Cake For Breakfast: Just your average Thursday night in Rishon

Another perk of being an ITF is getting an Israeli host family. My host family is by far the best on offer and I share them with another fellow.

My host Mum is originally from New York and she is absolutely hilarious. My host Dad is a lawyer in Rishon and has taken to lecturing me about how I need to get myself acquainted with Australian immigration law so that I can work as a migration agent when I move here (# classic Jewish Dad) ... The family also has three kids all under 10 who are so much fun to play with especially the middle girl who doesn't speak any English but we still manage to have a lot of fun.

I guess another interesting thing about my host family is that they are observant Sephardic Jews. Pre-Israel, I had no idea what the difference was between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews but simply put, Sephardic Jews are Jews from the Middle East. Although an Ashkenazi Jew myself, as my parents are from Eastern Europe, I wouldn't hesitate to say that Sephardic Jewish food is better. Moroccan stews, bourekas, cous cous and mint tea as well as other delicacies like lambs brain and cows tongue; both of which I have had the honour of tasting while here. It's been a real treat to see and learn about the slight differences in Jewish culture.

A Sephardic Temple we visited in Tzfat.

I usually spend 1-2 nights/meals at their house eating a real home-cooked meal (#lessstruggle) and watching TV as we don't have a real TV in our apartment.

Our TV painting. Some may say better than a real TV.

Every Thursday night at my host family's house is pizza night. My host Mum runs a fairly tight ship health wise with her kids but Thursday is the one day a week where they get to eat like Americans. Her pizza is incredible. The dough is basically challah which makes it blessed with all of God's goodness aka fluffy, slightly sweet and delishhhhhhh.

So yesterday, me, one of my housemates and my host brother (I guess you could say) went to pizza night to demolish some well earned carbs. My host Mum also recently got a nespresso machine so yesterday's pizza was followed by a decaf coffee :D.

After gorging myself on pizza and attempting to get myself into my now ridiculously skinny black jeans, a few girls and I decided to go out in Rishon for a drink. Our adventure had two general goals: to catch up and to see how easy/hard it is to nab an Israeli manz.

One of our fellow ITFers advised us that all you need to do to grab an Israeli manz is to sit at a bar looking slightly confused. Apparently if we do that, within minutes Israeli men will swarm.

Now, I had little faith in his advice but low and behold, after sitting at the bar for under an hour and looking normal and maybe slightly confused, a group of Israeli men came over and starting chatting with us. Their English was fairly decent. One even tested his best English pickup line on me: "I love you, you love I?" (hahahaha).

The night was nothing less than hilarious though. My favourite part would have been when one of the guys was looking in his jacket pocket and found matza from last Pesach (March 2014). I nearly died of laughter. I mean seriously, that has got to be one of the most random things to find in your pocket 9 months after the fact. As a memento of our evening he let me keep the little piece of matza which I named the 'lucky matza' and which I hope will survive the rest of my time here.

The guys invited us over tonight as they were "going to make a little party with a jacuzzi" but unfortunately I already have plans with some new American friends I made in Rishon so had to decline. And jacuzzi's are not really my thing. ever.

Below are some photos of pizza night and our night out with our new hilarious Israeli friends: