Some more "only in Israel" moments

I was smelled by a middle-aged woman.  Unbeknownst to her, she is the cousin of the guy I was with for 6th months.  Rephrase: She knows they are cousins but did not know we were together - I was a SECRET.   She said I smelled nice and asked what perfume I was wearing (none, BTW but I had used my new shea butter from Safta Jamilla) and asked for permission to smell me.  We had a lovely conversation and I was happy to know that I smell nice.

Went to a bar last week in downtown Jerusalem.  There was a birthday party going on next door.  People were gathered outside, listening to music, drinking, etc.  Enter a stripper pole.  In the middle of the plaza (outside).  Then enter the "dancer" in a white fuzzy bikini type get-up.  Switch back to bad cover band singing horrible renditions of Red Red Wine and Brown Eyed Girl and back to weird stripper music and this girl dancing on a pole.  Then a man joined her and they did some joint pole dancing routine.  Very confusing moment in one of the holiest cities in the world.  One of the girls on my program told me to send her a text if there was an "only in Israel" moment.  My text to her read: "does a stripper dancing in the middle of the street count as only in Israel?"  Yes, yes it does.

One night we were heading home from the MASA mega-event at the convention center near the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem.  I was with my room mates Tracy and Becca and another girl from OTZMA, Laura.  We were looking for the shuk party that happens every Monday night and we werent exactly sure where it was... just somewhere in the shuk.  So we are wandering around and we hear some bass coming from one of the alleys.  As we approach, we all said "this isn't what we were expecting..." as we noticed the crowd was a little older than we thought and there were balloons up everywhere.  Well, we ran into our friend Or from one of the mifgash's that we have done while we have been here.  She told us that it was kind of a private party and we probably shouldn't be there.  We started to leave and Tracy ran into one of her co-workers who said that we should stay.  If anyone asked, we were with her.  Where were we?  Oh, just happened into the birthday party of the lead singer of Hadag Nahash, one of the most famous bands in Israel.  We went to go and buy a beer and came to find out that the beer was free.  Or told us that it was amazing to her.... here we were surrounded by celebrities at this party and none of us had any idea that any of them were celebrities.  Go figure.  Turns out that the shuk party was right around the corner too so once Becca and Laura left, we went back and forth between the two parties for a little while before heading home.  What a night!