Italy wins, Jerusalem, Israel 07/10/06

So here I was in the old neighborhoods where I used to live in Jerusalem. I met up with the Valbuena family for lunch. I found myself following a UN vehicle in the streets of Jerusalem to the restaurant. Again, memories came crashing through my head. I remembered how my father had first taught me how to drive in a UN vehicle. I remembered crossing the borders into Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Israel in one of these vehicles and all the diplomatic priveleges that was granted to us. I pictured the car parked outside of our house.

I sat down to eat with the parents, their daughter and husband, their son and girlfriend. I forgot the name of the restaurant, but it was located in the Arab side. The meal was delicious accompanied by a lot of laughter and great conversation.

It was about 3:30pm by the time we got done braking bread. We headed to the Valbuena's house towards the south of Jerusalem on the way to Bethlehem. At 5PM, we headed to an evening service at a congregation where I used to attend called King of Kings. They now meet in their own building, and one of the leaders in Jewish. As I walked in, I met my friend Humberto. He is a good friend of mine from Mexico, who I went to graduate school with. I hadn't seen him in like 5 years. What a great surprise!

The evening service was over at 7pm. I invited my friend Humberto and his friend to the Western Wall. It was their first time in Israel and they hadn't seen anything yet. The Valbuenas invited this lady from Peru, who is now living in Israel, to come along. So we all headed to the Wall. On the way, I got carried away with my tourist guide skills, that I lost the UN car, which I had been following. We drove around close to the old city wall looking for them, but finally decided to park and just meet them at the wall.

It was such a great night! It wasn't cold! It wasn't hot! It was perfect to be outside by the wall to offer our prayers to God. As usual, there were thousands of people. Women on the right and men on the left. It was my pleasure to show my friends around at the Kotel (Wall) for the first time. Of course, I took a lot of pics and video.

Around 10pm, we headed to the Peruvian ladies' house. She invited us to watch the soccer final - Italy vs. France. Her apartment is in the same floor and the Valbuenas. When we got there, we had missed most of the first half. All the guys went to watch the game at her house and all the ladies went to the Valbuenas to watch a Colombian soap opera airing on Israeli TV with Hebrew subtitles. Colombian soap operas (novelas) are pretty popular in Israel.

Italy won after a dramatic moment towards the end of the game. Zinedine Zidan, one of the best players of the world in the French team, disgracefully got kicked out of the game because he lost his cool and blatantly headbutted an Italian player on the chest. The game went into penalties and Italy won 5-3, although France had played better.

I headed back to Abu Gosh in the middle of the night. On the way, there were cars riding around with the Italian flags yelling and blowing their horns. It was a time of celebration around the world. Once I reached the Arab village, it was all quiet.