Tea parties with Salah

The mysterious ladder owner came back the very next day. He’s no longer mysterious, we are basically best friends. I walk in from work, and he’s kicking it with Gina, having tea and a cigarette. We learn his name is Salah, and after he fixes our circuits, we proceed to have him fix all kinds of things around our apartment, he rocks. After telling us his name, he proceeds to tell me he is Arab.. I gathered it from the name buddy.. I tried speaking with him a bit, he was so excited that he was rambling off a million words a minute.. he didn’t really get that I studied Arabic.. I wasn’t a fluent native.. but it was fun anyways. From that moment on, he would only speak to me in Arabic.. that was fun. As if I wasn’t struggling enough with the Hebrew electrical terms, a language which I have been surrounded by since age 5… he now assumed I fully understood his 1,000 word a minute Arabic, and terms like circuit breaker and sulfur content. Shuk life is still going swell. I cook a lot, its super easy and cheap- and convenient. Work is also still moving along, learning a lot I suppose… learning that I am not a fan of sitting in front of a computer all day, but learning a lot about world issues at the same time.
Gina and our friend Mera have been planning this almost month-long Euro-trip for mid March.. she leaves in about two weeks for London, and travels from there- A few days ago I decided that it might be fun to meet up with them for a leg of their trip and join in- so I found a super cheap ticket online (someone is on my side) and I will be meeting them up in Amsterdam in three weeks, taking a train to Paris, and doing France with them- and flying back as they continue on. I’m pretty excited, it was totally un-expected, so on one hand, its totally random, and I don’t even feel like I am going, but on the other hand, it came as such a surprise- its fun and something random to look forward to.