Heat & Salt

First off, side note:  For anyone not familiar with this website's system, all my posts will continue to be accessible even as I update with new posts.  There should be a little navigational menu on the right side that sorts them by date.  Even though I am blogging about events that took place a few weeks ago, it will sort them by when I posted them, in order.  Any trouble, just lemme know!

I am rapidly finding that the main hold up in creating new blog posts is sorting through these PILES of pictures so that I can share some of them with you.  I think I will have to switch strategies, and rather than go through sequentially ( but I likeeeeee to do things sequentiallllyyy :( !!!!! ) I will pick out a few to work on and then post to give you guys the general idea, and as I finish entire albums I will post them to my Picasa website and direct you there for the full effect.

I will not have much of a chance to update the blog this weekend, so I'll get this one in now to keep the ball rolling and hopefully get you guys caught up soon!  Too much to tell, too little time.

Ok so resuming from where I left off...

Scene: Stephen is asleep in Tel Aviv.  The alarm goes off.

Stephen: UUgghhnoooowhatttt

We didn't go to bed early, but we did get up early, and after all my flying, I was definitely tired in the morning.  If there is any confusion, I am now talking about October 3rd.  I will henceforth refer to any dates in MY local time for my own convenience.  Sowwy.  Why'd we get up early?  Because today we are headed to Ein Gedi!!!!! Woooo yay!  Everyone is familiar with Ein Gedi right?  I thought so.

I'll explain anyway.  Ein Gedi (that's my new thing now, making hyperlinks in my blog... click it!!!!!) is a nature reserve in Southern Israel, I think it might be in the outskirts of the Negev desert, although I am not sure if it is technically in the Negev.  It is desert there either way.  Except Ein Gedi that is.  Well it's still pretty desert-y.  Cool though.  At this point I didn't know much about Ein Gedi other than it provides access to the Dead Sea and Masada, and that when I watched the 6 hour TV Movie, appropriately titled "Masada", the main character threatened to burn it.  

That was enough for me though, I was interested in going at Mike's recommendation, so we got up early, got on a bus, and left Tel Aviv.

Actually, that makes it sound very simple.  I should point out here once again that Mike's aunt was very nice and let us leave luggage in her apartment, including my 2 largo suitcases.  So, I was travelling with my hiking pack, daypack w/ camera, and laptop bag.  Gotta have my compy.  So why was it not simple?  Because apparently Sunday October 3rd is a day when tons of people get on the bus in Tel Aviv.  75% soldiers.  I didn't know if I should be reassured by all the soldiers or uneasy, but it is a little odd to see whole packs of people 2 years younger than you, some just sprouting some little chin hairs, all running around carrying M16's slung over their shoulders.  Israel...

So it was very crowded, and there was only one bus that we could take to Ein Gedi in the whole morning, so we were out there at 8 or 9 am, whatever it was, bumping through all these soldiers (some civillians too...) trying to get on this bus with all our bags.  We were misled into thinking we could buy the tickets upon stepping into the bus.  The driver just said, "No".  We started to panic since we had to get on this bus.  Mike ran to go buy the tickets.  The bus filled up.  

Shock.  Horror.  But what's that?  They were actually running 2 busses at the same time.  Phew.  So we threw all our stuff in the cargo hold under the bus (except my precious compy :)... that rides with me... and camera), and firmly planted ourselves in some seats.  Off to Ein Gedi!

It is definitely a bit of a bus ride; you have to go more or less horizontally across the country and then a ways down.  I think... *checks map*.  Well either way, Israel isn't that big so it's not that much of a to-do, and I was perfectly happy to soak in some of the foreign countryside.  We made one stop along the way at a refreshment / rest stop type thing so that we could buy things and they could get our money.  We were going to buy some fresh sandwiches until we saw the flies landing on the ingredients, and opted for some brekas in a sealed glass container.  Those are very yummy though... think fried pastry type thing with potato filling, or cheese if you want.  I'm not sure I have the spelling right though...

There were flies everywhere actually, it got kind of gross and some followed us back on the bus.  But, there was a camel tied up out front which I personally enjoyed very much, so I'd call it a net win if you factor in the breka.

As we began to reach the Dead Sea, Mike and I were really enjoying the views, but our sunshade was down on the bus window and we tried to negotiate with the people behind us to put it up so we could better enjoy said views of the newly visible Dead Sea and Judean Desert.  The only words I caught from the flustered lady who started arguing with us were Shemesh!... Shemesh!  Or sun in English.  Israeli people can be very animated, and at times do not have qualms about arguing with you.  In Hebrew.  While you are clearly speaking English.  I bet she knew English.  We had to wait a little but we got to move the shade up a click later when the sun moved to the other side.

Enough of the bus ride, eventually we got to our destination, the Ein Gedi Field School (see I did it again).  It is a maintained little nature thingamajigger with hostel rooms.  Pretty cool.  The bus drove us up the hill and we went inside.

"Inside" (it was all pretty open) we met Mean Lady who worked at the desk.  Mean Lady gave us a hard time in general and always seemed to look disapprovingly at us.  She didn't seem to want to help us much and enjoyed referring us to other people for various questions.  She also made things like paying and checking in seem like big tasks.  We did not care much for Mean Lady.  I think she could tell we were American too.  But howwwww.  Lucky guess probably.

I don't think our status with Mean Lady was helped by things like running around chasing Ibex to get a picture of them right outside the office.  We couldn't help it!  They are too cute.  Not our fault.  And they are EVERYWHERE.  Exhibit A:

Awww the babyyy.

A pretty common / standard way that words are made plural in Hebrew is to add an ending of "eem".  Needless to say I affectionately starting calling these little cuties Ibexeem.  

So we checked into our room and decided to make something of the second half of our day.  We geared up and decided to go on a nearby hike.  We walk outside and...  oh my gosh.  Was it this hot when we went inside??  As we panted down the hill (which we didn't realize the full magnitude of since the bus had taken us up it originally) to go down to the main road where we could get to the hike, we commented on how we didn't realize how big the Dead Sea was... I thought I would at least be able to see the other side.  Did I mention it was hot.

Before we went on our hike, we stopped at the ancient synagogue ruins that are in Ein Gedi.  I think it is something like the oldest synagogue ruins in Israel maybe?  I am not sure I will have to check that out, but I think it might date back to something like 3000 BCE.  OOOOllllddddd.

I personally enjoyed the "Honored Seat".  Doesn't even look that comfy.  So we left the synagogue, went back along the "Scenic Route" that we came on (you'll have to see the album when it goes up for the Scenic Route... get pumped) and went over to do a little hike up a sort of crack in the side of one of these desert mountains that had a stream running down it with lots of greens growing in it (pretty cool since there are no greens as a general rule of thumb in this desert).

We stopped for some food at a stand at the bottom and quickly learned that Ein Gedi food is very touristy... aka pretty bad and way overpriced.  Oh well.  The hike was about 30 minutes and nothing stressful, in fact it seemed pretty popular.  We saw all likes of Ibexeem and homo sapiens along the way. Pictures tell 1000 words (per picture).

A waterfall!  In the desert!  Ein Gedi is cool.  Plus, notice my nice olive, Mediterranean skin.  So tan.  No but really I almost blinded myself editing that picture, my skin has highly reflective properties.  Squint at the picture.  It helps protect your eyes.

After the hike we were hot and sweaty.  What is right across that main road I was talking about?  The Dead Sea!!

Ok quick preface though.  As I am sure most of you know, things in the Dead Sea are supposed to float. It is very salty and everything in it is dead.  Hence the name.  Enter Stephen.  I can't remember the last time I floated.  I can't float for my life.  I can fill my lungs with air and I still sink to the bottom.  Swim lessons were tough.  I set the bar really low on this one, I hate disappointment and Mike was laughing at me saying he wasn't sure if I'd float.

The buildup...
Cue dramatic music.
The entrance.  (I'm walking in near the middle of the picture)

By the way.  Look how hot it is.  As in you can literally see it.  Look for the horizon in that picture.  Nigh impossible to see.  I guess heat + water = haze.  (By the way, at some point, I believe walking back over to the Dead Sea, Mike and I realized that we could see across the Dead Sea after all.  In fact there were large mountains on the other side, and it wasn't actually very wide at all.  The haze had just been so thick we couldn't see.  Ick.)

Anyway... the finale *drumroll*... I floated!!!

Hahahaha I thought it was hilarious.  Every time I walked in and my feet just started to pop up I couldn't help but giggle.  I literally was sitting on top of the water.  I'm still laughing, I'm laughing right now.  I couldn't NOT float.  Hehehehe.

Mike floated too.

After a little while you get all slimy and stingy from the salt so you have to get out and try to wash it off to no avail.  We didn't do the mud things where you smear it over your body because that was way up the beach and we wanted to go home anyway.  Plus we would have missed this sunset...

And you would not want to miss this sunset...

Like seriously you don't even know how good this sunset is going to be... sorry, I'm being a jerk, but seriously it was good, you couldn't take a bad picture of this thing.

Agree or disagree?

Mike and I decided to hike Masada the next day.  Masada is a flattop mountain about 15-20 minutes down the road from Ein Gedi where the Jews had their ancient stronghold back in the day.  When the Romans attacked and destroyed the Second Temple of Jerusalem, the zealots ran to Masada and harassed the Romans from there.  For 3 years!  This bad boy was impregnable, in fact I think the only reason the Romans got in was because they used Jewish slave labor and the Jews didn't want to just massacre their friendsies.  Romans built a huggge ramp and walked up.  (Jews committed suicide in advance to show the Romans up, but thats getting into too much morbid detail... interesting though!  Interested in more?)  Now the mountain is a big deal in Israeli folklore, and soldiers get sworn in up there, promising never to let Masada fall again.

Apparently the trendy thing to do is hike up at 4am and catch the sunrise (not to mention beat the heat).  We were supposed to meet the cab at 4:15 am, but accidentally woke up at 4:15.  We got ready quickly and ran over, luckily he waited.  We split the cab with two people we met in our hostel room who went to George Washington and Syracuse, the kid from GW played frisbee haha.

Not wanting to miss the sunrise Mike and I basically ran up Masada in 30 minutes, and ended up with plenty of time to spare.  The sunrise was very cool and we had a great time on the mountain looking at the amazing ruins of the old fortress, which included a palace sloping off the side of the mountain.  Check out the album for all the pictures of Ein Gedi and Masada when I post it... lots of cool stuff... Roman camps, swimming pools, everything!  My camera lens got dirty so a lot of these pictures are hazier than they should have been trying to photograph the sunrise and whatnot, but it is mostly just due to the hot weather and I was able to get rid of most of the dirtiness by playing on my computer I think.  If you think they look fine forget that, but reserve judgment for the full album.

An HDR here, (thanks for the software Anna!)

So, wrapping up, we spent a long time up there, and eventually came down at like 10am (its amazing what you can accomplish before 10 when you wake up at 4), and decided we had pretty much done Ein Gedi.  There was a kibbutz with a garden and actual good food to check out, but we decided we were ready to move on, and we went to talk to Mean Lady about checking out a night early.

We were nervoussss.  It didn't help that we had been aggravating Mean Lady by doing things like buzzing up to have the gate unlocked when it was already unlocked.  Oops.  Walking up that hill gets really tiring, it wasn't our finest moment, it looked like it was locked.  We approach Mean Lady about getting a refund for the night we wouldn't be staying and... she says... "ok?"... what.  She said ok?  With a refund?  I think she even smiled... maybe.  Perhaps Mean Lady has a heart after all.  It is like the scene in the Grinch.  Her heart grew something like 12 sizes that day.  How nice.

So we gathered up our stuff, even got a meal at the local eatery which had food from the Kibbutz, and got on another bus and do some more traveling before we had to actually go back to school (yuck).  

Our destination this time?  Jerusalem.

Arriving in Israel

Hi all!  Sorry for the delay in getting this up and running.  I didn't have much internet access during my first week of travel, and I have been doing various school related things since I arrived at the university.  I've got a little spare time on my hands at the moment though so I figured I'd give it a go.

I am thinking it will be most interesting for me to go back to my arrival and backlog what I've done since then, rather than just jumping into the present.  I'd love feedback on this though, since the first few posts won't be current as a result.

Anyway, for now I think I'll start with Logan Airport since that's where I pretty much stopped with any extensive contact.

So I left Mom and Dad at the security gate after the waitress nicely gave me a pass to use the first class line or whatever that was, and the terminal was just on the other side of the gate.  After changing some money to get some New Israeli Shekels (aka shekels aka sheks... only heard that one a couple times though) I was waiting for my plane, decidedly unexcited to be getting back on a plane after my trip home from Auckland.  I was also a little tense from not being used to flying alone, nevermind alone internationally.  You'd think the trip to New Zealand would have helped, but I had met Steven and Nicole on my way to NZ through LAX, and the way back was just a domestic connection.  I couldn't help but worry I was about to get on the wrong plane or something.  It probably didn't help that in trying to make the aforementioned domestic connection, I actually forgot I was flying JetBlue and tried to check in at the Virgin America counter again, only to end up pretty confused for a couple minutes about why there was no longer a plane flying at 1:00.  The JetBlue desk was 4 terminals away too.  That stunk.  Back in Logan, it wasn't helping that seemingly 2/3 of the updates were in French, and the rest were in very Frenchy sounding English.  Yes I took something like 7 years of French, but unfortunately I still only speak un peu francais (eh? eh? not bad huh?).

At any rate I got on the correct plane and everything was on schedule.  Before the plane even left the older woman next to me asked in very broken English if I could switch with her daughter who was 15 rows up the plane, because she was not very well and her daughter helps take care of her, yada yada yada I think she just wanted my aisle seat (her daughter had a middle seat).  As if a middle seat wasn't bad enough by itself, I couldn't help but think of the hours Mom and I spent laboring over the computer trying to get these tickets, as all the strategic seat picking was about to get flushed away before the plane even started rolling.

So yes, I switched.  I figured, "I'm heading to Israel, why not get the trip started off on the right foot by getting a little mitzvah in on the way over."  I left my hiking pack jammed into the overhead bin (good thing nobody ever checked that I had avoided weighing that thing) and moved up.  Otherwise the flight was pretty uneventful. I slept.  I ate.  I watched The Kids Are Alright, which I thought was going to be more of a comedy but it was actually pretty heavy.  Still good though.  The food was good, although I have to say I prefer Air New Zealand to Air France based on my limited experience on both.  I had more room on the former (even before I moved into an open 2 seats on the way home), there were more movies to choose from, and I thought the people were nicer.  New Zealand in general is definitely known for nice people, whereas France...

I didn't get to see any of Paris or anything fun like that; I made a beeline for my terminal and made it with a comfortable 3 hours to spare.  I think I arrived at 6am local time, and my internal clock had essentially been rendered useless by this point after my stop in Boston coming home from my visit to Anna.  If you've ever wondered what an airport terminal in Charles De Gaulle looks like at 6am, you're in luck!!

If you've ever wondered what I look like at 6am in Charles De Gaulle, you're in luck again!  Sorry this one is out of focus, but I think I might start saying I did that on purpose and claim artistic license as I feel it reflects my state of mind at the time.

You can see I'm not too happy.  And lastly, if you have ever wondered what Israeli shekels look like... you guessed it!

I was definitely bored (see above) and to make matters worse there was something up with the internet and I couldn't buy the time pass, only the flat-rate all-access membership for all the WiFi hotspots in France or something crazy like that, which would cost a few hundred bucks.  I pre-wrote a bunch of emails and banged out most of my internet browsing in the ten minute free period that was offered.  (I did the offer again on my iPod... hehe.)  A bottle of water, a chocolate croissant, a little playing on the PlayStation 3 demo booth, and I was back on yet another plane, this one to Tel Aviv.

This was when I started to get the "I can't believe I'm actually flying to Israel right now" feeling.  Seeing people arrive for the flight and hearing Hebrew everywhere, I had a much greater, more intense sense that I was flying somewhere foreign than I did in my previous trips to Europe.  Or New Zealand.  Although the Kiwis I saw and was listening to on the plane definitely provided an interesting experience too.

Anyway, another smooth, uneventful flight, this one relatively short by my standards at this point.  And finalllyyyyyyy I land in Israel!!!! Yayy

As may be expected, landing in Israel is a bit of an experience, but I actually didn't find it to be too much trouble.  Maybe it was the time or something.  It was Shabbat now that I recall, so I'm sure that helped.  The passport checking was crowded, but nothing outrageous.  I definitely think the student visa helped me get through fairly easily.  (Cameraphone pictures sorry... not too bad though.)

Shabbat actually is a very interesting and unique aspect of Israel.  From Friday evening to Saturday evening many things shut down, some places more than others, but pretty much across the board busses stop, or mostly stop during Shabbat.  This meant I had to take a taxi in from Ben Gurion Airport to Tel Aviv.  (Cameraphone again...)

I guess the plus side of this is getting taken straight to the house and no chance of missing a stop or anything.  The downside is instead of a handful of shekels for a bus, I had to pay 180 :(, or roughly estimating in my head, something around $50, which is definitely a lot for a cab here, but what can you do.  I wouldn't be surprised if I got the tourist special deal on that one either... Mike's aunt thought it would have been more like 150 but I wasn't going to raise any trouble at this point.

So to wrap things up, I met up with Mike (my friend from college who is doing the same study abroad program, and had been in Israel for about a month prior to this point, working on a farm for a few weeks, then doing a week or so of traveling by the time I arrived) who was at his aunt's house, and it was nice to see a familiar face after all my traveling and a summer that was getting pretty long for me by the end (I feel that I should mention that yes I did just visit Anna, I don't want an angry email saying that I had just seen a familiar face...).  His aunt was very nice and she let us stay the night there and even leave some bags as while we traveled for the next few days.  This was amazing because I would have had to do something with almost 100 pounds of luggage otherwise.  Mike was surprised I wasn't more tired, but I was able to hold my own with the sleep I got on the plane, and we walked around Tel Aviv for a couple hours in the afternoon before dinner, which was nice because I got to acclimate a little and get my legs moving again.  Plus I got my first falafel here yayyyy!

Sometimes things here randomly remind you that you are in a Jewish country.  For instance, I was very surprised when the sun set around 5:30.  Turns out it is because they did their daylight savings earlier than Europe so that the sun would set earlier on Yom Kippur, which then makes the day of fasting easier for anyone observing the holiday.  Crazy!  They need to suck it up like us American Jews. Apparently the reception for this has been pretty negative, surprise surprise, and it might get changed to later for next year.  I guess one plus side was we got to see the Tel Aviv beach at night, although in these pictures it is pretty dark and its hard to see the beach itself... look for the waves on the left side of the first one.

Wanting to beat my jet lag before it became a problem, I decided to stay awake, and Mike and I ended up meeting up with one of his sister's friends who she had met when she did her trip to Israel.  We met him at 10:30 or so, and he took us around and showed us some of the different neighborhoods of the city, and some of the trendy nightlife / bar type areas.  We stopped in one such establishment named... Lenny's, haha.

We didn't stay out too late, by Israeli standards at least (the area was really starting to fill up around the time we were leaving, I don't know how they do it).  We went back and I got some much needed sleep, especially considering that we had decided to get up on the earlyish side the next day to begin our traveling, thus concluding my arrival into Israel.  I will pick up the next post with my travels with Mike, but if it takes a few days to go up, remember that I have homework now.  Consider it a nice time to reflect on post #1 and build suspense for #2.

Ok well please let me know what you think, I'll try to get the blog up to the present relatively quickly, but it will take a little time.  I'm gonna keep playing with the look of the page and everything too so give me a day or so to work out some of the kinks with that.  I'm glad I can finally talk to everyone and tell you what's going on, hope you like it!  If you are so inclined, I think you can comment on posts and such within the blog itself, which might be a little easier than getting a whole bunch of emails (I think I'm flattering myself here...), but whatever works for you is totally fine.  Enjoy!