Swept Away HR46 at anchor Second Wind at anchor Northern Exposure at anchor

In some ways, life here is very much like life in the US. Tel Aviv looks like it could be a South Florida resort, and the lifestyle is similar. It's been said that "Haifa works, Jerusalem prays, and Tel Aviv plays." On Saturdays, when shops are closed for the Sabbath, the beaches are filled with people. The sand is fine and soft, municipal workers keep the beaches groomed, and showers for rinsing off, strategically placed on the beach, keep you from getting too hot or too sandy. Even we were spending time at the beach in Tel Aviv.
One big difference between Israel and home is the language, of course, and Hebrew isn't easy to pick up.  Luckily for us, nearly everyone speaks English perfectly. Learning the alphabet isn't enough; Hebrew writing doesn't bother showing many of the vowels (which are dots and lines written underneath the letters) except to children learning to read. So you have to know the language before you can even sound out many of the words. On top of the difficulty of identifying the letters themselves, Hebrew is written from right to left, so your instincts need to be retrained.

This is what America probably looks like to the illiterate. You know what it is, but you don't know what it says.

Soldiers are everywhere, and most of them are armed with automatic weapons slung over their backs, as is this young woman. It's common for us to sit at a restaurant at a table next to six soldiers in uniform, with their berets tucked into their epaulets, and their guns dangling behind them. Furthermore, you undergo a security search every time you enter a restaurant or café, a mall, a large building, or even many shops. The guards ask you if you have a weapon, but having a gun doesn't prevent people from going inside. At some point, the intense security becomes routine.

In Israel, nearly all eighteen year olds are drafted when they finish high school. Men serve for three years, and women for about two years, after which time they can re-enlist or go into the reserves and serve for up to one month per year. Reserve duty can last until you are fifty. Israelis who are not drafted include Arabs, married women or women with children, and the ultra-religious. Most women are given administrative rather than combat assignments.

Another surprise to us was the cuisine. We'd half-expected to find a place where breakfast would be bagels and lox, lunch would be corned beef sandwiches on rye, and dinner would be brisket with potato pancakes. Though you can find Eastern European foods like those in Israel, in the same way you find Italian, Thai, Indian, and Mexican cuisines, the locals eat in the manner of the region. You're most likely to see a breakfast of chopped salad, cheese, eggs, and pita bread, and, for the other summer meals, a heavily vegetarian menu of eggplant salads, marinated vegetables, hummus, and yogurt.

Of course, the cuisines of the world are available in this melting pot of a country, just like in the US. We visited a restaurant that served the cuisine of the Republic of Georgia. The main dish in pomegranate sauce and tamarind paste tasted like chicken. Actually, it was chicken.