I got a good night's sleep on the comfortable bed in Sidney and Eleanor's spare room which felt good compared to the cots we sleep on at the Air Force base. Eleanor made delicious French Toast, something they also don't have on the Air Force base. I called my Mother's Cousin Ephraim who lives in Tel Aviv. Ephraim is 71 years old and an aerospace engineer. He is also a Colonel in the Air Force reserves. He told me that after the age of 38 you are considered a volunteer as you no longer have to be in the reserves. Ephraim and his Wife Rachel live in Tel Aviv. They have three daughters who all served in the Israeli military and all of the daughter's husbands also served in the military. Ephraim picked me up and we went to Tel Aviv's old City Hall
where me met up with Rachel and their 12 year old Granddaughter Nina who speaks excellent English. The old City Hall now contains art exhibits as well as being a museum for the first Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff.
From there we walked a short distance to the former home of Chaim Bialik, Israels greatest poet. Bialik was a prolific poet and also wrote childrens' books and was an activist in Tel Aviv community matters. This next picture is of a placque on the same street in front of a house where Israel's first organized fighting force was established to fight against the British Mandate which had Britain in charge of the lives of so many Jewish refugees after World War II.
After the museum we went to a late lunch. Nina wanted nachos so we went to a Mexican restaurant where none of the employees spoke Spanish. The food was as good as most of the Mexican restaurants in the States, which surprised me.
Ephriam dropped me off at Sidney and Eleanor's and I relaxed a bit before getting ready to head out for dinner with one of our Sar-El mates, a woman named Emmalina (she goes by Emily) who was a US Air Force flight nurse in Viet Nam. Emily does volunteer work in Africa on a regular basis and seems to have a lot of energy inspite of having many ailments which limit her mobility. We went to an Italian restaurant and thankfully we got seated in a quiet corner because it seems like all Israeli restaurants are very loud.
After dinner we walked back to Emily's hotel and dropped her off and she didn't want to walk a lot which was required for our next stop. We took a taxi to get as close as possible to Rabin Square. Rabin Square is named for Yitzkhak Rabin, former Israeli Prime Minister who was murdered exactly 22 years ago. There was a large rally which caused the police to block off many streets and we had to walk a few blocks to get to the square. Rabin Square is very large, I would estimate that it is about 40 acres.
We arrived at 730pm and lots of people were streaming into the Square. Live musicians were playing and large video screens showed pictures and video of Rabin. Rabin was and is still loved by a great many Israelis for his work to make peace with the arabs. We stayed until about 9pm and we leaned later that the police estimated the crowd to be 85,000 people. The people were relatively quiet except when the video was playing Rabin's speeches, when the audience cheered loudly. A group called "Shalom Acshav" meaning "peace now" was giving out the scarves with the Israeli flag on them.
We walked back to Sidney and Eleanor's apartment and I got my stuff partially packed for an early trip to meet our Sar El group on Sunday Morning.
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