water park on the Kinneret and haircuts

Yesterday, I and the boys got our first haircuts in Israel!  It was the perfect time, too, because its nearly the 15th of Tammuz on the Jewish calendar, and during the three weeks from then until the fast of the 9th of Av it is customary to be a little sad in commemoration of the time leading up to the destruction of both the First and Second Temples (and various other tragedies around that time), and one of the ways of observing this time period is by avoiding beautifying one’s self by getting a haircut.  Anyway, the barber shop was quite crowded.  It had only one guy cutting hair, and two chairs.  The system was quite efficient; his young apprentice would seat the next customer, prep him with the gown and water spray bottle, and the barber himself would just bounce back and forth non-stop from chair to chair cutting the hair of whomever his apprentice had prepped.  There was one family ahead of us, so once all five of their children were done, it was our turn.  The barber was very nice, and when in my broken Hebrew I told him that we were new Olim and that this was our first haircut in Israel, he was clearly very happy for us.  He wished us much success, affirmed that we had made the right decision, confirmed that this was and is our country, the country for all the Jews.  He was pretty clearly secular, with tattoos on both arms and no kippah.  But once when he took a phone call on his bluetooth earpiece I heard him exclaim, “B’ezrat Hashem!” Which means, “With G-d’s Help!” and is a common way of agreeing with someone, hoping that something should happen.  It’s just that in the US I’ve only heard religious people say it.  Here, things like that just permeate the culture.