Everywhere you look there are feral cats. But unlike the feral cats at home, they seem healthy – certainly not scrawny – and usually quite friendly. Our Shabbat host likened Israel’s cats to Toronto’s squirrels. That was true in Israel more so than Jordan.
In Jordan we saw more dogs. We were told they were Bedouin dogs – used for herding. In fact it seems that Jordan has a stray dog problem exacerbated by earthquakes in Syria and possibly the refugee situation. Abandoned animals have crossed into Jordan and over time proliferated.
Another observation was the general cleanliness of Israel’s streets and roadways. Jordan’s highways seem to be lined with plastic of all kinds – garbage found closer to the towns and cities.
Roundabouts were quite common in both countries but maybe more so in Israel.
Zaev taught us a new term for going to the washroom – coffee out (as in ‘coffee in,coffee out’). It became the standard for the trip.
In Jordan some camels seem to roam freely in the desert countryside. I’m not sure whether they are feral or if, in fact, they are owned by someone and we just didn’t see the owners.
In Israel we were told that most of their electricity was produced thermally – by coal. We did see a lot of solar panels on rooftops though. We wondered about nuclear power generation but did not get an answer. We were surprised about the thermal electricity because we were under the impression that Israel was quite forward thinking in terms of environmental concerns. In Jordan we saw wind generating farms in the desert.
