Past Few Weeks

I've clearly slacked off in my blogging....one of the couple 'oopsies' I've experienced in the past few weeks.

I moved from the beginner Ulpan (Hebrew lesson) class to the intermediate - although I never should have been in the beginner one, I was just too scared to speak. Intermediate is with all the kids who are here on the 10 month program (so they were beginners when they arrived in September), and have mostly lost steam or don't care about learning anymore. So, again, I should probably move classes but I doubt I will. The advanced guys just know so much more vocabulary than I do and can string together sentences of more than 6 words...

Volunteering's been fun - I went to the senior center for the first time a couple weeks ago. I think it's basically an Alzheimer's daycare, so they speak no English and have no interest in learning. So it's a wonderful place to practice Hebrew! And, though they're at extremely varying levels in terms of the disease, some of them are very cute and want to talk or color or just hold hands and walk around. I'll get some pictures next week.

I also started at a new school in town, Sharet. It's an elementary school but it's muchmuch more organized and structured than some of the schools I went to at the beginning where I felt like a zoo tamer just screaming at kids all day. And I get to work with the teacher who teaches the 1st-3rd graders....I love the babies.

We also started going to a Yishuv last week where we thought we'd be helping pick vegetables, but it turns out we just weeded around the cucumbers and tomatoes for an hour and a half. But it was an enormous greenhouse (1 of 3), and they gave us t-shirts and refreshments and a tour around the gardens with their little animals and a new bar they just opened at their place.

And then, for the holidays and vacations:

Holocaust day was 4/19, we went to the religious elementary school and listened as the kids sang songs then stood with them while the sirens sounded and the entire country was silent for 2 minutes. Everyone's supposed to wear white, and that little guy photobombed our picture.

The next Tuesday night til Wednesday night (4/24-25) was Memorial Day (to remember soldiers and people harmed in acts of terror). They took us to Latrun, a place just outside of Jerusalem where they've got a lot of old army tanks, a memorial wall of soldiers names, a beautiful lookout, and an enormous amphitheater.

Then on Wednesday, one of my roommates and I decided to go hiking in Jerusalem and be there for when the sirens went off. But, at our first stop we ran into another MASA group, the Honors program kids from Hebrew University, and their tour guide invited us to join them on their day, so we did. We were at Kiriyat Anavim for when the sirens sounded, then went to Mount Hertzel and some other lookout point where there were more tanks, and a wonderful lookout over Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. At the graveyards they hand out thousands of flowers to put on the graves, it's spectacular.

Then that night, I went back to Ramla to shower and get to Tel Aviv for the beginning of Independence Day, which means tons of celebrations, concerts, fireworks, bbq's...a day of joy.

And, finally, yesterday we went to Carmel for the day - started off at Caesarea, then to Ramat Hanadiv Gardens, and then a short hike amid the Carmel mountains.

Pesach Break (and Eilat which I forgot to mention)

Forgot to mention! Oranim took us on a long weekend trip to Eilat and the Negev the last weekend of March. I LOVE hiking in the Negev, when you get to the top of a mountain and look in every direction, it's as if you're looking at a postcard. It just looks fake - the endless hills of desert in different colors? Come visit, I'll take you there.

Vantage point from David & Paula Ben Gurion's graves

During the Red Canyon hike (on the first day we hiked at the Big Machtesh, and don't ask me what that means)

We had time to wander around Eilat, go out to the bars/clubs, hang out on the beach, they had a Kabbalat Shabbat for us on Friday and a boat/booze cruise on Saturday. Suffice it to say, it was nice.

The following Wednesday we hosted a Ramla Seder for everyone in the program who was in town (23 I think) at our house. So the majority of the cooking was left to the able bodies in our house - which was mostly me and one of the other guys. But it was fuuun, we skewered 10+ pounds of chicken, made matzah ball soup, grilled veggies, lalala.

Skewering.

Some of the seder-ites.

And we made desserts.

Alright, then I went to Allan & co. for Seder at Gail's house which was so much fun! And I learned a lot. Did you know the Israelites didn't just eat matza when they were leaving Egypt, but all year round because they could leave it to harden or not wait for it to rise or something like that while they were slaving? Yeah.

Also went to Herzeliya beach (AMAZING, beautiful, fancy) then to Tel Aviv and hung out for a while and tried to go to the Museum of Art but they closed 10 minutes after I arrived (I went yesterday instead), but I saw the Hunger Games! Read them, then go see it.

Art Museum's on the right, it's a really artsy looking building...

Finally, then went to the Kinneret to go camping and hiking and swimming etc. for a few days. We went on a hike in the Yehuda, so it's big mountains that you basically climb straight down then hike along the inside path along a river, which's fully equipped with gorgeous waterfalls. However there are also falling stones from many sides. So, here's a little story from the hike: we stop at the big swimming area that's at the bottom of a big waterfall, where a lot of people are hanging out and breaking/swimming from hiking. We decide to have lunch and then go swimming, however one of the park rangers comes over and tells us that they're closing off the area for the time being, too many rocks are falling from one side of the mountain. We complain that we wanted to have a swim, and he says, "Well, you'll have to swim in the next 'pool.'" When what he meant was 'You'll HAVE to swim in the next one' because about a hundred meters further on when we got to the next area, there's a waterfall/cliff with a deep lake at the bottom and the only way to pass through to the other side and continue the hike is to jump in and swim across!!! My shoes are no longer white booooo.

You can see the jump all the way behind us...

From the top of the hike

The New House - #3 HaRakefet

I took a video that I wanted to upload walking through the rooms, but I couldn't make it upload. So here are the photos:

View from the street:

Backyard - we got a grill and Nargila, and that room is...for some reason an extra, unattached room:

Straight from the front door. The downstairs is a big open space with 2 tables (one I turned into a ping pong table, THANK YOU FOREVER M!), a big kitchen, and a big couch area (to the left):

Couches...

Front door and ping pong:

Big kitchen:

There's 4 bedrooms, 3 upstairs (2 girls in each of two of them, 1 single), and then a 4th bedroom on the split-level area between upstairs and downstairs. That last one's the biggest with basically all the closet space in the house and it's own bathroom, so the boys got it...and this is my room

Girl's bathroom - complete with no shower curtain, so you see everything you're doing as you shower:

Upstairs balcony - the window from this leads into my bedroom:

And that's it! (There's also a bathroom and laundry room on the main level)

Past couple weeks

I haven't posted in too long...so this will be a synopsis of the past couple weeks.

From the 11-15 we were in Ramla, doing regular volunteering and the likes...tried out a couple new places, the more religious school in the area Bar Ilan (it's kind of boring though, I don't really want to go back) and Moadonit which is an after school center for elementary school kids in need of care but can't afford other options. It's a small building with a little outside area, but they make use of the space available and we play soccer, or climb trees, or whatever the kids want and also some English work at some point. Alright, other than that it was a standard week.

Then last Friday (3/16) 7 of the 9 kids who started the program at the same time as I did moved into a HOUSE on the edge of the city and it's ENORMOUS and awesome, but kind of far away from grocery stores and the bus station...I'm going to take a video very soon (maybe today) and will post that as well.

Alright, so last week MASA (who gives us scholarships for being here, meaning the cover the program cost) had a Building Future Leaders conference in Jerusalem for the week and 400 MASA participants attended along with many staff members who were past MASA participants. And then, in this one week conference, they packed in about 6 months worth of activities. Day 1, President Shimon Peres came and spoke to us (he wakes up at 4am everyday, just FYI) along with Bibi Netanyahu (but Bibi didn't speak).And from there we went directly to this fancy hotel for an Evening Gala complete with hors d'ouevres, a 4 course meal, speeches, and a concert. Day 2 the entire group went to Neot Kdumim which's a huge outdoor park with a lot of different activity sites and we all got to do 3 in our groups. They're all designed to teach us lessons and as group bonding time. The first activity I volunteered to be the one to leave the group for 5 minutes and when I came back I had to get the other 20 people to stand on chairs and clap and holler. Except I didn't know the secret password...and on and on. We also built massive sand castles and herded sheep (which was amazing).

The next 2 days were packed with speakers and demonstrations, mostly online stuff since I chose the Networking track as my desired 'specialty' at the conference. We were introduced to a bunch of websites, heard from a lot of entrepreneurs, and did some hands on (though I don't know how they were relevant) activities.

Here's a lipdub that some of the kids participated in: http://vimeo.com/39054231

At some point there was an American stand up comedian and a performance from SHI360 (who apparently people have heard of).

Anyway, I got back from Jerusalem Thursday night and went to Allan for a lovely weekend Friday. Am now back in Ramla!

Chag Purim week!

They definitely know how to celebrate here...the key is starting on Wednesday and not stopping. And a load of alcohol.

Sunday and Monday were standard volunteer days, Tuesday was the parades and parties at the schools (which unfortunately we were late for and arrived just as the kiddies were pouring out of school - still one of the highlights was a kid who dressed up as 'dinner' and was wearing an enormous box with plates, cutlery, bread, etc glued to the top). Here's me and some of the girls I work with at the Arab Center, which I love:

Wednesday we had an extra long Ulpan session then 3 hours of enrichment in the afternoon - Rabbi Eli, who also talked to my group during Birthright, came to talk to us about Purim and told us about all the festivities going on in Jerusalem for the weekend and told everyone to come and hang out. He lives in the Old City about a 10 minute walk from the Kotel and introduced us to the Heritage House which is maybe 5 minutes away from his house, a hostel where Jewish travelers can come and stay for free. So I went Friday night, and they fed us and gave us drinks basically from when we got there until we left. There was supposed to be another meal on Saturday at 6, but we left instead of going to it because I literally couldn't sit down for more food.

Thursday my program took my group as well as the Ashdod volunteer group on a walking tour around Jaffa and then to the Palmach museum (kind of an interactive walk through with scenery and videos about the beginning of the Palmach and how they were able to survive with such few provisions and negligible training time). We also went to supposedly one of the best hummus places in Israel, but when we got there they told us all their most popular dish was this hummus with egg dish, so we all got it and it was grossssss. Highlights from Jaffa:

Jerusalem and Purim (which I couldn't stop calling Halloween) pictures:

Ramla Week 3

Been so busy (which is great) and so drenched in rain (which is horrible....you'd think after Blacksburg I'd be used to ridiculous weather).

Sunday I had Ulpan in the morning then went to visit a community center on the other side of town (in the Arab area) where I think I'm going to be going a couple days a week after school to teach English or just hang out and play games with middle school to high school age girls who are typically only allowed to leave the house for school, but have gotten permission to attend this workshop hosted in their new community center.

Went to Tel Aviv Monday and ended up at the Dizengoff Center which is a very unique looking mall, that happened to have a Michal Negrin, which happened to have a promotion running....

Then back to Ramla to sit in on other kids volunteering at the 'Underground' (to get a sense of how things run and what kinds of lessons we'll need to plan) which is a program for adults ages 18-30 ish who want to learn English at night.

Tuesday was back to Ulpan for our last full day of Hebrew lessons (now we'll have lessons twice a week, maneuvering the schedule around our volunteer times) and then we were invited to go to Hertzelia to be extras in a movie called Youth. I know nothing about the movie or if I was even in it, but we were at a movie theater  for about 5 hours as they filmed scenes where normal people were either sitting in the theater pretending to watch movies, walking around, buying popcorn, etc etc. I spilled a huge thing of popcorn, and after that pretty much watched the last couple hours from the sidelines. They had a couple soldiers join us, though, so it was cool to talk to them and learn what they're up to and how they get involved in different, random community activities.

Wednesday and Thursday I had my first official days of volunteering finally! The differences between schools here and those at home are startling. Everything here is informal, slightly (being generous here) disorganized, and a VERY loud. The kids scream, the teachers scream, they all slam doors, stand on chairs/desks, just basically do whatever they want. I worked mainly with 4th-6th graders this week...4th grade was nice (and they think I'm super exotic...) but the 6th graders, especially the boys, are impossible. Most of the time we'd get to a class then the teacher would send me outside with 2-4 kids to work with, and their levels of English could range from fluent to 0. And their level of participation ranged from fully participating to screaming expletives and throwing stuff at windows. I really need to improve my Hebrew...

Ok, here are some of the most boring pictures: my apartment:

Bedroom

Other half of bedroom

Table

Living area

Kitchen

Golan again...it wouldn't let me put any more pictures

Kibbutz Hokuk

View from our Kibbutz. That's the Sea of Galilee

So pretty

You can kind of see the snow mountain tops!

Mostly Golan Heights

For the past 2 weeks we've had Hebrew lessons in the morning and then pretty free afternoons to roam the area (though there's not much to see in Ramla...) and 'study' or just hang out. So I've mainly been hanging out with the other kids on the program, making dinner, strolling the market, and anything else we can think of.

Last Monday, I went to Jaffa for the day which is GORGEOUS. But it's still kind of chilly here so the only other people around were American tour groups. There's an old church in the middle of Jaffa and they were in the middle of services as we walked by, so I actually went and sat in for a little bit. It was crazy to hear them singing and praying in Hebrew in a church - all these hymns that I didn't recognize, but it sounded like it could have been things we did in shul.

This is a 'hanging tree' in Jaffa...it's suspended by ropes and kind of bounces around if you push it (which it asks you not to do, so I didn't). But there's no explanation why it's there, and even though I stood behind a tour guide and tried to gleam the significance or just an explanation, all he said was "I'll let you all take photographs now."

One of the many old alleys leading around Jaffa. I have to go back when it's warmer out, there's supposed to be a lot more going on.

On Wednesday morning we met at the bus stop at 6am to go to the Golan for 2 days. I think it's the most stunning place I've ever been, you need google it if you haven't been because my pictures capture nothing. It was snowing on Mt. Hermon yet in the valley below it's lush and green and flowers are blooming, cows are roaming, it's crazy. We went to a couple different 'observation points' the first day (Gadot observation point and Mount Ben Tal view; the bus would basically drive us up incredibly windy, narrow roads then we'd get out and walk a couple hundred yards to a lookout) where you can see the divide between Israel, Lebanon and Syria and there are helicopters constantly flying above you and the military roads between the countries below. We also went on an AMAZING hike the first day: from the bus we descended into a mountain pass and got to climb through streams (I didn't fall in) and jump over rocks, it was so cool. Then you go back up the mountain and end up in a cave on top of a waterfall! We relaxed for a while, then went back down to the bottom of the waterfall just cause we could. And I don't know the name of the hike because I forget and I also write nothing down, but I asked our leader so hopefully she'll get back to me before I post this and look like a fool:

At Gadot observation point.

Some of the growth on our fabulous hike.

Getting lost.

The cave I was telling you about!

We spent the night at Kibbutz Hakuk where thy fed us and made a roaring bon fire then left us to our own devices. Day 2: another observation point then Cemetery of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi where our guide told us a story about a guy named Trumpledore - but all I could think about the whole time was whether or not he was related to Dumbledore. After that we went to the Hamat Gader hot springs which looked really cool, but in truth they're slimy so I hung out:

Hot springs - I don't regret it. They got out and had to drive 3 hours home on a bus slimy and smelling like sulfur.

Mount Ben Tal viewpoint post - showing you the way to all different places.

I went to Allan and co. for Friday night and then visited with Felicia and Lenny and family on Saturday and they are all wonderful! The first thing Lenny did when I walked in was usher me to his room to show me a picture of my mom at his wedding (she was about 5 and ADORABLE!!!) and kept telling me I look just like her. Can't wait to see them all again!