Bianca informed me we’d be hosting a pair of Israeli men and I immediately turned to my most hardened stereotypes about that country. As usual, they turned out to be entirely true.

They came to our home on January 1 as we were nursing a killer New Year’s Eve hangover. Tomer, a native of Ukraine, had flags of Guatemala, Colombia and Brazil stitched on his backpack. “I speak Portuguese,” he said, in a straining, unmistakably Semitic attempt at Portuguese.

“I speak some Hebrew,” I replied, and fired off three words that would win any schoolboy a swift reprimand. They both chortled and proceeded to teach me more complex obscenities.

Aelon, who’s been living and working in Philadelphia for several years, carried a bag large enough to alarm human smuggling inspectors. He immediately made himself at home on our couch and battered us with questions. After a few minutes, the two were smacking one other on the arm and insulting each others’ mothers. Then they offered to make us a complete Israeli meal.

I had recently bought some obscure teas from a specialty shop and cautiously offered them a cup. Cautiously because for these two well-built guys’ guys, tea might be an expressly unmanly drink. But both accepted my smoky lapsang souchong and demanded to be taken to the shop to procure some themselves.

I was once told by an Israeli girl that her countrymen are like prickly pears: thorny on the outside but sweet and nourishing once you get inside. My experience with people from Israel showed that analogy to be a partial lie. Not one that I met showed any signs of a protective exterior.

Neither did Aelon and Tomer. We liked them right away.

Some of my closest friends growing up at an expat school in Budapest tended to be from that area. There was Sagi, the compact but spritely Israeli; Mark, the Cro-Magnon impersonator from Lebanon, as well as a couple of wise-cracking Hungarian Jews. We were sometimes joined by a Palestinian emigré or two. One was named Islam. They all shared a certain fancy for penis jokes and prominent cleavage that I could relate to.

I was told years later by another Israeli that his people are not only mad about soccer, they are mad about the Brazilian national squad. I slowly started to understand why. Israelis, much like Brazilians, aren’t happy to just get things done. They like having it done with style, with grace, with art. It’s not enough to score the goal. You have to do it in a way that blows people’s minds.

And this itself can be distilled to an ever clearer essence: Israelis, like so many Brazilians, leave their homes every day knowing they might not end the day alive. For them, its the threat of a suicide blast. For us, it’s a carjacker or a stray bullet from a battle for drug turf. So their daily existence is atomizes into two simple choices: enjoy it or waste time being scared.

Tomer later taught me how to play poker and (I think) let me win. He also tutored me on his approach to seduction theory, being a pick-up coach (he calls it “courtship specialist”) in Tel-Aviv. Aelon shared his recurring dreams with Bianca and traced its symbols to unresolved conflicts in his life. They played us videos of them brawling with their friends in their backyard fight club, where they punch away frustrations and then hug it out over drinks.

They gifted us some cosmetics made from Dead Sea minerals and left, making us almost promise to stop in Israel on our trip (we were going to skip it).

We just might have to go now.

For tips on how to improve your chances of scoring a couch, click here.