"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