Independence day

Typically, the Jewish - and thus Israeli - method of holidays is frustrating because things shut down the night before.  Jewish Holidays tend to start the evening before and end at sundown the day of.  However, in the case of memorial day, it's quite convenient.  We decided to go out last night, and it lent an opportunity for us to sleep in today when we got back very late.

First we went to a bar, where we split a bottle of wine and some small appetizers.  The place was going crazy, and in the middle there was traditional Israeli dancing going on at one point, which we sort of joined in on.  The bartender kept pouring shots around the bar on the house, so that by the time we left we had shared the wine, and each had a few shots.  Never good.

Found Whitney in Neve Tzedek a little later on, but decided not to go into the bar because of the cover and lack of benefit of going in, most of the people were pouring out onto the streets anyway.  There was a bottle of champagne and more L'Chaim's.  Then we were walking and I ran into Yael, who had suggested earlier we go to Neve Tzedek.  What a small world this is!

At some point shortly following we ended up in a lovely loft apartment, very modern with very gracious hosts of which I have no idea how we were connected.  At the end of the night we received a ride back to Ramla where we promptly fell asleep, only to awake at midday.

I saw an article on Israel, Modern Israel at 62: Tiny Country and Huge Success, of which one line jumped out at me: "Israel also is the only nation in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees." That's pretty frightening, I would be curious to know which other countries at least stayed close to the same number or didn't lose any trees.