Ramah Seminar Pictures Thus Far

First 2 Weeks of Seminar

Ok so as most of you reading this know (that means my parents, because I don't think many other people actually read this) I don't really have internet access while I work as a counselor on Ramah Seminar. I'm on my first day off in 2 weeks, and it has been MUCH needed! I get about 5 hours of sleep a night and each of my days is about 18 hours long consisting of 3-4 stops each day of hiking and walking around. I hike/walk about 6 km every day. My experience with the kids has been both a positive and negative one: there are some amazing kids out there that impress me tremendously, but unfortunately there are several kids that make me disgusted to be related to them as human beings. I want to ship them off to boot camp until they learn respect and the values of being a good person.

Anyways, let me try and give you a quick summary of what I've been doing...

My first week of Seminar started in the north of Israel, based in an orthodox youth village called Hodayot. The theme of the travels in the north was Borders and Beginnings, where we showed the kids the borders with several countries and showed them different kinds of people living in and around Israel. We traveled all around the Golan Heights and the Galilee, seeing beautiful nature hikes and cool cities. Some of the pretty hikes I've done are in places called Banyas, Gilabon, and Mount Arbel. These were all nature hikes, some being around beautiful waterfalls and hiking in streams (which I always think is very cool). As for Mount Arbel, we hiked up it in order to stand on the top and pray Shacharit (the morning prayers) as the sun rose, which was really a beautiful scene. I know I throw the word beautiful around, but it's one of the best words I can use. Other places we've visited have related to the military here, as it is one of Israel's central focuses. We visited a place called Kfar Giladi where we heard the story of a man named Joseph Trumpledor, who was a Zionist leader and came to live in Israel, saying that if no one cultivated the land up north, countries would simply take it over. He died fighting for what he believed was his homeland, and was quoted as saying "It is good to die for your country." We also visited an old army based overlooking Syria called Har Bental, and we got to run around in all the old trenches in this base. We've also gotten to meet with Israeli Arab teenagers to hear their perspectives on things as well as meeting some Druze people in their village (called Dalit al HaKarmel) to hear their perspectives on Israel.

The second week here we moved ourselves to the base camp in Jerusalem, and have started to travel around this area. We've traveled up to Tel Aviv to see Independence Hall, where Ben Gurion declared the Jewish state of Israel in the middle of a war. We took the kids to a mall where every single place to eat in the mall is strictly kosher, there's a synagogue there, and how this mall completely shuts down on Shabbat...how cool is that??? We've taken them to parts of the Old City, to walk around the ancient towers of the walls of the old city, walking in Hezekiah's water tunnels. We are also exploring the War of Independce of 1948 and seeing some battle sites, such as Castel and San Simon Park. We also got to tour an underground ammunition factory called the Ayalon Institute and we visited the Palmach Museum (the Palmach was basically the beginnings of the Israeli Defense Forces).

Next week begins our 5 days of Etgar (literally meaning Challenge), where I will be one of about 9-10 counselors leading about 70 kids on a 5 day hiking, swimming, biking trip from the Kinneret (on one side of Israel) to the Mediterranean Sea (on the other side of Israel). This trip is commonly known as Yam L'Yam (Sea to Sea). Anyways, my next internet access should be in about 2 weeks, so be prepared for another big update then. Pictures will follow soon hopefully!

Love you all and hoping this finds you well,
Talia

The End and The Beginning

I’m sorry that this last update is looooong overdue, but the last couple weeks have been crazy. So, with that being said, I’ll try to catch you all up on my life. On May 24th, I cashed in my Hanukkah present and took my friend Zehra on a tour of the tunnels of the Kotel. I hadn’t been on the tunnel tours since I was around 10 years old with my family, so it was still new enough to be interesting for me too. Many people don’t know the visible part of the Kotel (the Western Wall) is really only a very small part of the walls of the ancient Second Temple. You can take a tour walking along the rest of the wall that runs beneath the Muslim quarter of the current Old City. Also, this tunnel tour gives you the chance to marvel at one of the ancient mysteries from the Jewish world: a single stone block that weighs over 500 tons was placed down there, but no one knows how! Little did I know that I would be going on this same tour a few weeks later on June 11 with Ramah Seminar because we had to learn to give the tour so that when we take our kids (yes that means I’m going a third time this year) during Seminar, we can give them the tour. The first week of June was absolute craziness. Not only did I have 4 finals, a 12 page paper, and a 15 page paper to do, but I had to say goodbye to all of my closest friends from the semester as they flew back to the United States. After the tearful goodbye to my friends, I had to move out of my apartment in the Kfar and into another apartment. Thanks to my friend Abby and even more thanks to her grandmother, I have a great place to stay for the 3 weeks until Seminar starts. Also, during these crazy first two weeks of June, I started my staff training for Seminar. Long days of them telling us obvious things like don’t exit the bus in the middle of the street. I’ve met my little staff of 4 (3 others and me) and I really like them and I think this will be a fun yet exhausting summer. After the boring parts of training like sitting in a classroom while they talk and talk, we were taken out on a hike to simulate a day in the life. We hiked in an ancient agricultural site right next to Jerusalem called Sataf, located on the terraced slopes of Mt. Eitan, where you can see the remains of a pre-1948 Arab Village. Here in Ein Sataf, we entered a cave where a spring flows and brings pure cold water out from the rocks. Inside the cave, completely pitch black, the whole staff sang a song called Ohzee (a Jewish song/prayer). It was really emotionally moving to hear all of our voices singing this beautifully haunting melody in a cave thousands of years old. And actually, even more moving for me, I did this same thing 5 years ago, in this exact cave, on my high school in Israel program. One last thing I wanted to tell you about: my Shabbat experience at a synagogue called Shira Hadasha. Shira Hadasha (New Song for those non-Hebrew speakers) is an orthodox synagogue but with a very feminist feeling. By that I mean they have a mechitza (curtain separating women and men) but women were leading parts of the service, reading Torah, and doing many other egalitarian things. They even opened up the mechitza in the middle so that women could read from the Torah. This was the most confusing Shabbat for me. I really liked it at the beginning because you could get that bond with women only, but not feel like you’re being completely excluded from the men. However, by the end, the more I thought about it the more I didn’t like it. I felt like if you were going to be Orthodox, be completely Orthodox, and if you were going to be egalitarian and let women be involved, don’t separate us and let us do some things but not all things. As I said before, it was a very confusing Shabbat experience for me. It made do a lot of thinking and re-evaluating of my current observance level to figure out what I liked. Anyways, now I have 2 weeks to hang out in Israel until Seminar starts. I hope to spend some time with some of my new Israeli friends and see those friends who are still here. I’ll try to update you again before Seminar starts, but be aware that once Seminar starts on June 28th, my internet access will be zero to nil.

Media vs. Reality

As I know this blog is much delayed, it's really going to be more about my thoughts and impressions rather than my exact actions. In the past month, I have had the opportunity to visit 2 very different cities: the Southern Israeli town of Sderot and the town of Nablus, located in the West Bank. Since you are reading this, it means I've returned safely from both of those cities, deemed dangerous, so no need to fear. I just wanted to write a little about my impressions on media vs. reality when it comes to these cities, both victims of media lies. Sderot The city is still under Qassam rocket fire, where residents still live in fear. We went on a tour of the police station (and the Qassam pile), a house destroyed by a Qassam, a playground where the equipment has turned into a rocket shelter, and an overlook of Gaza. The media is not able to truly display the feelings of the residents in the area. We spoke to a college student who described a class experience of hers: in her class, she could not finish watching a 30 second commercial in 20 minutes because the incoming Qassam alarm went off 7 times, and they had to run to a bomb shelter every single time. Her home had a bomb shelter in it and she said her family kept running out of food because everyone would crowd her bomb shelter and eat all the food they had for days at a time. The streets of Sderot are empty, the shops are lifeless... this town has essentially been abandoned. EXCEPT, everyone still lives there, it's really a sad situation. And after seeing the Qassam rockets, I can't imagine having one of those slam onto my home. What's even sadder was walking on the playground. This playground has the famous concrete caterpillar, a very long, big, and colorful hollowed out caterpillar made of about 1 foot of concrete, designed to be a shelter for children to run to when they hear the alarm. For your information, this caterpillar actually can't protect the kids from a direct hit, it just protects them from the shrapnel and debris that does the damage. By the way, in case you didn't know, after you hear the alarm go off *TZEVA ADOM*, you have 15 SECONDS to get into a shelter...basically, you're in trouble if you're not standing right near one. For the first time in my life, as I walked down the street, I was actually staking out where the bomb shelters were, should I also need to run for my life. I looked for the bus shelters which are made of concrete, homes that have a bomb shelter built in (which not many do), and any other structure that could protect me. How scary is that? When we went to the overlook, where we could actually see Gaza, it was amazing to see how close it was. But honestly, the most amazing part of this day was being able to tour Sderot, seeing the actual rockets that have exploded (I got to touch them, very scary), and listening to stories from a girl not much older than me, explaining how she couldn't finish class and how she had to pull her friend out from under a table because she was shaking so bad. I'm blessed to live in safety. Nablus Oh what an experience this was. After all my studying of the politics of the area, I thought it was only fair that I give the other side a chance, and at least go see with my own eyes what's so terrible about the West Bank. The media only partially lies about this...I took an Arab bus (because it was a Saturday and regular buses weren't running) from Jerusalem into Ramallah, after which I transfered to a van (with several other friends) that took us to Nablus. In case you didn't know, Nablus was the center of many of the suicide bombers and much of the unrest in the West Bank. This means that there has to be lots of checkpoints around Nablus itself. So we went through our first checkpoint of the day. What a nice thing to be a foreigner...you get through some checkpoints MUCH faster and without any problems. We then took a taxi to the center of town. In case any of you plan on going...take someone with you who speaks Arabic!! We had my friend Zehra who guided us through to Nablus but then split off, making sure we didn't get taken advantage of, and I also traveled with my friend Rachel, whose Arabic is equivalent to my Hebrew, but obviously is better than I can do in Arabic! Once we got to the center of town, we were trying to find the famous Jacob's Well, and after much walking around, we just decided to get a tour guide since we didn't really know what we were doing. We bargained (always, ALWAYS, bargain your way down). Our tour guide first showed us a soap factory, which is now shutdown because no one can buy the soap (you can tell no one buys soap because the human body odor was terrible, but it was cool to see the stacks and stacks of the soap). We eventually made our way to Jacob's Well, which is located in a beautiful church and we got to drink from the supposed holy water that has physical restoration properties. We then toured the city, getting a VERY one sided explanation of things ("this is the house that was destroyed by the Israeli occupation invasion that murdered an innocent family"), but such is life over there. Shortening up the story, we eventually found our way back to the border crossing called Qalandiya, which was QUITE an experience. At this border crossing, it didn't matter if you were Christians, Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, or American. You had to go through the same process. We waited in a single file line (or something like a cage, closed in by bars on both sides and on top) for about 1 hour as we were being sorted into more lines. Then we waited for about 1.5 hrs in this one VERY unruly "line", which really was a mosh pit. The Arab men were basically trying to break down the turnstile that was letting them through about 2-3 at a time. It was taking so long because after you get through, you had to put your bags through a scanner and present your documents to a soldier behind a bullet proof glass office and then go through a metal detector. The more unruly the men got, the more reluctant the soldier was to even let them through, which only made them more mad and unruly. I was a little afraid standing in this row, being only 1 of 3 non Arab people. Eventually, me and my 2 friends jumped lines because we were getting afraid of being squashed to death and got through just fine in another line. After all was said and done, it took us about 3 hours to get through that border crossing and we wanted to celebrate about getting back into Israel. I guess if you're used to that kind of activity, which is daily and sometimes several-times-a-day daily, it's not as bad, but it made me never really want to go back again. A few other impressions I had....1) maybe I just wasn't in the worst parts of the West Bank, but it looks like any other crowded city anywhere, with not that much destruction. It kind of angered me that the residents there try to get so much international sympathy when it looks like any other crowded New York City neighborhood. I've seen worse areas in the US and they don't garner anywhere near as much attention. 2) Palestinian men made me feel really grossed out. They looked at us like we were zebras and they were lions. I wanted to go home and take a shower after the way they constantly stared and made gestures and said things to us. Yuck. 3) I really enjoy my freedom and the ability to do basically anything I want. The checkpoints were quite frustrating, especially when our "American card" didn't help at all. Also kind of made me realized as Americans, we can't just do anything and we don't get exceptions everywhere. Sorry this post was long, I just had a lot to say. And also sorry it's VERY late in coming. I'm in the beginning of finals period, so I've been a little busy. Enjoy the blogging and the pictures!

Pesach break slideshow!

So here are my spring break pictures finally.... After losing many of my pictures to a stupid mistake, I was able to recover most of them and then I borrowed some pictures that friends took. These aren't all of my vacation memories, but here's a small taste so you can see what I did for two weeks!

Pesach Break Part 2- Greece

Thursday April 9

• in trying to get a cheap flight to Greece for vacation, I ended up booking a flight that had a layover in Riga, LATVIA! (not really realizing how far out of the way that was) so I now have a stamp in my passport saying I went to Latvia!
• arrived in Greece...for some reason without getting a stamp in my passport :( and met up with my friends who were already in Greece
• grabbed an evening ferry to the island of Santorini where we were picked up by the people who ran the hostel we were staying in called Manos Villas, which was very nice (the pickup service and the hostel)

Friday April 10

• after getting a recommendation from Ali about seeing a volcano, and hearing from other people too, we decided to wanted to check out this volcano on a small island off of Santorini called Nea Kameni. In order to get to it, we had to catch a bus from our hostel, take a cable car down to the port, and then hop on a boat going to the island! All very exciting though!
• We were guided around the volcano by the tourguide of the group, and got to hear about how it's still an active volcano and for only something like 1 million US dollars, you can actually buy this volcano!
• After wandering around the volcano for awhile, we hopped back on the boat so they could take us nearby to some hot springs, where we could get out and swim around if we wanted, which of course some of our group wanted to do. We jumped into the Aegean Sea (which was freeeeeezing) and swam to the hot springs, but because it was only April, the hot springs weren't actually hot, but it was still fun.
• that night we went to a late dinner and then out on the town to check out the scene, and it was very touristy was still fun

Saturday April 11

• rented 2 ATVs to share among the 4 of us because we were told it was the best way to get around the island to see all the things we wanted to see
• drove to a black sand beach called Kamari beach and then drove to another beach (with white sand) called Perissa...sadly we ran out of time to see the red sand beach
• grabbed an afternoon ferry to Crete. It was rough seas but we made it pretty quickly because we took a ferry that was a hi-speed Cat.
• arrived at the main port of Crete called Iraklio but we were staying in a city called Rethymno, so we took a bus over there which was 1.5 hrs away and checked into our very crappy but very cheap youth hostel

Sunday April 12

• took a bus back to Iraklio in order to go see this ancient palace called Knossos which was built by the Minoans, where we met up with 2 of our other friends from Israel...we saw lots of ancient ruins, but because so many of the ruins were falling apart so badly, the guy who did lots of the excavations of the site built replicas in its place, so much of what we were seeing were replicas of what he thought the palace used to look like
• then we decided to go see the CretAquarium, which pales in comparison to the New England Aquarium in Boston, but it was still fun to see all the underwater animals

Monday April 13

• the plan for the day was the beach, but the wind was killer, so we decided to visit the Fortezza in Rethymno which was built by the Venetians relatively recently (in the 1500s) to protect against the Turkish threat
• met up with our 2 friends again in Iraklio where we went to the Archaeological Museum, but didn't stay there long because it was terrible and small. It's under many renovations and they are very strict, unlike many museums in the US, about visitors being inside, so it wasn't really pleasant to stay there
• hopped on a 9 pm ferry back to Athens

Tuesday April 14

• grabbed a 730 am ferry back out to Mykonos (I know, going back to Athens was out of the way, but it saved us some money)...and at this point in time, it was now my friend Larissa and I traveling together because our other 2 friends traveled to London for the remainder of the trip
• arrived on Mykonos around 130 pm and was picked up by the place we were staying with (we were staying in a little studio called Studio Eleni, a little 3 person room with only the 2 of us, on a roof, very nice and quaint and relaxing)
• Larissa and I wandered around the city of Chora, where we were staying, for the afternoon and then called it an early night since we were exhausted from not sleeping on the ferries

Wednesday April 15

• went to a small island right off the coast of Mykonos called Delos, where basically the whole island is an archaelogical site/ruins of a city and walked all over the island and up the mountain on the island until the early afternoon
• after cleaning up, Larissa and I went to a local bar on the water in the city/area called Alefkandra to watch the legendary sunset on Mykonos, which was absolutely beautiful and then spent the night dancing away at the clubs together

Thursday April 16

• sat in the sun on the rooftop of our studio since we were leaving relatively early to head back to Athen, leaving on the day that supposedly 10,000 people were arriving to Mykonos
• arrived in the evening to Athens where we checked into a wonderful hostel called Easy Access. It wasn't located in the best part of town, but it was a great hostel otherwise. We met some people in the lounge who showed us to a great place to get gyros right around the corner, and since I finally could eat bread and break Pesach, I was super excited to have my first gyro!
• later that night we met other people, and went out with them to this area called Psiri, which is always cool to learn about other people's stories (we hung out with one of our roommates, a girl from Scotland)

Friday April 17

• One of my favorite days of vacation began with a cheese/cracker lunch in Syntagma Square in Athens, near the Parliament building. Today, if any of you know what the Freedom Trail of Boston is, Larissa and I did the same type of walking trail around Athens. We had a great walking Athens in 1 day book that took us all over the city to see the sites.
• We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which happens on the hour every hour. It's a very ornate process, but very cool to watch
• Then we walked through the National Gardens, which are very beautiful and made me miss my mom, as she really loves botanical gardens
• We passed by the Panathenaic Stadium, which is built of white marble and used to hold some of the athletic portions of the Olympic Games in ancient times, and in the 2004 Athens games, held the archery competition
• Next we walked through the small streets of an area called Plaka, which is very cute and full of little shops and cafes
• Continuing on, we walked through parts of the ancient agora and saw the Roman Agora and Library of Hadrian
• After that we continued our walking tour by the Temple of Olympian Zeus (well the ruins of it) and by Hadrian's Arch/Gate, which was pretty cool, but it looked out of place standing next to telephone poles
• Finally, we got to the the Acropolis! We saw lots of ancient Greek buildings such as the Dionysos Ancient Theater (which wasn't on the top of the Acropolis but on the slope of it). On the top we saw: the Propylaea which is a gateway to the rest of the buildings, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Parthenon (and from this spot you could also see the St. Georges Church on the Lycavittos hill and the Fetchigie Mosque)...sorry I'm throwing out all these names, I just jotted them down as we went, and you'll see the pictures of them in my slideshow
• Went back to Plaka for dinner and this is where I had my ill-fated accident with my camera and accidentally lost ALL my pictures (and for those of you who missed out on my hysterical email, I did eventually get most of them back, but some I lost to file corruption)
• For our last night in Greece, we met a group of kids from Wake Forrest who were on their break from studying abroad as well, who pulled us into their group and we all went to this really cool ice bar. You couldn't stay in the bar long because it was so cold (they gave us parkas and gloves to wear inside) but then came out and just danced to the great music that was playing. It was really fun to be able to sit on couchs completely made of ice!!

Saturday April 18

• trying to kill some time before going to the airport, Larissa and I went to the big archaelogical museum, where many of the actual statues and paintings of the sites we had been seeing (and seeing the replicas) were.
• also checked out Monastiraki Square, which is a big public area and on Saturdays I guess, they sell lots of cheese!
• finally checked out and went to the airport for a very long trip home (through Latvia again)

And that, folks, is my trip to Greece in a quick nutshell... I know, it doesn't seem like a short blog to you, but let me tell you, I cut out details so as to fit it all here. Here are some other observations I made while traveling abroad:

• Traveling in Europe, or at least on the Euro, is expensive!
• Keeping kosher for Pesach and not eating bread makes it even more expensive because you can't eat the cheap street food
• Greek men are VERY aggressive and slightly creepy
• there is nothing to see or do in the Latvia airport, don't ever go there :)
• Greece is very touristy and loves to play to tourists' expectations, but it's also very pretty if you go for relaxing vacation and for the beaches

Ok ok, I'm done with the typing. Stay tuned for the photo slideshow!!

Pesach Break Part 1- Netanya

This is WAAAAYY overdue, but I had to hit the ground running after I came home from vacation, so here are my vacation blogs. Also, because there's so much to say (because I did so much) my blogs are going to be in bullet format. If you would like more information on anything I did, feel free to actually email me (what a concept!!!) Pictures will follow in another blog, similar to my Petra photo slideshow.

Friday April 3

• took a bus to Netanya to spend a few days with my sister Dena and her husband Amit
• had a wonderful Nepalese Shabbat dinner made by Amit's grandmother's caretaker Mina, while being joined by my friend (and Amit's cousin) Abby

Saturday April 4

• went to Tel Aviv at night to join in the celebrations for Tel Aviv's 100th birthday
• met up with Amit's cousin Eitan and his girlfriend Maayan and went to a cute little bar called Backy's where Eitan's friend was a bartender

Sunday April 5

• didn't really do much except run some travel errands with Dena and Amit
• sat on the beach for awhile

Monday April 6

• went Passover food shopping with Dena, only to be severely disappointed
• discovered that most of Israel eats Kitniyot, which I don't, which makes all the food that says Kosher L'Pesach NOT kosher at all!!!! Realized that if I don't eat kitniyot, it's actually easier to celebrate Pesach in the States

Tuesday April 7

• sat on the beach for a few hours, it was beautiful weather!
• Mina made this dinner called Pansaroti, which everyone loves, it was delicious!

Wednesday April 8

• went to Eitan's parents' house in Herzliyya for Seder
• this seder was amazing, tons of amazing food that was kosher for me and Dena (we were the only ones not eating kitniyot)
• surprisingly, almost every guest at this seder was American, but it still made it quite interesting
• it really made me miss my family's seder, and more specifically having all my family together for it
• left for the airport right after Seder to catch my 5 am flight to Greece!

Fun in the sun in Tel Aviv

This past weekend I visited the city of Tel Aviv. It was a lot of fun but a little more on the expensive side. So here's what I was up to: Thursday, March 19- Went to Tel Aviv as part of a sponsored event by the organization who gave me a scholarship here, called MASA. We got to go on a tour of part of Tel Aviv, and I went on a tour of Old Jaffa. This is the big port area and there are lots of art-sy areas around here. Actually, it was funny because as we were walking around, our tour guide brought us to this hanging tree in the middle of the city...the same place that I was with my family 10 years ago. So of course I took a picture with it. Then around 10:30 we got back to the bar where the band GAYA was going to be playing for us to have "dinner", or at least that's what they advertised. By the time we got there, mostly everything they were offering had been eaten, except for some terrible falafel and a couple of pitas. Anyways, we GAYA performed for awhile and then after it turned into a dance party which was fun. We left at 1:30 to go find our hostel. Friday, March 20- After a fairly early morning wake up to check out of the hostel and into our next hostel (which was cheaper), we decided to go walk around a street called Nachlat Binyamin. Every Tuesday and Friday, this street is turned into an art fair, with tons of jewelry stands and paintings and lots of little craftmakers making things you never would have thought of. I found a pretty ring that I purchased for only 15 shekels! After that we wandered down to the Dizengoff mall, not to go in it but because we knew that area had lots of fun shops around it. After walking around for several hours, we stopped for lunch at a little cafe near the mall, where I met up with my friend Ofir from camp! She is studying media at Tel Aviv U, so it was nice to meet up with her before she headed home to Haifa for the weekend. After a late lunch, we were in the mood for some dessert, so Ofir took us to a frozen yogurt shop very similar to a place in NYC called Pinkberry. So the frozen yogurt here in Israel is different than in the states, it's more sour here. It literally is their plain yogurt in it's frozen form. Anyways, so at this frozen yogurt place you can put almost as many toppings as you can fit on your froyo. Fruit is the main topping to put on, with kiwi and pineapple and strawberries galore, plus several flavors of syrup, and many kinds of nuts. It was just absolutely delicious and exactly what we all wanted. Then Ofir left to go home and we continued walking around, through the Shuk to see if we could get anything really cheaply. We were able to get a lot of Challah and other croissant type treats for basically free since it was right before Shabbat. Afterwards, we returned to our hostel for a brief refresher nap/shower and then went to have dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. As I was starting to feel sick (my stomach bug hasn't quite left me yet) I called it a pretty early evening as almost everyone else stayed out at the pubs. Saturday, March 21- My stomach bug chose not leave me alone on Saturday, so I took it pretty easy. I walked around on the boardwalk with my friends for awhile, enjoying the sunshine and the sea. Then we came across something really interesting. About 100 people were participating in Israeli folk dancing to music that was playing. We sat and watched them for awhile before I realized I knew one of the women dancing...she was the dance teacher at camp when I was there! We talked for a bit and she invited me dancing with her there, but as I still wasn't feeling well, I just observed. My friends then decided they wanted to walk down to Jaffa and explore the area down there, but again, I passed since I was feeling nauseous. Instead, I spent my afternoon lounging on the beach, under the beautiful sunshine. We caught a sherut (big taxi for a lot of people) back to Jerusalem that evening, and I just stayed in from exhaustion. Sunday, March 22- This part of my weekend wasn't in Tel Aviv, but it was quite an experience. So there was this food festival at the Shuk in the evening, a mixture of Grandmother chefs and actual restaurant chefs. The food was pretty cheap and you could go up and down the shuk trying all the different dishes out there. I went to check it out with a couple new Israeli friends I made here, and when we got there...absolutely CHAOS!! I can't even begin to describe to you how crowded and pushy it was (although to my family who was in DC for July 4th with me, it was that crowd x10 with the Israeli aggressive pushy attitude!). The funniest and saddest story that came out of that experience was that after we realized we weren't getting anywhere to get food because of the crowds, we decided to leave, and as I was leaving, there was a father with his 3 young small children in front of me. The children were crying and screaming because they were so afraid of the crazy crowds. We left and got some food elsewhere because it just wasn't worth getting trampled to death. Craziness! I enjoy your comments and they let me know you're actually reading these blogs, so leave me lots of comments!

Purim and Rappelling Trip

So my week continued with school keeping me mostly busy. But a few interesting things happened. Mar 9- As part of my curriculum here, I’m participating in an internship with an organization called StandWithUs. They seek to promote a positive image of Israel in communities throughout the world through various media. Anyways, my boss, who’s really a young girl about 24, firmly believes in saving the soldier Gilad Shalit. For those of you who don’t know about his situation, you should check it out online, but the short story is that he’s an Israeli soldier who’s captured and being held somewhere in Gaza. Hamas is really only willing to trade him for thousands of terrorists that Israel holds in their prisons. So continuing on with my story, outside of the Prime Minister’s house a couple different groups have a booth that stands there all day every day collecting signatures in support of Shalit and in support of trading for him, while across the street, a protest goes on against this, by the families of the victims’ of terrorists’ attacks. It’s quite a spectacle to watch this and at times, you don’t really know whose side you’re on, but I stood at the Shalit table helping to attract people over there because my boss firmly supports this side. It was quite an eye-opener. Mar 10-11- You want to talk about an eye-opener, come visit Israel over the Jewish holiday called Purim. Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen such madness. Basically, this holiday is an excuse for the entire country to drink more alcohol than I’ve ever seen consumed at one point. Everyone dresses up in costumes, as per the holiday, and drinks to oblivion. The commandment for this holiday is called “Ad lo yada” which means until you don’t know, and the commandment says to drink until you can’t tell the difference between the good and bad guys in the story of Esther (so Mordechai and Haman). I personally feel no need to follow that commandment, so instead I just observed the spectacle. Two other things I noticed during this madness… 1) As sad as this sounds, this time period seems like the perfect target for terrorist attacks as thousands of people are gathered in small areas and everyone is covered in costumes. 2) The reason I noticed this is because as I was standing on a very crowded Ben Yehuda street, people were throwing firecrackers down and it sounded like many little explosions. For those of us not used to that sound, we half expected to see people flying at any minute, which was a little scary. Overall, I did not really enjoy this holiday, but it was an experience. I especially didn’t enjoy it because I was missing my mother’s hamenstaschen, which are the triangle shaped cookies eaten for this holiday, and the ones made here (which are actually called Oznei-Haman in Hebrew/Israel) are not filled with the same fruity fillings that my mom uses. But at least one good thing that comes out of this holiday is something called Mishloach Manot. This is a tradition of giving goodies to people, usually in need, but people just give gift baskets of yummy treats to anyone and everyone. I received one from a friend and it had lots of tasty treats inside  Mar 13- I went on a rappelling trip with my school to explore the area of the Qumran Caves. This is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. We began the trip very early in the morning and hiked up to the top of this spectacular mountain. It was a tough hike up, as we were literally crawling on our hands and feet at times to clamber up over the rocks. There were about 30 of us students, plus 2 “madrichim” which are counselors, plus 2 medics/armed guards (a requirement for big school trips around Israel), plus 2 guides. It took us quite awhile to get everyone to the top and set up, but it was well worth the wait. They explained to us that we would be doing 3 rappels, off cliffs that were about 100 ft, 50 ft, and 150 ft. Then they told us the more challenging part. These caves are technically located in the desert, but because of their location, they frequently receive copious amounts of water rushing through, and sometimes, the water doesn’t dry up fast enough. So basically our guides told us we were going to be rappelling into water 1.5 meters (that’s about 5 ft), meaning head to toe covered in water. Everyone went into a mass (read: slight) panic because we weren’t expecting to get wet and also because everyone had cameras and phones. Anyways, those were put into a special bag that was sent down differently, so that’s why you will not see many pictures from this trip, but the experience was worth it. I’m now a much more comfortable rappeller, as I have conquered many cliffs and I’m not so afraid of them anymore. It was amazing to rappel down these cliffs only to land in pools of freezing water and have to unclip yourself, send the rope back up, and swim across the pool fully clothed to the other bank…3 times over! I had a great time and I will post the few pictures I have from this trip. So that’s the updates for now…this weekend, as I said before, was uneventful due my sudden illness that literally took everything out of me, but I’m recovering now and will continue updating you on my Israel adventures!

Adventures in Jerusalem

Ok ok I know I’m slacking big time on my blogs, but I did have a mild excuse. I was all set to blog this weekend and then I somehow contracted some sort of stomach bug, and spent my weekend crawling between my bed and the toilet. As I’m now taking one personal day from school and I’m slowly on the mend, I figured I could at least sit here and type up what’s been going on in my life. Mar 5- I went to see a concert here in Jerusalem by a group called the Idan Raichel Project. If you know nothing of his music, you should become familiar, it’s great. He’s an Israeli musician (Idan Raichel) who formed a band of people from all over the world, although his two biggest singer stars are Ethiopian. They sing in many languages and play instruments, and perform wonderful music! This concert was put on privately for all of us who participated in this organization called MASA, which basically gives out thousands of dollars in scholarships to students coming to study in Israel. There were thousands of people at this concert, but almost all were American and almost all were probably under 21. I went to a smaller performance by him in the states, actually at my school, which I enjoyed a little better because of the intimacy of the gig, but this time, listening and dancing to his music with soooo many other people who enjoy his music as much as I do was a lot of fun. My two friends who I visited in Haifa actually came to Jerusalem for the concert (and to visit/stay for the weekend) so a couple of us walked around downtown Jerusalem afterwards. We stopped off at a very yummy place called Babbet’s for waffles. The waffles here are famous, and it’s one of the great late night foods to snack on. Mar 6- There were 5 of us hanging out this weekend that were part of the Neri/Jess visit, and we decided to walk around the Old City in the morning before Shabbat. Sadly, despite the fact that I live in Jerusalem, I hadn’t been to the Old City on this trip yet. I don’t know why, it just worked out that way. Anyways, we got a nice tour-ish thing around the Old City by the sort-of boyfriend of one of the girl’s who lives in the Old City, and that was really nice. We visited the Kotel, and walked all up and down the streets, stopping at a few stores. Then we walked from there to Ben Yehuda street and then the Shuk (marketplace). We earned our food that day from all our walking. We finished our Friday off with a wonderful potluck Shabbat dinner at my place, with 9 people bringing so many yummy dishes, it was one of the best meals I’ve had. Mar 7- The next day was rather uneventful, but since we had absolutely beautiful weather, we laid out in the sun on the yard in the Kfar for awhile, enjoying our time together. That night we all went downtown again and found a semi-quiet bar, King’s Bar, to chill out in, where our old camp friend Jacob Sager joined us in the festivities for awhile.

Photo Slideshows

Hello again-
So my last 2 adventures have required many many photos to be taken. I have tried to make a slideshow of both my adventures (Cave Day, Haifa, Bahai Gardens & Eilat, Petra). Hopefully this works and you can view my slideshows :)






Love,
Talia

Eilat and Petra

This blog will be another one of only words, as I have too many pictures to put up. I'm going to try to add a slideshow blog post for yall to see all my pictures, so stay tuned for that one. I spent this last weekend in Eilat, the southern-most city in Israel, and also in Petra, Jordan....such a beautiful city. Side note: For those of you who don't know, part of the movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade was filmed here at Petra, and if you saw the movie, you'll recognize some of my pictures.

February 19- After my last ulpan class finished, I hopped onto a bus, along with several of my friends here, and rode 4 hours down to Eilat. Once we got there, around 9 pm, we walked to our hostel which was called Arava, dropped our stuff down, and decided to go find dinner and explore the boardwalk near the beach where we were staying. The boardwalk in Eilat is called the Tayelet, which is essentially the Hebrew word for walkway/promenade. We got a delicious burger dinner from a burger stand called Yam Burger (in Hebrew, it means ocean burger), ate on the beach and continued along our merry way on the tayelet. We didn't stay out too late because most of us were getting up early to start our journey across the border to Petra.

February 20- The morning began around 7 am with a taxi to the Israel/Jordan border in attempts to jump ahead of the tourist groups that would be arriving when the border opened at 8 am. We actually beat the border guards to the border, but we wanted to get there early so we'd be first to cross. If you think security in Israel is extremely tight, you should see the security/crossing process to go into one of her neighboring Arab countries. It took about 2 hours to get 13 people across into Jordan, going through security, customs, passport check, ticket check, and paying for tickets to get into and out of the country. Finally, our group was through and then we took a 2 hr van ride to Petra. The group then split up into 3 smaller groups of people, depending on how fast you walked/how much you complained. I spent most of my trip with 2 of my closest friends here (Josh and Larissa) and we began a faster walk through the park to get to the sites we wanted to see. We were offered free horse rides down the beginning path if we would exchange these guys' Israeli Shekels for either American money or Jordan Dinar (which we were able to do) and so got to horseback ride down the path in Jordan (not quite like Indiana Jones). Then we walked through the Siq, which is an approximately 1 km long gorge/valley that opens up onto what's the Treasury in English and Al Khazneh in Arabic. This is Petra's most famous monument, mostly thanks to Indiana Jones. This monument is basically a temple-like carving out of rock. It's gigantic and carved out of the canyon walls...and it's absolutely beautiful. Sidenote: One of Petra's nicknames is the Rose Red City because all of the stone/rock in Petra is a very beautiful red, especially when the sun hits it just right. We didn't linger at the Treasury too long because we wanted to go visit the Monastery (aka al-Deir in Arabic), which we heard takes a long time to get to. There are 800+ steps to get up to this Monastery (yes, I did in fact say 800+, that wasn't a typo) so in order to save ourselves and to save time, we took the ever popular donkey up to the Monastery. It was absolutely worth paying a few Dinar to ride up, as we passed by many a hiker nearly passed out. Plus, it was really fun to ride these donkeys. Our guide was a 20-something young Jordanian whose English was quite good actually, and along with his younger brother maybe, led me and my 2 friends up to the Monastery on our donkeys. He said he did that hike about 3-5 times a day, which impressed us endlessly as he kept up with the donkeys the whole time. I rode a donkey named Bob Marley, who was a little "uncontrollable." He ran me into a sharp bush and sliced open my pants' leg along a piece of wood with nails on it along a jewelry table. However, it was still a memorable experience as our guide was shouting to all the hikers ahead of us "EXCUSE ME! DONKEYS OUT OF CONTROL! NO CONTROL, WATCH OUT!" and kept us highly entertained all the way up. We had to climb the last 100ish steps on our own because the donkeys couldn't really make it, but it was not a problem. So basically the Monastery is very similar looking to the Treasury... a temple-like structure carved out of the rock. But there were lots of small hikes to be done around here, and we hiked around to different views the Jordanians had labelled "End of the World/Top of the World” which were breathtaking. After that, we hiked all the way back down and took another 2 hr van ride back to go through the extremely long border crossing, which was actually complicated by the fact that in our group of people was a 20 year old guy whose father was Israel, which technically made him eligible for Army service (if you didn't know, all Israeli men/women are required to go into the army right out of high school for 3/2 years respectively). So our friend was getting harassed as to why he wasn't in the army and took us awhile to get through. After we got through, we went back to the boardwalk to find food because we were absolutely starving at this point. So we got food at a place Café Optimi and after cleaning up, decided to do nothing but relax on the beach, and drink some wine.

February 21- We woke up late, got lunch at Yam Burger again because it was cheap, and laid around on the beach relaxing in the warm sun. After a couple hours, Larissa and I decided to explore the boardwalk shops a little more, and to get this yummy food called a Fro-Yo. It's like frozen yogurt with a bunch of fruit blended into it, similar to a smoothie, but more ice-cream-ish. I got a really yummy one of kiwi, strawberry, melon, peach, and mango. That night we ate dinner at Russian restaurant called Gulf Restaurant for a friend's 21st birthday, and since most of us were still exhausted, we just hung out on the beach. One of the popular things to do in Israel, but especially on the beach, is smoke Hookah, which many of our group did...but I'm not a fan of it, I just like the way the pipe or contraption or whatever it's called looks(very middle eastern and pretty).

February 22- I took the 10 am bus back here, and unpacked just in time for my first class to start! I have only one class on Sundays (and even then it's every other Sunday). The class itself was very boring, but I'm hoping that the internship, which should be with an organization called StandWithUs, will be really worth it and a lot of fun.

Ok, I think that's all for now. Let's see how good my slideshow creating skills are and hopefully soon I will post lots of pictures.

-Talia

A Comedy, Some Spelunking, and Haifa...Oh My!

This blog will cover the adventures of my fourth-ish week here, from February 11-15. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with my blogging on time, I promise I'll get better.



February 11- An Israeli improv comedy troupe (actually a duo) came to my Ulpan class to have some fun with us. They were great, and it was some good Hebrew practice since not only everything they said was in Hebrew, but when we had to participate in their fun and games, we had to speak in Hebrew. It's also interesting to see, and very easy to tell, when Israelis cater their Hebrew speaking to your level of understanding. The comedy duo, and all of the Israeli lectures we've been to (3 of them), spoke Hebrew slowly and of the level where we could understand what they were saying. But even when you don't know every word spoke, it's great how comedy can still be so much fun!



February 12- Cave Day! Our school held a program called Cave Day, where, if you signed up, you could go exploring some caves called the Beit Guvrin Caves. The first cave we went to was actually just a big open cave, called a bell cave, that we just walked around in. The walls of this cave were essentially made out of chalk...as in you could just wipe your finger along it like if you were checking for dust, and your finger would be covered in chalk! We didn't stay there long, but continued onto caves called the Bar Kochba Caves. They were named so because this is where the Jews hid out during the Bar Kochba Revolt. I happened to have crawled around in these caves 4.5 years ago, when I was here in Israel on my High School in Israel program. The tunnels were specifically dug very narrow and small so that it was impossible for any Roman soldier to come in with his weapon. If you were much bigger than me, this cave crawl would not have been so easy for you. The best part of all was that I got to use my headlamp! And while a bunch of people were making fun of me for it before we started crawling, they all wanted to crawl behind me in the caves because I was shedding the best light around, in addition to the only other 2 Israelis, who also had headlamps. We crawled for about 10-15 minutes towards this bigger cave where the Jews used to raise pigeons. There were hundreds of holes dug in the walls for the pigeons to live in. The Jews used to raise pigeons for both messenger purposes and for food, because they were smaller to transport around than goats! It was slightly muddy inside, but I had no problem with it, it was great fun! After spelunking, we made our way towards this mound called Tel Azaka, where we climbed our way towards the top to watch the sun set over the country. This was all near an area SW of Jerusalem, called Beit Shemesh. It was a beautiful view, and after which we were all provided with some yummy Israeli snacks to tide us over until we returned.



February 13-14- I made my way to the city of Haifa to spend Shabbat with my friends Jessica Feldman (from college) and Neri Stein (from camp) who both happen to spending a semester here in Israel at Haifa University. I brought my friend Larissa along with me, and we actually joined up with 2 of our guy friends who also came to Haifa but stayed with other people. After class on Friday we made our way on a bus from Jerusalem to Haifa and arrived in the early evening. After simply relaxing and enjoying some homemade challah from Larissa, we all went out to a pub in downtown Haifa called The Bear Pub after grabbing a quick bite to eat before. Now, as most of you may know, Friday-Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, which means that many many things here in Israel are completely shutdown until sundown on Saturday. While that still holds true in Haifa, many many places were still open, and it was quite weird for Larissa and I, who had gotten used to Jerusalem, where ABSOLUTELY everything shuts down for Shabbat, to be able to go out on a Friday night. We didn't stay at the pub too long because we were getting up early Saturday morning to go to the Baha'i Gardens. So, if you ever have the opportunity, go to Haifa and visit the Baha'i Gardens...they were stunning. Apparently, this is the Baha'i faith's 2nd holiest site. The way the gardens are set up is that near the bottom is the main focal point, a placed called the Shrine of the Bab. It wasn't that impressive inside, but I'm thinking that they only let us inside a very small part and the rest is closed off for worshippers? Anyways, the garden and the view from that part overlooking the water is amazing. But it gets better... After we explored the gardens at the bottom (which you don't need a tour guide for) we made our way up a very large hill where the terraces begin. Quick timeout- on our way up the large hill, we pass by the Sculpture Garden section, where we all hung out for awhile, relaxing in a very pretty area with tons of human sculptures all over. Anyways, we climbed the rest of the way up and waited to join up with a tour to walk down through the terraces. This part of the garden you do need a tour guide, but you don't have to reserve one ahead of time. There are 9 terraces leading down to the Shrine, and I can't find the right words to describe how pretty these are. It was also a beautiful day outside, sun shining, and just a perfect day to walk through the gardens. However, because the gardens are a holy site, women have to dress modestly. The funny thing is that according to our guide, the Baha'i faith is all about equality between men and women, as evidenced by the perfect symmetry of the layout of the gardens (yet somehow they can wear shorts and we can't!) No fair, boys get everything, girls don't get anything! The Baha'i people apparently don't accept money from anyone outside of the faith, so all their expenses for this garden, which total several million, come from only the Baha'i people. People have described this as the 8th wonder of the world, and after visiting, I might have to agree.



Anyways, that's all for now. Stay tuned for another blog post coming up as I'm heading to Eilat and Petra, Jordan this weekend for a fun little trip between ulpan and rest of our regular class schedule.

A Short Humbling Experience

I know I just blogged recently about my amazing week/weekend, but I have one more thing to add to my experiences here. This will be a short blog, but I thought I should tell you about it anyways...

In case you didn't know, I have joined a student organization/group here called Activists for Asylum. It's an organization that attempts to help refugees (currently specifically from Sudan) get asylum, or at least get into, Israel. I volunteered with this group to help type up and edit the interviews with refugees themselves. Tonight, our group got to sit down and have dinner (well, order in a couple pizzas) with 2 of the refugees, Gabriel and Malik. Having dinner with them, hearing their stories, and reading the stories of prior refugees has been one of the most humbling experiences I've ever gone through. They've watched their villages burned to the ground, their family shot before their eyes, and the struggles they go through just to reach the border is astounding. Especially considering how easy it was for me to just pop on over to this country and how easy it was for me to even STEP FOOT onto this land while for them it's one of the hardest things they will struggle through. Here's the website of the organization if you'd like to check it out. http://4asylum.org. We're in the process of editing the interviews for spelling mistakes and such, but please go read their stories.

I'd just like to say how grateful I am that I live the life I do, and am capable of having the experiences I have. It's great to live in a country so free and grow up in a wonderful, safe, loving environment. I'm truly humbled by what these Sudanese refugees have been through and I don't wish it upon anyone. So please keep in mind what a wonderful life we all have.

-Talia

A Very Busy Week

Sorry it's been awhile, but unfortunately not much had happened until the last week or so, and then I got a concentrated dose of activity. Be patient through this blog, there's a lot... February 2- Made my way on a couple buses down to an area called Emek Refaim to have a dinner/movie date with my friend/former coworker Michal Kabatznik. She recently made aliyah (moving to Israel) and is essentially half American, half Israeli. We had dinner at a cute restaurant called Kafit, which has amazing food, of all kinds. Then we traveled on more buses to the Malcha Mall to see the Benjamin Button movie, which again had an intermission if you don't remember. In the end, Michal offered me her companionship and Israeli knowledge, which are both an asset here. February 3- Our ulpan class was ended a little early so we could go on a historical tour of the campus. It wasn't the most interesting tour I've been on, but in the end, we were taken up to the rooftop of the school, where we saw an amazing view (see attached photo). February 5- I attended (along with friends) a political rally for Benjamin Netanyahu in the Crowne Plaza hotel, downtown Jerusalem. I won't say that I believe in all of his political stances, but it was very fun to go hear him talk. I sat in the second row, and was very close. He spoke in English, with this rally directed at the 250,000 English speakers living/voting in this country. We also got some free stuff and had a great time hearing the potential leader (and a very similar physical replica of my Uncle Avi) of this country speak 30 feet from where I sat. February 6-7- Definitely the highlight of this blog... I went up north to the Golan (the disputed territory in northern Israel) for Shabbat. I went with this orthodox/frum group of people/organization who work for a man named Jeff Seidel. They didn't force religion on us at all, instead, provided the opportunity for us to participate and learn from them if we wanted. But anyways, the day began with the bus leaving Jerusalem at 6:30 am on Friday. We arrived at a place called Manara to ride a cable car up to the top. From there, we could either choose to take a zipline halfway down (which looked like a lot of fun) OR we could rapel down a 42 meter cliff (~137 ft). As you could guess, I rapelled down a cliff in Israel!!!! It was absolutely the most terrifying thing I've ever done, but by far the COOLEST thing I've ever done. After which, we had to hike about 10 minutes straight back up to get to the top. Only 3 people chose to rapel, and all 3 of us were girls. Then we drove to a place called Ramat Naftali to go ATVing. There weren't enough ATVs for everyone, so I ended up driving this little off road golf-cart thing, but it was ok, I still had a blast driving through vineyards and orchards and resting at one of the most stunning views from one of the highest points in the Golan. At one point, we were standing 5 km from Lebanon. After ATVing, we drove to a hotel called Kinar near the Kinneret. This hotel was kind of cool for me to see because it was Shomer Shabbat hotel (this meant that it observes all aspects of the Sabbath, so the lights are on a timer, etc). I've never seen so many Orthodox Jews running around with their 30 children (slight exaggeration, but not really). We were mixed in with kids from Tel Aviv University and Beer Sheva and had a very pleasant Shabbat, eating and relaxing at this hotel by the Kinneret. I spent the majority of my evening (after Shabbat dinner) sitting on the shore of the Kinneret in the moonlight with a few other friends. In addition, our security guard/medic for the trip was a guy named Arye, who was born in America but his family made Aliyah here 19 years ago (he's 24). The most interesting thing about him was that he was in the recent operation in Gaza, he just got back 2 weeks ago. I spent many hours talking with him, hearing his war stories (and man does he have a lot). In the end, I learned that he actually lives 6 floors above me and is going to be a great resource to have here! All in all, it was a wonderful weekend of major excitement followed by much relaxing. Thanks for being so patient with my long blogs, things just come in clumps sometimes! -Talia

Adventures Galore!

And as the adventures continue, so does my blog. Ok, not so exciting, but here are a few interesting things that have happened/observations that have been observed :) Cats...for those of you who are cat lovers, this is the wrong place to be. I say that only because there are a bajillion (yes that is the official Talia count) stray, fuzzy, fluffy, cute, kitties running around the city! Israel doesn't really seem to have squirrels here, instead, they have Fluffy. And all of his friends. The interesting thing is that the cats here don't look like scruffy scrangy messes of a cat, they actually look fluffy and cute and all you want to do is feed them and take care of them. But alas, as I'm sure they're carrying more diseases than you'd ever want to know, petting them is probably not a good idea. But just so you know...I believe there are 6-8 living right outside my building, and the willpower to resist playing with them has been far greater than that of willpower resisting Magnum bars (incredible Israeli ice cream bars). Buses...so I have only begun to conquer Jerusalem buses, but like I said, it's only the beginning. I had a summer job interview in an obscure part of Jerusalem (I say obscure because no one could show me on a map where it was) and I had to get back on my own, on buses. Contrary to what you all see in the media, not all buses blow up, they're safe, I'm alive, yippee skippee. However, the funniest thing on my travels stemmed from people watching and observing the stereotypical aggressiveness of Israelis: not youngsters, but old ladies! I was sitting near the front of the bus for fear of missing my stop when I was literally SHOVED over by a little Israeli woman, probably around 75 years old, and probably less than 1/2 my size. I was amazed at her aggression in getting on the bus and moving my butt over, without giving me the chance to get up and offer her a seat. And the lesson learned (well, in reality, dealing with all Israelis) is that you have to get aggressive back, but how do you get mean with grandma?? Movie theater...I saw my first Israeli movie in an Israeli movie theater 2 nights ago! I went with a few friends to see the Academy-nominated movie called Waltz With Bashir. It was pretty good, and it gave me a good Hebrew practice. The movie theater was very cute. You walked into a cafe type thing and then through the back, and voila! There's the movie theater! Prices were comparable to most movie theaters there (about $9)...expensive compared to Vero, but what can you do? The movie didn't shed the greatest light on Israel (towards the end) but it was still pretty powerful. Paintball...yes, I said Paintball. I went and played paintball for the first time ever, in a city called Herzliya, 1.5 hrs away from Jerusalem. There were about 30+ kids who got to go (you had to register) and approximately <10 girls there. We played at night which made the adrenaline rush even more intense because you couldn't see at all. I got hit three times, once in the leg and twice in the head. My team lost, but it was still really fun to play. Anyways, I've made this one long enough too. I don't have any pictures of the activities mentioned in this email, but I will include a picture of my closest friends here. From left to right, they are Carly, Julia, Me, and Alyza. I haven't figured out how to caption photos like Amit and Dena, so you'll have to deal with this. Love, Talia

Starting Week Two...

My Israel journey continues, although it's really just begun. I'm beginning week 2, where hopefully the overwhelmingness, confusing, state of constant being-lost-ness, and most other new things start to become slightly more familiar. Ulpan, my Hebrew class continues quite smoothly. I'm definitely a little more advanced than this class, but I am learning new words. My voice is slowly returning, so now I should be able to participate more in class and use the Hebrew I'm learning. My Ulpan schedule varies each day, but as of right now, I'm spending anywhere from 2-6 hours a day in Ulpan, usually beginning at 8:15 am. I'm not a fan at all of these early starts, but it does leave the rest of the day to figure out what to do. I'm also slightly swamped with homework right now because I'm making up the stuff the class did before I switched into it. So far, living in Israel has been one big experiment with the most common answer to ANY question from anyone being "I don't know?" Included in that experiment has been eating. Happily, almost everything here is KOSHER!!! So I don't have to go to a restaurant or grocery store and look at what's in the package to see if I can eat it. And I'm not the only one like that anymore...what a nice feeling not to be in the minority anymore. As for cooking at home, that's been an adventure too because our kitchen is missing several items most Americans are used to: an oven, a microwave, dishwasher, disposal. But I'm making many yummy dishes, and occasionally going out to try food in Israel. Speaking of food, I definitely have to tell you about my experience in the Shuk (market). First of all, the Shuk is way cheaper than the grocery store close to me (which ironically is called Mister Zol, which means Mister Cheap). Second of all, as you'll see in the pictures which actually don't do them justice, the vegetables and fruit in the shuk are absolutely gorgeous looking. Brightly colored, big and healthy looking, and cheap!! And there's hundreds of them. In fact there are about 10-15 stands selling the same things! The Shuk is essentially a long hallway with these stands on both sides, so there's only one road to walk in. Now imagine packing that in with thousands of people. This may not be the case every day, but I went on a Friday from 12-2, which is right before Shabbat (the Sabbath), which is when most Jews go in order to get their food before Shabbat. I happily got my Rugalach from Marzipan (an amazing desert in a chocolate flavor for me, that I was introduced to by my sister 5 years ago) and some yummy fruits in addition. My Friday ended with me and my roommates making a wonderful Shabbat dinner, where the female roomies said the blessing over Shabbat candles and our Israeli roomie leading the longer version of the wine blessing in very rapid Hebrew. I'm on the tail end of my cold, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I'm going to spend the rest of my Shabbat doing just that, resting. Until next time... Shabbat shalom to my Jewish readers and have a nice weekend to the rest! -Talia

One Week Gone

I have now been in Jerusalem for one entire week, and a few other exciting things have gone down. I've begun Ulpan, Level Bet 1 (translation: all foreign students to Hebrew University are required to enroll in an intensive Hebrew course for one month prior to classes. I'm in the intermediate level, a little below where I came from with my Hebrew in Michigan, but my last semester of Hebrew at Michigan was a little too hard for me; so this is a pretty good level for me.) However, it took a little while to get me placed right, as the administration had me in the wrong level, so I did a lot of switching and saying things like "Shmi Talia ve ani m'Florida" (translation: My name is Talia and I'm from Florida). I've been doing mostly review, but I am definitely learning new words. The hardest thing is still mustering up the confidence to use what I learn.

I would have to say the most exciting thing this week was last night, where I went to Beh Yehuda street area to a couple different bars to watch and celebrate the inauguration of President Obama! Through connections, there was a bar that was essentially closed off to a bunch of us Americans from Rothberg to watch the inauguration, and after which, we went to a couple different places. I went with my roommate Julia and her friend Abram to another pub, which was essentially an American Pub in Jerusalem. They had decorations up everywhere to celebrate Prez. Obama and it was pretty exciting. An interesting thing about some of the pubs that I've been to. Whenever you sit down to order, they bring out a large basket of yummy popcorn, for free, for you to munch on while drinking. Can't get better than that! And somehow, the one drink that I ordered from this pub was red, white, and blue (as you'll see in the attached picture). I did not intend to do that and nothing in the name of the drink indicated it would come out as such, but it was pretty fun to have that. Then our little trio joined up with about 15 more, which then collected more people, so all in all, about 20+ Americans celebrated loudly in a bar called Zolli's, in Jerusalem. I can't imagine what life will be like here when elections happen, all the Israelis maybe celebrating?

Unfortunately, I'm still a bit sick from my travels. I have almost no voice and I'm not feeling completely healthy, but I'll get there. It's pretty amazing to be here though, regardless of being sick or not. And it gets even better when I start seeing friends here. I went with a friend named Lital to her house for dinner, which was very nice (Lital was actually originally Ali's friend, but since she moved back here, I have swooped her up as a great friend and connection). I have also continued to make contact and hang out with my Israeli friends from summer camp.

Will continue to update you as things happen. Enjoy living in a new era back home (hopefully!)

I leave you with: עם ישראל חי! (The nation of Israel lives!)

-טליה (Talia, if you couldn't figure it out) :)