It's kind of a funny thing on these trips when it is feeding time. There always seems to be a little anxiety about how long it is going to take to get your food. There are long lines of our group who fidget a little waiting to be shown where to sit. I tell myself that we haven't starved yet so we probably won't die waiting in line for our food.
Eventually we are asked to follow our host who takes us to a further seating area and we are seated. On the way, we are scoping out what other people are eating. It looks like there is falafala (surprise!), a deep fried fish fillet and on some people's plates - an entire fish, it looks sort of like a bass, from scales to eyeballs it is all there.
The seating areas are covered and somewhat shaded for which I am grateful. The other nice thing is that they provide our drinks sooner than later which helps. I perceive that it is cooler because of the proximity to the lake and there is a little breeze.
Our host informs us that our choices for lunch are, you guessed it, falafala and talapia (the deep fried fish fillet). I am pretty much thinking I will go with the talapia. We are sitting next to some really fun friends, Juan and Patty from the midwest. They pastor a hispanic church. Juan inquires about the other fish we saw on people's plates, "can we have one of those?" he asks. I am a little surprised that someone would want one of those other fish, but Juan insists that is what he wants.
We are informed that it is called a St. Peter's Fish. Traditionally it is said this is the type of fish that Peter found the coin in the mouth for the temple tax when Jesus instructed him to go fishing for it. Well, all of that is fine, but I still wasn't interested.
We now wait for our food. We have fun conversations and talk about what we have seen in the morning. We drink our drinks. We talk some more. Ah, here comes our food....no, it's for that table that came in after us. We kind of run out of conversation as our stomachs make those dying whale sounds as our hunger increases. Oh, just in time, here comes our food...no, that is for the table that came in after the table that came after us. We are out of drinks. We try to catch the attention of our host who is flying around serving way too many tables for one person. "Can we have some water?", "yes, of course!" We never see the man again.
Some tables have finished their meals and are getting up to leave. We look around, the anxiety is not spoken but is felt by everyone. More tables finish and leave. Here comes our food! Yes, it is for us this time. I am very hungry and anxious to try this talapia. It is amazing! Amazingly unremarkable. It tastes like whatever oil it was deep fried in, hmmnn...no salt or pepper on the table. No where do they have salt and pepper on the tables, it must be a western or American tradition to want to have some flavor on your food.
I eye Juan's plate. He is delighted with his meal. He stabs right through the skin and digs out the white, flaky meat underneath. He declares it is wonderful and keeps busy eating. I don't want to ask if there are really "guts" in there too, but I am really curious. I am a little bothered that his meal keeps staring at me the whole time. I want to poke out the eye of his fish. Pretty soon his St. Peter's fish is reduced to spiky bones poking out of the skin. The dying whale sounds diminish and my hunger is not raging like it was. I am thinking I still have some of those snacks in my satchel on the bus. At least they have some flavor in them.
It is finally our turn to get up and leave. We are not the very last table to do so, but nearly so.
We wander outside to look around. Ah! A genuine Israeli soldier! I am curious about the weapons he carries. I try to engage him in conversation. I ask "is that a Jericho .45 acp double action pistol?" He nods his head as he looks at me out of the corner of his eyes. I point to his carbine and ask, "M16?, 5.56 Nato round?" Another nod and a dismissive look away. OK, I get it, he's been through too many of these pointless conversations. One more thing, "can I get a picture with you?" He nods a bored nod yes and we have some pictures snapped.
Now we are bid to use the restrooms and get on the buses. I hope my description of the restrooms in Israel are not offensive to you, I'm not trying to make them so. First, they are more scarce than they tend to be where I am from. When you find one, it is best to use it because you don't know when the next one will be found. Second, they don't think of privacy in the same ways we think of privacy. There are of course separate facilities for men and women, sort of. In this particular case the restrooms are housed in the same building, men to the right, women to the left. There is an open ceiling in this building and the dividing wall between the men and the women is only slightly taller than my head, it doesn't go all the way up. ALL of the same sounds, conversations, noises, ah, smells, are clearly experienced on your side and their side. It is too weird. One cannot get in, take care of business, wash and get out fast enough. Once outside you want to just walk away quickly and not look around.
Privacy in the restrooms is the most unusual thing to get used to in Israel. It doesn't seem to occur to the designers of most of the restrooms to use things like angles and corners to keep things a little more private. Many times you can be legitimately headed to your own restroom and the coast is not clear in terms of unavoidable awkward eye contact with people who are on the other side, or people who can casually look into the restroom as they pass by on to somewhere else. It can be a little creepy.
Third, sanitation in most of the public restrooms is less than desired. How could it be otherwise when they are used so heavily? It is no different than here at home so I don't fault them too much on this. We DO have hand sanitizer with us which is used gratefully but we should have purchased the gallon jug so we could just pour it over our heads. I am not really a "germ-a-phobe", but living here I could easily become one.
We board the buses to go on to Magdala, the possible home of Mary Magdalene.
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