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 :)