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!