I returned to Tzfat 2 weeks ago for a friend’s wedding and ended up staying to help with some stuff. I planned to go to the coast with a friend last week and return for the Klezmer Festival which starts tomorrow night. But I wasn’t able to get a CouchSurfing host in Naharya, Akko, or Rosh Hanikra, coast moved to a future plan, I just stayed in Tzfat and continued work on a client’s website. I spent Shabbat hiding out rather than socializing but at the very end, got caught up in the interesting social opportunities that Ascent of Tzfat so often hosts and attracts.
As a result…
Recently, I had a new experience in Tzfat. A woman I have known for a while, and now have the honor of calling a friend, invited me to her home. Then she needed to go away but she also needed to be here for the refrigerator repairman. So I got to house-sit. I cleaned out the fridge and salvaged food. I learned how the fridge works. Then later I cleaned the shelves and put all the still-good food back.
Sound boring? Sound crazy?
Work place of the day: Old City stone dining room!
Here’s the thing:
Aside from being able to help a friend, and stay at her home, that fridge is in a stone-walled kitchen! A white Israeli stone kitchen! Arched windows with steel and glass windows.
And the rest of the home includes an amazing view from the rooftop because the house is three stories high on a hill.
AND…
View from an Old CIty Tzfat front stoop.
When I took a break to get some fresh evening cool air, I sat down on an Old City white Israel stone porch — and this was my view as I enjoyed the people casually strolling by and the soft music wafting through the air from the kikar down the road. (Kikar is Hebrew for Square.)
Views like this just never get old for me. I loved the streets of the old city in Montenegro, of the many in Croatia, of Ljubljana in Slovenia…. And now I am so lucky to find friends and a home (however temporary) in Tzfat, Israel.
People ask if I don’t miss home and indeed, I do. Part of my heart is always with my family and friends back in Los Angeles. But I know I am loved and can always return home. Technology lets me call my family whenever I want (10 hour time difference considered). I get to speak with my friends. I follow their lives. (Yep, on Facebook and via iMessages and WhatsApp.) And all the while…
I am loving my life in this amazing world!
Israeli stone houses are always so misguiding. They look small and cramped from the outside and then walk a few steps down into the entrance, and they are expansive! Thanks for the photos, they bring back memories of the amazing architecture in the amazing country.