Top 10 Most Peculiar Things You'll Encounter, Living As A Foreigner In Israel: #3

  1. Number 1
  2. Number 2

  3. Old stuff!  Old stuff everywhere!  You can look around and see places where Jesus was, and things that King David saw, and sights that Abraham viewed.  And people pass it by every day, without giving it a thought!

  4. Jesus’ own people, whom he loves and for whom he died, mostly still spurn him to this day. Oh... no, wait... that’s everywhere, not just here.
  5. Youths with automatic rifles are everywhere, and no one seems to think anything of it.  At the bus-stop, in the grocery store, in the post office, at the theater.  And they’re always wearing army costumes.
  6. Everyone assumes that you're Jewish.
  7. So many people are so concerned about following so many rules.  And not only do they not know where the rules came from (which, incidentally, was usually not the Bible), but they typically don’t have any thought toward, nor confidence in the God for whom the rules are supposedly instituted.
  8. The emergency vehicles (police cars, ambulances, military jeeps ... you know) - they always have their emergency lights on.  [When they're actually serious, then they turn on the siren, too.]
  9. Garbage, garbage, garbage.  Everywhere you look, people have thrown garbage there!
  10. The shopping:  Little tiny stores. The open air market is significant to the economy of even the biggest cities.  “Mall?  What’s a mall?”