“Couch surfing,” the practice of finding places to sleep by moving from sofa to sofa night to night, is not an idiomatic expression in Hebrew the way it is in English. But I really want it to be.
Last Shabbat I stayed with friends in Jerusalem. That night I met a volunteer from Germany to guide her to Talmei Yosef.
She didn't make it in time for us to take the direct bus. I pulled out a guitar at the bus stop while I was waiting for her and started to practice. Before I could finish tuning the strings, two Russian men (reasonably) mistook me for a street performer and tried to give me money. I refused (I can't yet play a song worth a shekel), and they gave me a can of coke instead.
When the German volunteer caught up with me we traded stories. I learned she's Christian. She is just coming off three weeks of volunteering on military bases with SAR-EL. I could tell she was going to fit in fine.
Our bus was overcrowded, so it took too long at each stop on the way, and we missed our connection. There were no buses to take us the rest of the way until the following morning. From the bus, I called a family friend, who called his sister, and just like that we had a place to sleep in Beer Sheva. This morning we took a bus to the nearest stop, hitchhiked the rest of the way, the German went straight to the greenhouses and I got back into the fields to work.
Just a normal weekend.
I have never been to Israel. But it sounds like you need to be constantly prepared for the unexpected!
A perfect weekend! Hi from New Orleans!