akrish

I’m going to continue again from the last post, but as I mentioned here, I skipped several weeks that I promise to get back to. I’ll try to get to writing about the middle bit of my trip over the next couple of weeks.

I’m at home now. I got back two days ago and have been pretty busy or sleeping since then so I haven’t really had time to write anything. It’s really great to be home, I’ve got to spend time with some of my friends and my family and I’ve been playing a lot of guitar because I really missed it in Tel Aviv.

My departure from Israel was sad, but also very characteristic of my trip. The day before I left, Jake and I went to Yafo in the morning (yup we took off the morning) and got hummus at Abu Hassan for breakfast. This was my third trip to Abu Hassan and every time I go there it is simply amazing. One of things I will miss the most about Israel is all of the delicious foods.

That evening I went out for dinner with my lab at this cafe on the pier and that was really great. I had some really good shakshuka. Maybe you can tell that food was a defining factor of my trip… That night I hung out with Jake and some of my friends and unfortunately had to say goodbye to them.

The day of my departure was pretty uneventful. I went to work, didn’t really have too much to do (it was my last day after all) but I showed Igor some of the results of my work and they looked okay. After work, I finished packing, said goodbye to Jake, and Mukul helped me take my stuff downstairs and catch a taxi.

As usual, I started chatting with the taxi driver and he was really cool. We talked for the entire trip to the airport about India, Bulgaria (his country of origin), Israel, traveling, girls, college, languages and everything in between. He was one of the best cabbies of my trip, and it was a great way to end the trip.

After the tedium of airport security I finally boarded the plane from Tel Aviv to Atlanta, Georgia. I sat next to an Israeli-American woman from Palo Alto, and we talked for a decent amount of the plane ride about a hodgepodge of topics ranging from Israeli supermarkets in the south bay to computer science. This was another really pleasant encounter with a stranger, which I really enjoy (see this for why). So the flight went okay and Atlanta was pretty uneventful. The second flight from Atlanta to California was a little depressing because I stopped hearing Hebrew and English had definitely become the default language.

I landed in California, got my bags and my mom was waiting for me outside of the terminal. We drove home and that’s the end of this story!

As I mentioned I do plan on writing more about Israel, especially the middle part that I’ve completely left out, and I’m starting to think I’ll also write something about my parting thoughts on the summer. I’m leaving for Bali tonight and I don’t plan on spending time at a computer there, so this will be my last post for two weeks or so.