...he offered me his lap...

As you can see (pictures below), Hanukkah is still in full swing.  But so is typical Israeli bus etiquette (which could actually include a number of behaviors).  Here is a brief rundown of my week in buses.  (I think I should have made a list, though, because I forgot the middle story.  Hopefully it will come back to me.)

Picture from this site.
It's actually my bus stop!

At the beginning of the week, I was waiting for a bus in the little bus stop, and I had a spot on the bench, which is quite a luxury.  The majority of the stop is covered but the bench only spans half the enclosure.  My bus route is busy in the mornings.  Sometimes we have to get in at the back because the front is so crowded. (Then we don't have to pay.)  This morning was just like the others, and there were a number of students waiting for our horrible late bus, the 14.  A few minutes later, though, an older man came into the enclosure too.  I quickly go up and offered him my highly coveted seat.  He took it with pleasure.  The bus came just a few minutes later, and it was packed!  We got on in the back and squished as much as we could.  When the older man boarded, another student who was already seated got up and offered him her seat.  I was standing near him (and everyone else because there was absolutely no moving or breathing room), and I had my lunch in a container in my had.  It was so Israeli when he offered me his lap to hold my lunch.  I demurely declined but his kind gesture made me smile the rest of the day.

MIDDLE STORY HERE  (Hopefully I will remember it and add it in soon.)

Taken from here.

This morning, as I was waiting for the bus, I was reading an article in Scientific American about autism and its genetic basis as correlated to genetically based technical and systematic intelligence.  An older, religious woman was also sitting at the stop, and It was so Israeli when she saw what I was reading and decided to strike up a conversation.  She asked me if I studied autism at the university and if I could explain the basis of it.  I explained to her as best I could (before reading the article) about linked genes and co-inherited traits.  I went back to reading thinking that the conversation was through.  It was not, though.  She continued the discussion and applied the rifts between siblings or between parents and children in which communication is cut off for years to be a sign of autism.  I disagreed with her and cited anger or hurt as a main cause for a break in communication.  The conversation continued in a philosophical direction, and somehow we came to the topic of the goats she owns and how even in them, there is an innate instinct to motherhood.  I wasn't sure how this tied in to autism, but I just went along with what she was saying. Luckily the bus came just a few minutes later, and I was free of my philosophically minded, Hebrew speaking companion.  It was a challenging, interesting, and spontaneous way to start the day, but I still haven't gotten through  the article.  Hopefully I'll get through it on the bus ride home.

On the bus seeing the city lit up with decorations

The third night of Hanukkah.  I am a bit late in my picture taking.
The let and right candles have already burned out.

The menorah at the community garden where I take my
compost.  I guess the previous night's candles
blew out because they were still there in the morning.

The fourth night, at the grocery store.

 

The fourth night, outside my apartment building.