I ended my last post with us arriving in Tel Aviv and getting set up with our host families. We were split up into four houses, Noah and I together, Bronwyn and Creighton together, Laurine with her brother, and Melissa in another home. We stayed with a woman and her army-age daughter in an apartment in Neve Avivim, a neighborhood of Ramat Aviv in northern Tel Aviv. Everyone else stayed around Neve Tzedek, so we were far from everyone else. Being so far from the center of the city and from the rest of the group made doing anything after hours nearly impossible. Cabs were expensive, and we had to pay for transportation ourselves. Buses were available, but unreliable. Several times we waited for a bus for more than a half-hour after it was supposed to come. Everything else about our accommodations was good. The family was friendly and the apartment was nice. Saturday was a lazy day. I walked around northern Ramat Aviv, and then went to the beach and hung out there for the afternoon.
Sunday we got to work. Shay Farkash, the man in charge, split us up to do different jobs. Noah and I started cleaning the backs of removed wall paintings, and the girls worked on cleaning and exposing a green snake stencil in different parts of the room. After we were done cleaning the backs of the paintings they put Noah and I to work painting new stencil around the room, Noah on once side and me on the other. They had created a stencil guide by tracing what they found on the walls so that it was identical to and would line up with what remained. With help from Shay's team, we learned how to paint stencils onto the wall. We got about a third of our walls stenciled before the day was done. That evening began Yom HaZikaron, Israel Memorial Day, and there was a MASA memorial service at Latrun. While it was a decent service, I would have preferred to have gone to one that was more Israeli and less "American". The memorial was attended entirely by MASA participants, which meant hundreds of mostly religious American teenagers doing extended MASA courses that all new each other. There were of course groups from other countries, but it was mostly Americans. The ceremony itself was also somewhat strange, with several interruptions made for people to start singing songs that I did not understand their connection. Whatever. It wasn't my cup of tea.
Monday at work we switched our stations so that we could all get experience doing the different jobs. Laurine and Melissa went to paint the snake stencil and I cleaned and revealed the old one. The walls had several different layers of paint, each with its own stencil design. The area I was working on had three stencil designs, the snake, a light blue design, and a brown one, and I had to leave them all while cleaning around them. That meant that parts of the snake that were underneath the newer designs remained hidden. The cleaning was a long, slow, and delicate process. Using a scalpel you had to remove each layer of paint without destroying what was beneath it. Several issues made this very difficult. One, some of the paint layers were extremely thin and it was easy to go too deep and remove too much paint. Other places the paint was really hard and didn't come off easily. Adding too much force could damage the paint underneath. Also, the snake was on a light beige background, and a layer of white paint was directly above this. The white blended in with the beige, making it difficult to tell the difference between the layers. The work required a lot of patience. I really enjoyed it though. Monday night began Yom HaAtzma'ut, Israel Independence Day, so we got off work early. That night I went to a party on a rooftop in central Tel Aviv to celebrate.
Tuesday we had the day off for Yom HaAtzma'ut. I went walking through
central Tel Aviv, crashed a few open parties to celebrate and eat, and
then went to the beach. The late afternoon became very windy, so I
headed home early. Wednesday I resumed revealing the different layers of stencils. I was in a different place on the wall, but the process and results were exactly the same. This location was a little more difficult because it was in a corner, but I think I managed fairly well. Thursday, guess what I did? If you said, "more cleaning", you're right! I was on another wall, but I was doing the same thing. This area was significantly more difficult because there was a hard layer of green cement-plaster over everything. It was extremely difficult to remove this layer, and when you could, it usually took everything beneath it off as well. We tried several different methods for removing the green layer, including light hammering, applying a vinegar solution, and adding an epoxy mortar that was supposed to bond with the upper layers making them easier to remove. Nothing really worked, but I found that the easiest way to remove the cement was to add the epoxy, let it sit for a few minutes, and then use the hammering technique. It wasn't perfect and I destroyed plenty of the snake motif, but it was really only way we were able to work. We were also running out of time, so as long as I revealed some parts of it they were happy. That night we went out for long-overdue celebrations for Laurine's birthday. We went to an anglo bar near the beach that is known for its Tex-Mex menu, and then we went to the Max Brenner chocolate restaurant for dessert. We ate and drank way too much, but it was a lot of fun.
Today (Friday) was our last day in Tel Aviv. We only had half the day to work before the bus came to pick us up, and even that was shortened because there was going to be a performance put on in the room before lunch. I started by (you guessed it) cleaning the wall. We couldn't finish the entire area before we had to clean up for the performance, though. Then we all moved to the hallway and did some work on creating stencils that Shay's team would use for other jobs they had. I was working with a stencil that showed a scene of two men leading camels near the pyramids. The design wasn't complicated, but it had several layers that needed to be drawn and cut separately. I was only able to get through cutting half of one of the layers before we had to clean up and get ready to leave. The bus came, we packed up our luggage, and then drove back to Akko.
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