Boulder in the Desert

As fate would have it, we seem to have found our way to the most Boulder-esque Israeli town imaginable. Just like Boulder, Sde Boker features a university campus, several government laboratories, a nearby national park, an extensive recycling operation, lots of mountain bikes, a farmers’ market, numerous vegetarians, and stunning scenic views. The residents are largely friendly and helpful, and enjoy outdoor activities. The local grocery store even sells Ben and Jerry’s (pictured below), soy milk, and tofu. Even though it’s not helping us to learn Hebrew quickly, most of the adult residents seem to speak at least rudimentary English. Many are quite adept at American English.

Don’t think though that our entire stay here is within our comfort zone. There are plenty of aspects of life in town that are quite foreign to Boulder. The girls go to school classes entirely in Hebrew. We’ve had to abandon sarcasm as a form of humor. Nobody understands it or thinks it’s funny. Many of the people we’ve met have fascinating life stories, so different from ours. The desert features vastly different fauna, flora, and topography than our mountain environment back home.

To visit a really foreign country all we need do is walk out of town a bit. There we find women covered in garments so that only their eyes show, ruins from societies that disappeared thousands of years ago, and soldiers toting machine guns. Yesterday we went to Ber Sheva, the local big city (Israel’s fourth largest) to go shopping, and we got confused, lost, cheated, and nearly deported (well, not really). When we drove home, we were delighted to be back in our little Boulder in the desert.

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream on sale in Sde Boker grocery store