Destination Israel in the Desert

This past weekend my program organizer, Destination Israel/ Israel Way, coordinated a group trip to the Negev Desert for all of its current participants on its programs.

Left to right: Maks, Brielle, Dima, me, Kostia

Most of the participants were American. But not all. There was a pretty large faction of French participants. All of the program instruction was in English. This presented a problem...

There were a few times during scheduled programming where some of the instruction was translated into French, but most of it was not. If it were me who didn't speak English, I think I would feel a bit slighted, especially since their programs are for French speakers. Being in a foreign country where the national language is not your mother tongue you expect to feel lost a lot of the time. But when you are inside of your safety net in the keep of your organization you expect to feel a sense of familiarity and not distance.

Being that I only speak about 15 words of French I didn't actually speak to any of the French participants about this issue. However it was obvious that there was a sense of separation between us, the English speakers and them, the French speakers.

The best part of the trip for me was the first hike we did since we were able to bridge the gap a bit. A hike can present many a challenge - people have all kinds of different abilities. Some feel invincible against heights, some have spider-like rock climbing skills, and some have the strength to push on for miles and miles. And then there are others who have never hiked a day in their lives.

I was excited to have the opportunity to help those that were struggling at the end of the group - most who were French speakers. It gave me the chance to work on my nonverbal communication skills and to show that we are more the same than different :)

That night we slept at a Bedouin campsite - I'm not sure of the name of it. We ate an "authentic" Bedouin meal and then slept in rows of sleeping bags in a large tent. A couple interesting tidbits from the host of our dinner: Unmarried Bedouin women wear all black so that men know they are single and are not allowed to approach them. A Bedouin man may have up to four wives.

It wasn't exactly that stimulating...

The next morning I woke up EARLY to go on another hike.

The bus ride was maybe two and a half hours. We saw the Egyptian border from the bus. There is a pretty hefty fence separating Egypt from Israel that did not exist until recent years. Our tour guide told us the Israeli government built this fence for a two main reasons: 1) The Sinai peninsula is not currently policed by Egypt and it is important that independent militants don't cross over. 2) Refugees from countries in Africa other than Egypt have been entering Israel illegally for years via the Egyptian border.

This second hike was a bit more challenging than the first and was just a hop and a skip outside of Eilat. From the top of the mountain we climbed we were able to see all of Eilat and Aqaba (in Jordan), and our tour guide also told us that some mountains we saw in the distance were in Saudi Arabian territory. This means that in one day I saw four different countries.

The mountain we climbed is called Mt. Solomon and it is the second highest mountain in all of Israel. It took us about four and a half hours to climb up and then descend back down.

The view from the top was INCREDIBLE!

And... at the end of the hike we of course took a group picture!

The rest of the trip was in Eilat which wasn't extremely exciting for those on my specific program since we already live here. But I must say it was nice to have some new faces around. I even like to think I made some new friends :)

A Slice of "Suburban" Tel Aviv Life

It has been a pretty packed week and a half! We will discuss only my most recent Tel Aviv trip in this post and leave the rest of my shenanigans for tomorrow :)

Last weekend I jetted off to Tel Aviv just for a change of scenery; the previous weekend I visited Jerusalem.

I stayed not in Tel Aviv but instead in nearby Giv'at Shmuel. (Side note: If Israel had "suburbs," Giv'at Shmuel would be its prime example.) Envision frolicking children, plenty of parks and people walking their dogs every 10 feet. A friend of my cousin set me up with her former college roommate, Paula.

Sometimes it pays to put a wire out on Facebook ;-)

Paula moved to Israel about 20-or-so years ago and now has four Israeli kids of her own and an Israeli husband and cat to match! I felt so grateful to them for welcoming me into their home <3 Thank you Paula and Avi!!!

Paula even prepared for me some special vegan food!

In Tel Aviv I met up with a few friends- a friend from college who moved to Israel within the last couple of years, a friend I made at the Masa Israel Leadership Summit I attended a couple months ago, and also with my Birthright tour guide. It was good to see some familiar faces in a not-so-familiar place :)

The highlight of my trip, believe it or not, was the few hours I spent babysitting for the family I stayed with, and then my walk to the bus station to set me Eilat-bound.

Left to right: Lahav and his friends- twins Gabrielle and Dotan (hopefully I got everyone's name correct!).

I've realized the best way to get a slice of life in a foreign place is to interact with the children. Let me preface what I am about to say next by saying this: I have done A LOT of babysitting. A LOT. I've been babysitting for more than 10 years. Looking back though I'm not sure why parents trusted me to look after their kids back then when I, myself, was a kid at age 13...

Anyway, I've noticed that Israeli children aren't as shy and awkward as American children and, physically speaking, they're a heck of a lot more active. And don't you worry, I've come up with potential causes of these variations.

Theory number one: social disposition. Perhaps because people in Israel live in much smaller quarters than in the U.S., the children are forced to interact more with other people and hence they gain the social skills that most American children (including myself back in the day) lack. The individual family size in Israel is larger as well. More siblings = more social interaction.

Theory number two: activity level. Perhaps because Israel is a military country, (everyone [both men and women], with circumstantial exceptions, is conscripted at age 18) its population in general is more physically fit. After graduating from the army the practices of exercise stay with the former soldiers and when they go on to have children, they continue these practices. Since kids take after their parents- they see the exercise behavior and they then copy it. 

The three children I babysat--I think they were around age 8 (whoops I forgot the exact age!)--couldn't have been cuter. They played soccer, walked a neighbor's two dogs and ran around the playground like little monkeys :)

Monkey Lahav the bilingual bouncing boy! 

After our playdate at the park I began my voyage back to Eilat.

The day was a Saturday. Saturday in Israel is just called "Shabbat." In order to catch my plane (yep, that's right, I sprung for a flight) in time back to the Land of Sunshine, I had to take the earliest bus after the busses began operating again following the Shabbat day of rest. The bus I had to catch was in the ultra-orthodox neighborhood B'nei Barak bordering Ramat Gan. Paula drove me just to the periphery of the neighborhood since cars are not allowed inside of B'nei Barak during Shabbat. 

The streets were literally blocked off with gates.

No cars are gettin' in to here!

Or here!

Walking through B'nei Barak I discovered a whole different world that I never really realized existed. I've heard about these religious communities before, but I've never seen them with my own naked eyes. I was the only woman in sight waking around in pants. (In more religious sects of Judaism women are required to wear long skirts.) I felt like I was in a parallel universe.

It is needless to say that I felt a bit out of place. Though I was raised Jewish, my family's Jewish was a very different kind of Jewish, where the religious aspect of our lives did not govern everyday life. I must say though that I do respect those who choose to live their lives following such specific standards. It is difficult and requires a lot of discipline. 

Also, I just remembered as I was writing this and am unsure of where to add it in, I went to Shabbat dinner at the house of some cousins in Modiin, a "suburb" of Jerusalem. This was the real highlight of the trip! It was so nice to be with family, even though I only just met some of them that night. One of the daughters who is a few years younger than me made for me vegan challah (it normally has egg), vegan cookies, vegan chocolate cake and vegan sachlav, a milk-based traditional Arab dessert drink that usually is accompanied with coconut and cinnamon.

I wish I took pictures with the cousins and of the food but I was so in the moment that I neglected even to think of this blog.. eek.

On that note... not to end too abruptly or anything... here is a picture of some cool statues carved out of bushes in Giv'at Shmuel:

**Cue ending credits here.**

Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem

Last week my program began a two-week break since the hotels are too slow for us to be working. Two of my roommates left the first day of the break to travel outside of Eilat, leaving my other roommate and me all alone. As Brielle and I sat in our quiet, lonely apartment we realized quickly that we wouldn’t make it through a full two weeks of doing nothing in Eilat.

So we decided to be spontaneous!

Our program leader Rami recommended a hostel, Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem. And within the hour we booked our bus tickets and our beds. We packed only what we could carry on our backs and the next morning at 7:00 a.m. we were off!

Prior to arriving at the hostel we met up with some cousins of mine at the Mahane Yehuda market [shuk] in Jerusalem. We went to a delicious vegetarian restaurant (I think it's called Pear and Apple) where we took refuge from the snow.

Here are the cousins! 

My lunch! Stuffed cabbage and grape leaves.

Brielle and I with the girls.

Brielle and I with Menahem.

After lunch it looked like a snow party was erupting in the market. We joined in until the cold got to be too much. We weren’t wearing beer blankets like some other folks were ;)

You can't hear the music or the people through the picture but best believe that it was a bit rowdy ;)

When we arrived at our hostel we were delighted to enter into a friendly environment with young people all around. We signed up to attend the Shabbat dinner at the hostel that night since it would be too difficult to venture out to anywhere in the snow as some roads were closed.

Here are some of my favorite Jerusalem snow pictures:

Brielle writing our initials in the snow. She's a Florida girl so it was very exciting for her!

The view from the common room in our hostel.

No one is on the streets the morning after the snow. As you can see though, barely any of the snow survived the morning sun.

It's a pretty photogenic gate if you ask me...

The "Snow Feed" at our hostel. This is what we saw right when we entered.

We met people from all over the world at this place - Canada, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States (of course), Israel, and probably more that I am forgetting. The coolest thing about this hostel was that most of the people we met were not Jewish. They just wanted to come see Israel.

I even ran into two people I knew!

Melissa and I met back in November at the Masa convention in Jerusalem.

I met Aaron there too... he came to help a fellow English speaker with his travel plans.

And a lot of the people we met at the hostel were not in fact staying there. The hostel has a big common room two floors up from the main level where anyone can come and hang out, use the kitchen, listen to music, get a drink at the bar, etc. A lot of Jerusalem English-speaking locals come to the hostel in the evening for social activity. 

Brielle and I were able to stage a reunion between these two! Rachel (pictured left), our other roommate, and Shneur (pictured right) went to elementary school together in California and haven't seen each other since! (Sorry about the photo quality...)

The last night we were there we witnessed a “no-pants” party. I say witnessed because we did not take part in the pantslessness. I felt like I was experiencing a frat party gone Yeshiva. It was definitely an experience.

The calm before the storm of the no-pants party. For some reason I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of the no-pants party. Sorry!

Abraham Hostel isn’t just a hostel. It is a subculture in and of itself. It has kind of a backpacker meets co-op meets party animal kind of vibe. The underlying tenet of the place is to respect the shared environment.

The second night we were there I accidentally left my scarf in the common room. When I realized the next morning that I had done this I instantly thought, I’m sure I can kiss that scarf goodbye. Someone is probably halfway to Tel Aviv with it now. But to my own amazement, it was safe and sound in the lost and found! :):):)

All three nights we stayed there we slept in a 10-bed mixed male and female room. But the first two nights we were in a different room from the third night. And let me tell you, there was a BIG difference between the two rooms. If you ever stay at Abraham Hostel in this type of room, opt for Room 15 over Room 14!!! Heed this advice!!!

Room 15 had heat that actually worked and was a bit bigger, so naturally the beds were farther from the door. This is VITAL since when people enter they make a lot of noise. Their doors are quite difficult to unlock. (To be fair though, the hostel did give us two extra blankets each since the heat was malfunctioning in Room 14, where we stayed the third night.)

As far as feeling like my possessions were secure, I never left anything unattended except for maybe some food items and a T-shirt. Other people left unsecured iPads, big suitcases and cell phones. I don’t understand how anyone could be so trusting in a place with so many strangers!

As far as activities at the hostel - it seemed like there were three or four different tours offered daily. Some of them included: Petra, the West Bank, the Western Wall, Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea. It also offered a Hummus-making class and 24/7 tea and coffee!

Breakfast was included as well. But it wasn’t anything terribly exciting - just hard-boiled eggs, toast, jam, yogurt, cottage cheese and for vegan me: cucumbers and tomatoes. They did have persimmons one day as well. 

As much as I enjoyed staying at the hostel I enjoyed even more leaving it. It’s tiring to be able to trust no one and always have to have all of your belongings on your person. I think the next time I stay at a hostel I have to be in full backpacker’s mode. I need to be ready with a padlock and train myself to sleep over the sound of other people.

Some other highlights of the trip were when my cousin Ela and her boyfriend came to visit me at the hostel and also walking around town with my roommate Brielle and our other roommate Rachel who was in Jerusalem independently of us. It was a great trip, and even though we had to spend eight and a half hours on a bus amidst screaming Israeli children, it was kind of worth it ;) 

Lemon-poppyseed vegan muffin from Muffin Boutique in Jerusalem.

Root vegetable soup and a buffet plate from the vegetarian Village Green in Jerusalem.

This is my favorite picture: I love the juxtaposition here of the strawberries being sold outside in snowy weather.

That is all for now. Thank you Abraham Hostel for providing me with some new writing material!

Up and Running Again (Pun Intended!) - Petra, Christmas and New Years

After a month and a half of doctor-ordered rest, I went running again today for the first time. Stress fracture no more :)

I'm back in my right mindset! And motivated more than ever! In this post I will provide a recap of everything that's been going on since Hanukkah... I'll go in reverse chronological order. Sit tight, because it'll be a long ride.

My dear old ma and pa were here in Israel for a few weeks while my mom attended a work conference. I went to visit them for a weekend in Tel Aviv and the following week they came to visit me in Eilat. And then together, we went to PETRA!!!

In front of the most well known of Petra's surviving ruins: the Treasury building. Carved out of a mountain!

For those who don't know, Petra is in Jordan. The climate is similar to that of Jerusalem's, which is similar to that of Atlanta's (I think...). It was cold! Petra is one of the modern-day Seven Wonders of the World.

Basically Petra is a historic village carved out of mountains - no bricks, no mortar, no stones - just mountains as building materials. It is really quite amazing. But what amazed me the most was finding out that it wasn't discovered by the Western world until the 1800's.

The government in Jordan purchased the land from Bedouins [I think] sometime within the last few decades on the condition that the only people permitted to earn employment there would be Bedouins from that particular tribe.

My mom: Ellen the excavator!

My dad: Leon the legendary!

This man on the right offered to make a trade with my dad: nine camels for me. It's a good thing my parents don't have that big of a backyard!

The worst part of the trip for me was to witness the abuse in Petra of camels, donkeys and horses. I had to hold myself back from crying while I watched as a camel nearly collapsed as it was lowering itself to let an overweight male passenger off of its hump and back onto the ground. I looked into this camel's eyes and never before have I seen such a look of desperation and sadness. It was truly depressing.

Then as we were exiting the site I saw some signs that helped me again find the light at the end of the tunnel.

It reads: "John should've thought about his size and the animal's welfare before taking a ride." Damn right he should have.

We got back from Petra to Eilat at about 7:00 p.m. Crossing the border back into Israel took a little bit longer than crossing into Jordan, since there was more security. I showed my parents where I live, they met my roommates and then we bid one another farewell.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention: our tourguide Nizar (pictured right) left a man in our tour group (pictured left) in Petra. He was not happy!

REWIND to New Year's:

In the U.S. we refer to the time period of Dec. 31 - Jan. 1 as New Years, since you are beginning a new year. In Ghana they refer to it as Pass Over, since you are passing over to a new year. In Israel, they refer to the same as Sylvester. The reason is one I didn't know until this week.

Since I feel the Internet can explain to you better than I can the reason for this title, I will copy and paste a passage a few paragraphs a website:

Silvester or Sylvester (also spelled szilveszter, sylvester or sylwester) is the day of the Feast of Pope Sylvester I, a saint who served as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 314 to 335 and oversaw both the First Council of Nicaea and Roman Emperor Constantine I’s conversion to Christianity. The feast day is held on the anniversary of Sylvester’s death, 31 December, a date that, since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, has coincided with New Year’s Eve.

As a result, many Europeans call New Year’s Eve “Sylvester.” When European Jews started to emigrate to the Land of Israel starting in the nineteenth century, the new year in their new country was, of course, Rosh Hashanah. But they still wanted to mark the changing of the secular year as in their old countries, so they continued to celebrate “Sylvester.”

Over time, the practice grew in popularity – especially after the aliyah in the 1990s from the former Soviet Union, where Christmas was banned and everyone celebrated Sylvester instead – to the extent that Sylvester parties are now held in many bars, clubs, restaurants, and peoples’ homes each year. As more and more Israelis consume American and European popular culture, they have also become more familiar with other holidays such as Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.

Though there's no ball that drops here in Israel, the new year is still celebrated, but I didn't feel it on as large a scale. At work we made special flower arrangements to decorate the big dining room in the hotel.

I resolve in 2015 to smile every day!

REWIND to Christmas and my voyage to Tel Aviv:

Even though I am Jewish, spending Christmas in Israel felt a little bit unnatural. I am so accustomed to the culture of Christmas that you can even say I missed it! There were still some little signs of Christmas peeking out of the curtains here, but no Christmas songs on the radio :(

The hotel handed out Christmas candy to all of the employees. Side note: a good chunk of the employees are Christian and not Israeli. Many are African refugees, or are from Russia, Ukraine or other countries.

This restaurant has Christmas decorations since it is not Kosher.

Look closely, a menorah lurks in the background!

On Christmas day I rode the bus from Eilat to Tel Aviv to spend some time with my parents. It was lovely. My dad and I toured the shuk and I was able to find a few vegan delicacies! I felt like I was in the Mecca for vegans.

Vegan cashew cheese burekah!

Vegan Krembo! 

Vegan sufganiyot!

Vegan shwarma! It was so tasty!

Vegan donuts!

The only thing I was missing was another vegan person to appreciate all of this greatness! 

Thanks dad for joining in even though I know you weren't as inspired by it all!

I should also mention it seemed like there there were animal rights activists on just about every corner. We saw people with dogs from a shelter trying to find them homes right on the streets. We saw three pamphleteering booths within half a mile of one another. We saw a fake cardboard garbage can filled with fake little chicks in order to show onlookers what is happening in factory farms.

It was my kind of scene.

One of the evenings my parents and I spent Shabbat dinner with some recently discovered Israeli cousins on my mom's side of the family. I had already met them but my parents had not. Dinner was delicious, and it was like the closing of the circle for my mom to meet these people.

I snuck a picture for you all!

After dinner, cousin Roy kidnapped me and took me as a hostage at a Christmas party in Jaffa. He said he didn't think I would have gone had he told me in advance! (He is probably right... eek... note to self: I've got to stop being so boring!)

Ho ho ho!

Never did I dream I would see so many Jews in Santa hats...

They contracted Santa to be the DJ!

 The next day my parents and I met MORE cousins. It always seems like we have an endless stream of cousins popping up all the time. The hosts live just north of Tel Aviv and prepared for us an incredible luncheon. I can't even begin to explain how amazing the tomatoes stuffed with rice were!

Here we are! 

These newfound cousins couldn't have been nicer. They welcomed us like we had been family and known each other for years, and extended offers to me to come and stay with them at their homes. What a warm feeling :)

This week begins a two-week vacation in my program. I'm not sure what adventures it will bring or to where I will be traveling but my hope is that I will have some great new material for this blog! Hasta la vista baby!