My Rural

Tel-Aviv is sometimes compared to Miami Beach, and rightfully so. Both have huge skyscrapers marking the city skyline (though TLV is the most polluted city in Europe so sometimes the smog interferes), both have magnificent beaches where the sites include beautiful girls in little more than their birthday suits and both have a nightlife that goes on to the early parts of morning. I have been living in this city for two and a half months and have tried to take in all of Tel-Aviv, the sun, the bars, the hummus (Jaffa/Yafo actually), the people and the metropolitan culture.
But this past weekend I decided to spend the night at my friend Deb's apartment which is 30-40 north of Tel-Aviv and 10-15 years behind Israel's secular cultural center. She lives on the edge of Michmoret in a small town called Olga. The town's population can't be more than a thousand people for as I walked from the bus stop to her apartment I did not see more than 30 people and began to miss a little bit the buildings in Tel-Aviv I have become familiar with. We walked into a grocery store that had one isle, perishable items on one side and non-perishable items on the other. We picked up some bread, hummus (israeli staples) and some fruit, had a few words with the cashier who was wondering what two Americans were doing in this town of mostly Russian and Ethiopian immigrants and continued to her apartment.
The town of Olga is pretty much on the beach and Deb's apartment building is one of three brand new luxury apartment built in Olga and the tallest buildings for miles. From her window you can see the water and the only remaining sand dunes left in Israel. We quickly put the groceries down, made a little lunch and left for the beach. The beach that we went to is nothing like the Tel-Aviv beach packed with people and hotels in the background. We walked through the dunes and down a cliff to the little beach where we were two of about a dozen on a kilometer strip of beach.
If you ask me I am a child of suburbia, if you ask Deb I am a city boy. As we walked I commented (to others, only Deb, complained) on the gigantic insects, the dirty sand, the climbing down the cliffs in flip-flops and other things that came to my attention. Now to give you a little background on Deb. She grew up in Connecticut as an only child. But if you ever talk to her you would think that she has siblings for she talks about her dogs and horses as if they were (and to her they are) her brothers and sisters.
Deb also works on a horse farm here in Israel with prized Arabian stallions and such. So after the beach on Saturday we visited this farm. Walking by the stalls of the horses I was impressed by how the people working with the horses knows each ones tendencies, whether they liked to be petted on the nose, which one eats what type of food and who their parents or children are. In Harrisburg we have the yearly farm show where people from all over the East coast bring their farm animals and show off riding skills so I have some notion of what it is like to be on a farm. However, when one of the horses got loose from their stall (and it happened 3 times in a span of an hour while I was there) I was called on to help retrieve the horse. I was called on to step in front of horse running to make it stop and direct it into the ring in the center of all the stalls. Maybe some of you would have helped but I decided to move/jump out of the way and not to be run over. I was teased by Deb and her friends at the farm for being city boy and not liking the animals as much as them.