My Life in Haifa

Two months ago I moved from Eilat to Haifa. What an amazing two months it has been. It's needless to say that I can feel, in a big way, the upside of living in a lush green paradise over the dry, quiet desert that is Eilat. 

Prior to moving to Haifa I’d only ever visited the city one time, for a couple hours, and barely even got a taste for it. My logic behind choosing Haifa as my new home was this: I want to learn Hebrew as quickly as possible. I should enroll in Ulpan Etzion. The Ulpan Etzion in Haifa starts the soonest after my program in Eilat finishes… I’ll go there!

And so here I am.

I live with two “native” Israelis in a three bedroom apartment that stands atop 115 steps (yes, I counted…). We have an incredible view of the surrounding areas and our neighborhood for the most part is familial and quiet. If I walk one block over I have an amazing view of downtown Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Everyday I wake up and feel like I’m a character in an adventure. 

During the week (Sunday-Thursday) I attend Ulpan (modern Hebrew language class) for five hours in a class that is, for the majority, comprised of Russian speakers. Three days a week after Ulpan I babysit for the children of the cousins of my landlord. (A connection like this is common in Israel.) On the other two afternoons following Ulpan I usually go to the shuk (the produce market) or study. On the weekends I try to mix it up - going to bars with friends, exploring Haifa’s hiking trails or taking a day trip somewhere. 

Since Haifa has historically been a labor city and is a mixed-faith city the busses run on Shabbat/ Saturday. This makes inner Haifa more accessible for its residents than other cities in Israel.

The lush neighborhood where I live.

My two biggest trips outside of Haifa thus far have been a day trip to Akko, and a four-day-long hike to complete the Yam L’Yam trail. 

The old city of Akko was quite amazing to see. I almost felt like I was in the movie Aladdin where at the beginning you see the marketplace. We ate some spectacular hummus and I found some freshly pressed sugarcane juice. But the best part of Akko, for me, was something we couldn’t have planned.

As my friends, Brooke and Aimee, and I were walking through an alleyway Aimee stopped and peered through a small opening in a doorway of what looked like at one time may have been some kind of large gathering house. Within less than a moment, one of the residents, Eddie, a 60-something-year-old petite man with poor oral hygiene, invites us in to see the view. We took turns getting our picture taken with him and got a rooftop tour of the surrounding scenery.

More recently (this past weekend), with my friends Aimee and Leon, I hiked from the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Nahariya to the Kinneret at the town of Ginosar. This hike is about 80 kilometers (~50 miles). (For us it ended up being about 5-10 kilometers more since we took a few detours.) The hike is called Yam L’Yam, which in English translates to “Sea to Sea,” a name very fitting for journey. 

We spent three nights in tents, coexisting with all the sounds of crickets, cows and coyotes. I can’t even begin to explain the calm serenity of living outside. That is, until the last day of the hike when the sun was beating down on us like a sledgehammer and it was near impossible to find shade. 

We also encountered a decent handful of Israelis (and one German tourist) who didn’t hesitate to offer us lodging or rides, just out of the goodness of their hearts. There is certainly something to be said for this- you decide what that something is!

The nature of the hike was a first for me as I’ve never backpacked to anywhere. It was a real test of both my patience and my endurance. I’m proud to say that I passed my self test and I’m ready potentially for another: the Israel Trail! The Israel Trail takes about two months to complete and takes you from the lowest latitudinal point of Israel to the highest. It’s safe to say on this trip I definitely got bit with the hiking bug…

Moving on… my friends in Haifa are more than I could have asked for. Prior to moving here I did not know a single person. And now, two months later, I feel like I’m a part of a tight knit little community. The majority of my friends in Haifa are U.S. citizens but I also have many other friends from England, South Africa, France, Australia, Uruguay, Canada, Chile, Ukraine, Russia and of course Israel. 

It’s difficult to ever feel like you are alone when there are so many other young folks without nearby family in the same boat. We look after each other. We are one unit. You never have to worry about receiving an invitation anywhere, you can always assume you are welcome anywhere. 

I feel so thankful to get to live here in Haifa and to be able to experience what feels like the ride of a lifetime. The only thing I could wish for is for mango season to start ;-)

Sorry for the lack of pictures- my phone/ camera was consumed by nature on the hike and I didn't feel comfortable stealing friends' pictures from Facebook. Until next time… see ya later!

Hello from the Bahaii Gardens! A short walk from my apartment.

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!