“You only live once, so eat all the ice cream you can.”
This is a statement that I, and many of my fellow cohort members, live by. After a long day of walking around Jerusalem and seeing many powerful and well-known places, we were all looking forward to a relaxing and fun evening. Finally arriving at a boardwalk marketplace not far from where we had spent the rest of the day, we split off into groups and were given the assignment of first buying and eating dinner, and then exploring and interviewing people on the different ice cream shops at the market.
At first, I was nervous to approach people. I was worried that I would appear like a typical American tourist or just a student who doesn’t speak Hebrew, but with the help of my friends and Michal, one of our new shinshinim, it really wasn’t so bad after all. Honestly, the workers at Vaniglia (the ice cream store) were not particularly friendly, but I did learn that the most popular flavor was… drum roll please…… vanilla! With so many unique flavors to choose from, this surprised me. I was expecting something more exciting, for example their white chocolate gianduja (which was delicious!) or the sicilian pistachio which I would definitely taste if I ever return.
After enjoying our extremely refreshing and great tasting ice cream that Leah Marek exclaimed “makes me so happy”, we decided to ask some other customers about their opinions. Again, I was nervous to approach strangers, but looking back on it, that seems ridiculous. People are generally super friendly or at least polite towards strangers, and let’s be real, who doesn’t like talking about ice cream? We found a family with three young kids and talked to them in both Hebrew and English about why they came to Vaniglia and compared all of our favorite flavors. One of the kids actually did say vanilla. I guess it must be a good flavor after all! This turned out to be a fun and light conversation to break the barrier between American tourists and Israeli locals, and we got to enjoy great ice cream in the process! I hope that there will be much more ice cream tasting in the future, and maybe next time I’ll have to try the vanilla.