I broke this blogging promise- big time. Nothing crazy has happened since the last time I posted. My program ended, I visited Cleveland, and returned to Israel. New apartment, new job, new weather. We didn't do much traveling over the summer. It was hot hot hot in Israel. We had a very tiny apartment, but life was good. I began working for my program part time doing a little marketing, and I found a full time nanny position conveniently located next door. Towards the end of the summer, we started planning for my parents visit, and looking for a new apartment. I started to reevaluate my reasons for wanting to live in this country. It had become apparent to me throughout the summer, that the extension of my visa would probably not cover the amount of time I was wanting to stay. With a fair amount of soul searching and conversations with friends and family, I decided to become a citizen of the State of Israel. It was a bold move, but I reasoned that if I was planning on making my stay long-term, I might as well enjoy the benefits of being a citizen. The process of gaining citizenship was surprisingly painless. Aside from 'misplacing' my passport (forever), losing my way enroute to meetings in cities I was/am unfamiliar with, filling out an endless pile of paperwork, and learning to use a fax machine - I was impressed with the lack of road blocks.

My parents visited mid October for a few days, after which we (mom, dad, Matan, Stacey and I) traveled to Rome and Barcelona for a much needed vacation. It was a wonderful break and we had an absolutely fantastic time. It was fun to take Matan, the world traveler, to places he had never been. In Rome we stayed in a beautiful modern apartment in the middle of town. It was a great location, a perfect home base for all of our sight-seeing. In Barcelona, we stayed in an amazing hotel, also seemingly in the center of town. We spent a few weeks marveling at the architecture, and avoiding tourist lines for some of the more popular attractions. It was the perfect little adventure.

Next stop for me was Cleveland! Matan returned to Israel, and Stacey to Paris then Seattle. I was home to visit, finish up my Aliyah paperwork, and eat turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving! I spent a month hanging out with family and visiting friends. Chicago to see Ben Kohn, and BG to see Lauren at the end of her last semester of grad school! I played trivia with a few of my favorite people, did some seriously necessary shopping, and caught up on about a hundred overdue doctors appointments. It was wonderful to be home. At the end of November we traveled to Cincinnati for some turkey and family. It was great to be surrounded by a few of my favorite people (and my favorite dog) for the last few days of my visit. 

On the Monday after Thanksgiving I said some teary goodbyes and left for the airport. What I didn't know was that I was beginning the longest three days of my life. I arrived at the airport, cried a whole bunch, checked my luggage, went through security, and hunkered down with a book and my iPod to wait  for my plane. About 45 minutes later there was an announcement that our flight would be about half an hour late leaving due to mechanical issues. My layover in Philadelphia was only an hour and a half. I could still make it as long as the flight wasn't delayed again. Another announcement- "Ladies and gentlemen, flight (insert number)  will be delayed another hour due to mechanical problems" and approximately 27 seconds later, "Flight (insert number) has been cancelled, please do not come up to the counter until your name is called" (cue every single person on my flight rushing to the counter). So I got another night with the O'Learys. Things could be worse. I will save you the suspense of day number two at the airport. Much of the same sad story, except this time I never made it through security, and I had Beth and the girls to keep me company! And back we went to Herschel Woods Lane. I was incredibly bummed out to be delayed another day, but glad to have a few extra minutes in Ohio. Day three, I was on a plane Philadelphia bound, gearing up for my six hour layover. The last sentence you want to hear at the beginning of a layover that long, "we are sorry to inform our passengers that the internet wifi is under construction. We are sorry for any inconvenience". The worst. So, I had a caesar salad, met some people from Chagrin Falls at the bar, and counted away the seconds until I was on that plane and back to Israel. The flight was uneventful, so I'll skip that part.

Arriving at the airport in Tel Aviv was just the beginning of a bureaucracy that I was not prepared to fight. The State of Israel was unhappy with me for being delayed. So unhappy, in fact, they were prepared to make it as difficult as possible for me to leave the airport. The very last thing I wanted to do after my 11 hour flight was fill out paperwork and make decisions about health insurance. After what seemed like years I was allowed to leave the tiny government office. I created an completely unnecessary scene about seeing Matan in the airport (crying incessantly and blubbering like a fool), and we went home. This time home was a great apartment in the middle of town with a big living room and space to put any furniture we wanted. It came complete with a flat screen TV and a washer and dryer. It's everything we could have wanted.

It's six months after I started writing this blog. I logged on intending on writing about our recent vacation to Crete. Instead, realizing I hadn't finished my previous writing, ended it hastily. I will start writing about Greece - I hope it doesn't take me another six months to finish.

All my love,
s

סוף העולם

Firstly, unless otherwise noted, all pictures included in this blog post are courtesy of Nicky James Kelvin.

        At the beginning of my time here, our program took a trip to the Negev Desert. The hikes were incredible, and a few of us decided we wanted more. During this first trip, we hiked during the day and spent our nights at a kibbutz called Sde Boker. We had all of our meals catered by the kibbutz and were able to take showers and use toilets at our leisure. The hikes on this trip were beautiful, but mostly flat and void of obstructions. Our wonderful guide let us know that if we were interested in further hikes or camping trips, we should contact him for trail information!
        We called our guide at the end of March and, as promised, he showered us with a plethora of information about various hikes through the desert. The one we chose also began at Sde Boker and took us to a waterfall oasis called Ein Akev. My fantastic madrich Itzik provided us with camping supplies we hadn't planned for- a tent, little kerosine stove, and sleeping accouterments. At this point the idea of camping really began to set in. I love hiking and being out doors. During the day. At night I prefer to sleep in my own bed (if my own bed is not available, a hotel or someone else's bed will suffice). I was assured by my friends that I would be fine. They would take care of me.

Arriving at Sde Boker, eager to begin our journey! (From right: Nicky, Me, Matan)

        Friday, April 1st, 2011- myself and two others from my program, Matan and Nicky, set out from our home in Tel-Aviv for the middle of nowhere. Our bags packed with supplies (me with my brand new big girl hiking back pack!), we left to catch a bus to the train station at 6am. From there we took an hour and a half train ride to Be'er Sheva, just north of our destination. Here we stocked up on food and other provisions. We boarded a bus to Sde Boker, bought twelve two liter bottles of water (how we fit them all in our packs, I will never know) and began our hike down into the maktesh (refer to first blog for description). At the very beginning of our hike there were signs with different trails and their names. Our trail was called "המעלה" "The Ascent". Ok, so ascent means up- that's fine. Well, whoever marks these trails needs to be a bit more specific. "The Ascent" was a harsh incline- FOR AN HOUR. It was difficult, but I put away my complaining and excuses and trucked it up to the top. Getting to the top of the ascent felt amazing. The hard parts were over! Or so I thought...

Matan and Nick going over the map and picking out trails

The beginning of "The Ascent". This picture does it no justice, but you are able to see  a bit of the trail in the middle.

At the top of the ascent. Happy to be done! (Photo: Matan Har)

We reached the top, and out of the mist appears a giant tent made of wood, sheet metal, and tarps. We had a short group meeting and decided to check it out. Inside the tent was a woman sitting next to a small open fire. She told us her name was Magdalene, poured us some sweet tea and began making laffa and labeneh. While she was cooking, she told us stories of her life and her family. She spoke Hebrew, Arabic, and English. None fluently, and often using all three languages in a single sentence. Bedouin women are normally sheltered from the world and kept covered. She explained to us that she knew life was hard. However, no matter if we were white, black, brown, blue, christian, jewish, muslim, or hindu, we were all children of the world and we were all her children. We began calling her Mama Magdalene. She told us to call our mothers and tell them we had a second mother in the desert.

Mama Magdalene in her kitchen

Tossing dough for laffa

Laffa and labeneh with zatar

Eventually we said goodbye to our host and continued on our way. We were headed for Ein Akev, and all desperately wanted to arrive. The views along this hike were unbelievable. we were hiking inside a giant canyon as before, but this time we were climbing over boulders and hiking up walls of rock. We were earning every inch we covered.

Matan in front of a trail marker. 

Nicky looking out over the maktesh. To the far right is the mountain we climbed the following day.

Around mid-day, we arrived at our destination sweaty, covered in dirt and ready to relax. It was too hot and dry this time of year for the waterfall, but seeing the pool of water in the middle of the desert was like a dream. We put on our bathing suits and got ready to swim.

Waiting for the boys to come swim

Next to the water was cool and breezy. It's the last environment I ever expected to encounter in the desert. The boys put on their bathing suits and started climbing up the wall of the waterfall. "What are you guys doing?!?!" I was terrified. "We are at a waterfall in the middle of the desert- we are jumping off this cliff!" well, there was no way I was climbing up there, I sat at the bottom and took pictures of them jumping into the water. The pool was about ten meters deep, so there was no danger of hitting the bottom, but I held my breath every time they jumped. After a while, the area began to get crowded. Matan swam over to me and said, "your turn, let's go" No freaking way! I was not jumping off a cliff just because all of my friends were doing it. Well, before I knew it I was sitting on the ledge at the top of the wall receiving what turned out to be a 20 minute pep talk. I was so scared. (sorry dad).

At the top of the wall- "the pep talk"

I couldn't do it. But more than that, I couldn't get up and walk back down. I was already up there, I needed to get my ass into that water.

came up to a standing ovation from the people sitting around the pool. and that was that.
After spending a few hours at the waterfall, it began to get dark and we decided to head to the camp ground. We were all exhausted and hungry. The camp ground was close by and we began to set up our tent so we could have dinner.

Walking to the camp ground

Matan struggling to open the tent while Nicky catches up on some text messages.

Men, proud of their work.

We pitched our tent and set up our sleeping arrangements for the evening. Afterwards we decided we were very hungry. We pulled out the small stove and realized shortly afterwards we had no idea how to use it. We saw some guys near by who were also at the waterfall earlier that day. We walked over to ask if they could help us, and they invited us to eat dinner with them. We pulled out our soup and hotdogs, thinking we were eating a pretty gourmet dinner for the middle of nowhere. We started eating our dinner, and roasting our hot dogs on sticks, while the boys we were sitting with pulled out fresh tomatoes, garlic, onions, and ground beef. They cooked everything up with pasta and shared with us their pasta bolognese. It was delicious.

roasting some delicious dogs.

Shai, Nachshon and their gourmet meal.

Shortly after eating, I realized that for the first time all day, I had to pee. Obviously there would be a bathroom somewhere. Not a chance. One of the boys we were sitting with handed me his flashlight- "good luck..." I didn't know how to pee outside, and I still don't. It is impossible. It had me, for the first time in my life, wishing I was a boy. Sleeping in a tent was nothing short of miserable. It was freezing cold, and extremely uncomfortable. I do not recommend it. However waking up at sunrise to pee (yet again) was beautiful. The beginning of the second day consisted of packing up our materials and heading back to the waterfall with our new friends. We ate breakfast there, did a little more swimming (our only shower for those two sweaty days) and tried to decide on our hike for the day.

Packing up (Photo: Matan Har)

The second day at Ein Akev. 

Making breakfast (Photo: Matan Har)

The boys from the night before invited us to hike with them. They were going to hike back to Sde Boker which involved a small mountain and would take about 4 hours. It sounded perfect. We set off from the waterfall and hiked on mostly flat desert for about two hours. Then, out of nowhere came the "small mountain". We took a water break at the base and I apologized to the group in advance for holding them up.  On top of my extremely mild case of sports induced asthma, I am horrendously out of shape. This was going to be no small feat for me. At the beginning of our climb, the boys were stopping when I did about ever hundred feet. After a while, the got sick of me and kept going without me. Matan started counting my steps, "ok, a hundred more steps, the we can stop again" followed by "250 more steps then we will be at the top, you got this". I would not have made it to the top without him.

At the base of the small mountain

Finally making it to the top!

The wind at the peak of the mountain was unbelievable. Our things started blowing away. We sat for a snack and finished what remained of our food. The views from the top were unreal. We finished and started hiking down the other side. The rest of the hike was over and through giant rocks. We walked along the edge of a cliff and finally down into the canyon for the final leg of our trip.

Walking down the opposite side

Our trail is the little white line on the side of the rock and down in the canyon

Once again, I thought the worst was over. Boy was I wrong. "The Ascent" was hard, the mountain was really tough, but it was nothing compared to what we were in for next. Our trail took us to a road which i assumed would take us to Sde Boker. It looked flat from what I could see, and I was blissfully unaware that we had yet to hike out of the canyon. We came to a point in the road where we could see a hill in the distance in front of us. It looked huge to me. One of the boys we were walking with turned to me and said "when we were in the army, they used to make us climb this as punishment". I laughed at kept walking once again unaware that our trail led straight to that hill.

Boys walking towards the incline.

We began walking up, knew at once I was way out of my league. This kind of hiking was for the pros. I was hungry, exhausted, dirty, and couldn't walk another step. Once again, Matan started counting. "500 steps, then we can stop". It helped for a little while, until we reached what I thought was the top. We turned the corner and saw that the hill continued up for another few hundred feet. It was unbearable. making it to the top of that hill proves that if I don't have any other choice, I can do anything. We got to the top sweaty and ready to pass out. We could see Sde Boker in the distance and couldn't wait to get back. As we approached the kibbutz, we realized there was a twenty foot high barbed wire fence around the entire property. We had hiked this far and they were going to make us walk around to the main road to get back in. So, in good Israeli fashion, we broke the rules and jumped the fence.

I knew someone was going to catch us and kick us out or arrest us, but no one said a thing. We walked through the streets with our packs and hiking gear and no one looked at us twice. We found some real bathrooms with real toilets, grabbed some overpriced snacks at the gift shop, and laid down to wait for the bus. Needless to say we all fell asleep on the bus.

It was an incredible weekend, full of things that I have never done before and most likely will never do again. I slept in a tent, peed outside, jumped off a cliff, hiked up a mountain, and broke into a kibbutz. More camping trips are in the works, and I can't wait.

Photos that didn't make it-

Mama Magdalene wishing us well

Some Israelis on our trail pulled literally an entire watermelon out of their pack. Then shared it with us!

Talking to my dad. He's saying "you're where? what? why???"

A few of our water bottles...

Really super outdoorsy 

It was shabbat, so we lit candles 

Some serious wind at the top of the mountain

Climbing down the other side!

To the tombs! Back at Sde Boker (also David Ben Gurion's grave site)

amen.

!!משהו–משהו

It's been almost a month since my last blog. My pledge to keep my friends and family updated has not held strong. This month has been significantly less programmed than the previous one. Just like the first month, however, this one has flown by. The past few weeks have been quite eventful. We all started our internships, during which I learned and re-learned how to take a bus. We celebrated St. Patrick's Day and Purim which happened to fall on the same weekend and were both observed with equal zest. Immediately following these festivities, I came down with what might as well have been the black plague, missed a week of work, and am on the road to recovery. This past weekend we visited the holy city of Tzfat which was both intense and beautiful. I'm still taking ulpan (hebrew class) twice a week, and have subsequently begun taking a Judaism class taught by a very cool young rabbi. Life here is crazy, but I continue to love every single minute of it.

Lazy beach day in Tel Aviv (Photo: Joesef Harris)

My internship is amazing. Every single day is different. I'll start at the beginning... Before my internship started, my program gave me a bus pass. I knew I had to take one long bus ride to and from my internship each day, I didn't know the Israeli busses are complete and utter chaos to a person unfamiliar with the system. It is an understatement to say that I was unfamiliar. I got on my bus and asked the driver if he was going to Rishon LeTzion (where my internship is a few towns away), and if he would let me know when we arrived at my stop. He said yes to both. When we arrived at the end of the line an hour and twenty-five minutes later, I realized that maybe he had forgotten about me. "oops" is the same word in Hebrew and in English. I got on a second bus to go back to my stop and stood next to the bus driver to be absolutely sure he did not forget me. Finally I arrived at work safely. On the way home, I asked several people on the street and at the bus stops which direction the busses come from that head back to Tel-Aviv. I got mixed answers. When the bus came, I asked the bus driver if he was going to Tel-Aviv, and he nodded. When we arrived back at the end of the line in Rishon LeTzion, I began a vow that I would never take another bus again. I finally made it home, with travel time totaling four hours (which is double the time I happened to actually be at work that day). It was a difficult first bus experience. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I am now a seasoned pro at taking busses in this city, and my bus pass is my best friend. I have gotten to and from work every day without any more disasters (knock on wood). My internship is amazing. The kids at the school are between the ages of two and five. The teachers and aids are incredibly nice, supportive, and helpful. The kids are so much fun. They are all somewhere along the autism spectrum. A few are severe, one is very high functioning and the others are scattered throughout the middle. I'm working with one little boy who has been abused throughout his three years and has a great deal of emotional issues along with communication delays, etc. It's been great getting to know all the kids the past month! I'm very excited to see them all progress while I am here.

St. Patrick's Day and Purim happened to fall on the same weekend this year (lucky for us). It was quite the celebration. During my four years at Ohio U, I celebrated Halloween with the rest of the 80,000 or so other people who came to visit the campus for the annual block party. Purim was just like that- multiplied by a million. All the streets were jammed and everyone wore costumes the whole weekend. The ultra religious Jews retired their black coats for a few days and rallied on the streets in costume next to us. It was an experience. A few of my friends and I dressed as european footballers. The costumes got very creative. I think pictures do better justice than I can. Here is a peak at purim-

A few Career Israelers in Costume (with the street party in the background)

Nicky the Cowardly Lion and Liverpool Footbal Star BenAyoun

Immediately following Purim came the plague. Sick in bed for four days. I am so lucky to have such great friends here to take care of me. I began to recover just in time for our weekend tiyul to Tzfat. What an unbelievable city. The streets are cobblestones and the buildings are impossibly close together. The entire city seems to be stuck in time. We celebrated shabbat with gusto, services overlooking the mountians, dinner, dancing, and a few lively games of charades. We took a wonderful tour of the city, heard some fascinating stories and visited some incredibly devoted kabbalists. It's a different kind of life there. Staunch religion drives their lives, but everyone was welcoming and friendly. Eager to show us their ways of life.

Checking out some nature on the way to Tzfat (Photo: Chelsea Truesdell)

The front door of a home in Tzfat

This is a brief summary of the past month. It has been difficult finding time to blog. I just returned home from weekend trips first to Haifa then back to the Negev for some hiking and camping. Update about these to come in the next few days!

Love,
s

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" -Lao Tzu

Ok, so I haven't blogged. I made promises that I would blog about my life here, and I have done some major slacking off in that department. For this I am sorry. I feel as though I don't have enough hours in the day to take a shower (a major undertaking here, as we have to wait 45 minutes for the boiler to heat up), let alone write a blog. But here I am, skipping class and feeling guilty. So I am putting this wasted time to good use and starting my blog.
The first month in Israel has been a whirlwind. I don't know where to begin this story, so I will start with Emma's bat mitzvah- which came and went much too quickly, and the "worst blizzard to hit the mid west in twenty years". My highly anticipated flights were cancelled, re-booked, and cancelled again. I got the flu/food poisoning (a highly disputed topic due to the genius of WebMD.com) . I spent three days deciding which tank tops and which shoes would be the most versatile. And FINALLY boarded an airplane. The flight to New Jersey was turbulent, yet uneventful. I sat next to a 300 lb. man, and we laughed about articles in cosmopolitan magazine together (awkward). As I boarded my flight bound for Tel Aviv, I kissed my blackberry goodbye and prepared myself for nine hours of hasidic Jewry. I sat next to an orthodox mother and her 12 children (all of whom were first timers to Israel, and ecstatic to say the least). We conversed about my previous trip to Israel, my religious beliefs, and my connection to g-d and the holy land. I promised my mother I would not come home orthodox, so I excused myself from my dvar torah lesson to pee. I got up to use the bathroom and found myself swept into evening prayer with several black hat clad men. I was welcomed into their prayer session and much enjoyed my kosher airplane food afterwards. The rest of the plane ride was uneventful. I met Haley (another girl from my trip and unbeknownst to me at the time, my future roommate) at the Tel Aviv airport and we made our way to Jerusalem together to meet the rest of our group. The first few days were filled with meeting people whose names I could not remember, scrambling to tie up loose ends in my paperwork, choosing roommates, and eating some seriously delicious (sarcasm) hostel food. We did some obvious sight seeing- the kotel, Jerusalem museum, and underground tours of the city.

My roommate Haley and I at the Jerusalem Museum 

We all started settling into our niches, making friends and deciding who we wanted to share rooms with for the upcoming five months. After a few days, we moved to Tel Aviv into our permanent housing. This is where I will smugly admit that my roommate and I got the best room in the building. Two giant windows and the most square footage of any of the rooms (square footage is obviously relative in this situation as we live in a glorified dorm room). This marks the beginning of ulpan (hebrew class), and my battle with picky eating. For those who don't know my eating habits well, I am a plain pasta type of girl. With the marinara sauce on the side. Israel is not an on the side type of country. I don't like the food on my plate to touch (an topic of comedy for my friends here), and I don't like to eat meat if I can't tell whether it's beef of cat. When I ask the man behind the counter for pita and humus, he always responds "?!?זהו" "that's it?!?". I have tried several new things, and am getting used to the food here. It will be an ongoing battle, I'm sure. Anyway, ulpan classes are very hard. Learning a new language is not easy, however- as my mother pointed out, it's giving me good insight into the brain of a second language learner, or a non-verbal child. We have done some really interesting programming since arriving to tel aviv. There have been several speakers about different aspects of Israeli politics. We've learned about Arab Israelis, Ethiopian Jews, etc. We volunteered at various organizations. We also took a tour of Yafo and ate dinner at a famous shakshuka restaurant (a tomato and egg dish, of which I of course ate none). Our group went to visit Better Place, the manufacturer of the worlds first completely electric cars. We learned about the cars and got to test drive them!

During our tour of Yafo. Tel-Aviv in the background.

We have been slowly discovering the city. The night life here is amazing. We have gone to a few clubs and we danced our תחתים (tushes) off.

Girlfriends- on our way to our first Tel-Aviv club!

It has been a crazy month, but I have made some incredible friends and we have done some wonderful things. We are all finding our favorite restaurants, bars, and spots in the city. We had a few warm days where we went to the beach (a 10 minute walk from my apartment), and we are picking up Israeli past times like מתקות(paddle ball), and ששבש(backgammon). This is such an incredible city. It's quickly passing up New York as my favorite city on the planet.
This past weekend all of Career Israel boarded a bus and headed south bound for the Negev desert. I have been to the desert before this trip, but had no idea how abridged my version of the Negev was. We left Beit Leni (our apartment building) at 7am and drove south. We stopped on the way to visit a student village. These villages are made up of university students that have a common goal of developing the desert and making it fertile. They build their own houses and have goals of becoming self sufficient and being able to raise their families in the desert communities. It was an incredible place. After that, we continued south to our first hike. During this trip we were hiking through the מכתש (makhtesh) which is an enormous canyon, sometimes erroneously referred to as a crater. For those of you who have been to the grand canyon, this kicks it's ass.

At the end of our first hike through the מכתש.

The hiking was unbelievable. The first hike was scaling one of the cliffs (sorry dad). We hiked until the sun started to set, and headed to our hostel. The first night we had dinner and a campfire. We went to sleep early because at 2:45am our alarms went off for us to get ready to leave for the next hike. We started hiking at around 3:30am through a valley. It was like nothing I've ever experienced before. During the hike we each sat in a solitary spot while we looked at the stars and had a little time for self reflection. As the sun began to rise we had a small group discussion where we read quotes of famous Israelis and discussed our individual purposes for coming to Israel and what we hoped to get out of our experience here. Amazing. Afterwards we hiked towards the sunrise and stopped for breakfast. The views from the cliffs were breathtaking. We hiked until lunch, after which we drove to a settlement- an "urban kibbutz" which called themselves the black hebrews. These are people who have moved to Israel in the last 40 years from places like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, etc. They claim to be descendants from various African tribes that originated on this land and migrated south during the Roman invasion. These people believe that white eastern european "jews" are not the real descendants of this land. They stood in front of us and said (in a much more eloquent way then I am about to) that King Solomon and Abraham were black and it is historically impossible that the ancestors of white eastern europeans originated on this land. It made me sick. I am not bothered by different lifestyles. People should be able to live however they choose to. However, I don't take kindly to being told by an american man standing in front of me and telling me that everything I have ever believed in is a lie, and there is no historical basis to the fact that I am a Jew- needless to say it got more than a few peoples' blood boiling. It was an interesting change of scenery. Our next stop was to a Bedouin settlement in the middle of the desert. It was news to me that the tents I visited during my BBYO trip were not real bedouin tents. Fooled again. These people are not legal inhabitants of the land, therefore are not allowed to build houses. They live in metal shacks built with tin and canvas tarps. It was a raw, dirty, unsettling thing to see. We drank tea with them, played with the kids, rode a donkey, and finally boarded the busses.

Riding a Bedouin donkey

By this time it was 3pm. It had already been a 12 hour day. We were exhausted. We took naps and got ready for shabbat.  Saturday we hiked in the morning, relaxed in the afternoon, and visited David Ben-Gurion's grave in the evening. We did havdallah, ate dinner, and boarded the busses back to Beit Leni. It was an absolutely incredible weekend. We are already planning future camping and hiking trips to take in smaller groups.
It's been a quick first month here. Next Sunday we begin our internships, and "real" life here begins. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else in the world right now. After a lot of years wondering what I am supposed to be doing with my life evaluating and reevaluating my decisions, I finally feel like I am where I belong. Even if just for a few months, this is what I am supposed to be doing.
I hope this has been a sufficient update. I will do my best to keep them coming.

love love love,
s