(Updated List of) Things you need to know about Israel

1. There are palm trees… Everywhere… And it messes with my head because I kind of thought this was supposed to be the desert, but in reality, Tel Aviv is just built on sand dunes (and who knew that wasn’t the same thing?)

2. There is construction… All the time… To be fair, we’re in a country with an essentially open immigration policy for all Jewish people everywhere, and thus a nation that’s population and demographics are constantly changing.  Becoming a new nation every year.  So, yes, construction everywhere… all the time…

3.  I know I said there were palm trees everywhere, but I was (partially) lying.  In the Jerusalem forest, there are a gazillion pine trees (and cypress, Palestine oak, olive, etc.).  Below, you see the hills of Jerusalem (and we'll go into more detail later about my visit there).  

4.  It’s the only country that has planted more trees than it’s taken down… (And today is the equivalent of Arbor Day, so they’ll be planting more). 

5.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to come to this conclusion, but another reason for that is because they build out of stone… In fact, in Jerusalem, it’s the law that you have to build out of a very specific type of stone. 

6. #5 explains why everything looks so much different than back in the States (or at least the East Coast). 

7. My mom and I thought that New Zealand’s landscape was constantly changing (you move from vineyards to glaciers to the ocean but you drive several hours in between each landscape)??  Only because (at the time) neither of us had been to Israel…

8. The stray cats wander inside sometimes… there were a few just hanging out in a museum the other day… 

9.   I know I mentioned the decorated traffic circles before, but I’m a big fan of this one.  

10. And this one: 

11. Hebrew doesn’t always translate correctly into English.  One of my lunch options recently was ‘disability chicken’.  And yesterday I had “Pasta visit”. 

12.  The history of this country is incredible.  Seriously, archaeologists have dug up artifacts and human remains from Prehistoric humans, the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Byzantines, Crusaders and Turks, not to mention the fact that this has been a nation of Jewish people the entire time, throughout all of the conquest of other nations, Judaism has prevailed.  And so has Islam.  Christianity too.  I have a hard time keeping it all straight, but it's pretty epic.  

Ruins of the Roman City of Caesarea 

13. People think the United States is a melting pot?  This takes it to the next level, because you have three major religions coexisting, many of whom are extremely religious people.  In each religion, you have different branches and levels of religiousness.  Furthermore, you have the Druze (a religion celebrated by a subset of Arabs) and Bedouins who roam the desert on their camels and still serve in the Israeli Army and the Bahai faith (there’s only 300 B’hai in Israel but they have amazing gardens in Haifa).  In addition, you have people from countries all over the world, speaking all different languages.

14.  To add to the previous statement, Haifa is a mixed city but I was still surprised to see this the other day (also, don’t they take it down by the end of January or is it actually a permanent fixture to signify the friendly coexistence of Jews and Arab Christians?)