!‏אל אל ישראל | Gooooooooooal!

This past Wednesday was my birthday, and on Saturday we went out to dinner to celebrate. I used the Google machine to pick an Italian restaurant called Boccaccio in Tel Aviv. The food was really good and everyone liked my choice in restaurants. One of my friends told the waiter that it was my birthday and at the end of dinner, they brought me cake. It was awesome.

After dinner, we went to a football (soccer) match (game) to which Oranim got us tickets. The Israel Football Association (the national team) played Moldova at Ramat Gan Stadium. This was my first real soccer game, and it was pretty cool. Of course, they played Hatikva (the Israeli national anthem) at the beginning of the game, which, in my opinion, is much more epic than the American anthem. I think the lyrics are more inspirational, plus any song is made more epic just by having a swelling brass and percussion section and lots of cymbal crashes. (Sorry, music-nerdiness over.) The game was interesting to watch; better than American football, I think, but that's probably just because I don't really know how American football works. People have a lot of team spirit (or national pride, I suppose) and they all wear scarves and jerseys and such. Israel would have won 3-0, but Moldova finally scored in the last 15 seconds of the game (literally), so the final score was 3-1. We won! And there was much rejoicing.