried twice.)

The owners, two brothers in their sixties who seemingly spend all day there, know me now too. As does the manager and their similarly omnipresent friends. I’m not clear on who all these people are, but there are about 5 people who are always there. If I pass by around 8pm, when the place is starting to empty out, I go in and sit at the table with them while Gal works and and we all drink tea and eat sweets and wait for everyone else to leave. No one there speaks English very well. They chatter on in Hebrew most of the time while I sit around and alternately read and watch the mysterious conversation. If someone says something that elicits a round of laughter, they’ll try their best to translate. Every once in a while when it quiets down, someone tries politely to include me. I get the same ultra-basic questions on repeat. “So you are from San Francisco? I love San Francisco.” “Is this your first time in Israel? How do you like it?” “What do you do in San Francisco?” Once it gets more complicated than that, we’re generally unable to understand each other. They passed around the back cover of the book I was reading and, after asking me for definitions of about six words, Gal declared “this isn’t English, this is Chinese!”

Still, despite the language barrier, it’s great to have a little place where I’m more than a regular; I get to sit at the owners’ table.