Playing Catch Up on the Last Few Weeks

Unfortunately (or perhaps not) I have seemingly had no time to recount what has happened in the past few weeks. Since my trip to the Golan and the election on the 10th, I have traveled to both Petra and Eilat, Haifa, and experienced Purim in Israel, not to mention classes started about two and a half weeks ago. A big group of kids from Rothberg went to Eilat for the weekend between the end of Ulpan and the beginning of class because we had a long weekend and the weather was supposed to be beautiful. Eilat, for those who don't know, is in the southern part of Israel, right next to Jordan, which sits on the Gulf of Aqaba, thus providing some beautiful beach areas. We arrived Thursday night and because we were getting up extremely early the next morning to make it to the border, we didn't have time to do much. The Yitzak Rabin border crossing is open from 8 am to 8 pm on Fridays but in order to beat the rush of the tour groups (who go straight to passport control), according to all the research I did online, it was advisable to get to the border around 7 am. We were one of the first groups of people there, but that didn't make crossing time any less because, while we crossed first, we had to go exchange money to Jordanian dinar while all the tour groups passed up to wait in line for their passports. Crossing the border was very much an experience in and of itself. After getting my passport checked on the Israeli side, we had to go through one gate, walk through what was basically no-man's-land (the walkway between exiting Israel and entering Jordan), and then go through the checkpoint and wait to get my passport checked and stamped on the other side. The Jordanian soldiers hassled most of the girls, taking my passport and pretending to rip it, and refusing to give it back until I demanded it. We waited for about twenty more minutes waiting to get our passports stamped, and after our whole group (all thirteen of us) finally made it through, we met our drivers in the parking lot. Josh had arranged ahead of time to have a van and a car meet us for the meager priced of 23 US Dollars round trip, which is about 17 Jordanian Dinar, pretty good deal, especially because the trip to Petra is about 2 hrs and 15 mins. The drive was fantastic. As soon as we left the border, we drove through Aqaba and straight towards the mountains. There seemed to be one major road heading in the direction we were going because we were traveling with a pack of about 50 or so 18-wheelers carrying goods to different parts of Jordan. It's a very different country in terms of layout. Dispersed amongst the mountains were villages small and far between. The villages we drove past seemed to be sparsley populated and very simple. On the way back, we drove along a different road, because we drove through a much more highly populated city that seemed much more modern, but the way up was a different story. We got to Petra around 12, and since the border closed at 8 pm and we wanted to make sure we got back in time, that left us around 5 hours to see what we could in Petra.
Petra was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. We entered the park walking down a dirt road, split into two by a divider, the other side being the path for horses. Along the sides of the road were what looked like houses carved into the stone and other structures. As we were walking, a group of three men on horses were riding up in the other direction holding up a 100 shekel bill. They stopped us and asked if we could make change for it in either dinar or US dollars, which we didn't think we had, but before we could refuse any more, they had gotten off their horses and offered us free rides to the top of the siq if we would make the change. Josh ended up finding enough to make change and we got to ride horses down to where we were heading. It wasn't a very long way, probably 4 minutes by horse. The men were very interested in Talia and I, not surprisingly as most foreign men I have met in these situations seem to be interested in foreign women especially if they are from the States. My rider ended up asking if there was any way he could get me to come back to Jordan, if I had an address, or a phone number. I smiled politely, looked down at my phone in my pocket of my backpack and said no. Free rides are one thing, giving out any information to anyone unknown was something completely different. It was nice to ride the horse though so I didn't mind much.
We made it to the top of the siq where we paused for a few pictures and then began our descent through the gorge. The siq is a long stone path leading down to the Treasury that runs through high walls of stone, much like a canyon. Along the sides of the siq you could sea busts of statues carved into the stone and a waterway along the edge carved into the stone, which is how they transported water downwards. We didn't have a tourguide so I don't know much about the siq other than the little that I read up on, but it was breathtaking. As we neared the end of the siq, I began to catch glimpses of something at the "end of the tunnel." As we continued walking, slowly but surely, the Treasury seemed to emerge out of nowhere. Anyone who has seen Indiana Jones knows what the Treasury is and how amazing it is to see it appear at the end of this long gorge/canyon walk. The Treasury is built into a huge rockface. Unfortunately you can't go in anymore but you can go up and see the inside. There isn't much to see inside, so I've been told, but the outside is truly amazing to look at. We mulled around for a bit, but decided that if we wanted to get up to the Monastery with enough time to spend time up there, we'd better start heading up. We knew we wanted to take donkeys up and walk down, but we had to find the donkeys first. The guy who ended up taking us up ripped us off big time (we paid 10 dinar when we should have gotten it for 4 tops, probably even 1) but in many ways it was worth it because he was fantastic, pointing various things along the way, including what looked like an elephant carved in the stone siding, and a lion at the top of a mountain in stone, and being very hospitable, although I would be too if I made 10 dinar a person for taking 4 people up on donkeys. Riding donkeys is MUCH more difficult than I had imagined, especially when they are taking you up 900+ stone steps to the top of a mountain. My donkey's name was Alex and liked to travel along the edge. I kept being reassured that he wouldn't walk off the edge, I just need to stay centered on the donkey. Easier said than done. Talia's donkey, perhaps appropriately named Bob Marley, took her for a ride. He not only ran her into a tree, from which she still has the remnants of a bruise from, but he rode her so close to one of the tables that the local women have set up to sell jewelry, that he ripped her pants leg on nails sticking out of one of the tables. From that close call she came out unscathed physicially, but her pants fared worse. On the way back down, the woman whose table ripped her pants recognized her and invited us into her little cave area where she was sitting with her daughter to drink tea and spend some time. Also along the way we saw a group of mountain goats making their way up. I had never seen mountain goats up close and personal before so needless to say I did my best to take pictures while struggling to keep myself on my donkey. In the end I was successful and have some pretty cool pictures to show for it.
When we finally made it up to the top where the Monastery and lookout points were, I was ready to get off of my camel. With the donkey it was about a 35/40 minute trek. It probably would've taken us about 50+ minutes by foot, so it saved us a bit of time. The Monastery, as the Treasury, was huge and fantastic. Again, there wasn't much to look at inside, but the structure itself was incredible and towered over everything else. From there we decided to find the lookout points, of which there were two. Both were referred to as the "View from the end of the world" because you could see so far from the top. The views were breathtaking. I didn't quite know what I was looking at, but I was told you could see Israel from where we were looking and since the visibility was great that day, I guess I was looking at Jordan and Israel. We spent a long time walking around, looking down from the different viewpoints and enjoying the beautiful, albeit a bit chilly, day. We even had time to make our own stone sculpture, mimicking many of the piled stone structures we saw on the paths up to the viewpoints. We also made our way over to one of the viewpoints where a group of Jordanians were sitting outside of a tent playing music.
We left with enough time just to make it back to the entrance to meet up with our driver and head back. On the way back down we got to look at all the tables of jewelry we had passed without stopping on the way up, but I wasn't really prepared to buy anything. All of the women at these tables were selling basically the same things and charging much more than they were worth. I didn't know if they were as poor as the looked or if they used their disheveled looking kids to try to get people to buy the stuff, but I tended to want to think they weren't doing that. I was used to being hassled by people to buy things, but I was still fascinated every time I passed one of these tables. The woman who invited is in for tea said that she lived in Petra, or right outside of Petra, and came here every day to sell her jewelry to tourists.
Before we got back to the Treasury and the Siq, we stopped to explore the Brown University Excavation site. As soon as we got up the stairs, Josh looks at me, motioning for me to take out my frisbee. Of course I have it because I carry it everywhere, on every trip, so I get it out and he makes his way back down the stairs to the other side of the platform, which is separated by a big drop. I throw it to him, so far so good. He returns the throw, but instead of going anywhere near me, it flies past me and lands in a large stone pit. My one frisbee I bring to Israel gets lost in Petra. Well, not exactly lost. We could see it, and if I had really wanted to, I could have climbed down the very shaky sides of the stone pit and retrieved it but I wasn't willing to risk my life for it just yet. Thus, my Sparkle Motion disc is sitting at the bottom of a pit in Petra. But it makes for a good story, right?
We were all exhausted from a very long day spent driving and walking around so most of us slept on the ride back. I couldn't sleep for very long, but it was very dark so I couldn't see much for most of the ride, especially because the major roads aren't as well lit as they are in the States. In fact, there weren't reflectors on the road for most of the time and lits were few and far between. Every time our driver went over 120 km/h his car would ding and a light would start flashing. In order to pass anyone, or to let them know he was coming up behind them, he would flash his brights at them. Driving in Jordan, much like Israel, is a very different experience from back home. People are more aggressive and there seem to be more exceptions to driving rules, rules of the road really created by the people who are driving and less by what is taught to them. Needless to say we arrived back to the border safely. We ended up crossing right in time and making it over at 8 pm on the dot. Why did it take us so long? Because our friend Aran's father is Israeli, so they questioned him twice about his family, if he spoke Hebrew, why he wasn't in the army, etc. We also had to get our bags checked through machines coming back on the Israeli side, which was much more than we had going in. But we made it through fine, got back to our Hostel, relaxed for a bit, and went out, though it was a pretty early night because we were all extremely tired. The next day was spent lounging at the beach, walking along the boardwalk, which was similar in many ways to Wildwood or down the Jersey shore, and just had a relaxing day. That night we went out, ended up eating at this russian restaurant for Joe's birthday where Talia and I split a mixed grill dish for 95 shekels (the equivalent of about $15 each) for the most mead I've had in a really long. It was accompanied by rounds of pita and different spreads and dips, more than any of us could handle, but well worth it. They brought Joe out a bowl of ice cream with a sparkler, but what was funny was that he couldn't eat it because it was dairy and he had just had a meat meal. Oh well, guess it's the thought that counts!
The next morning a few of us got up really early to catch the 7 am bus back to Jerusalem because we had class at 12:30 and it takes about 4 hours to drive back. It had rained a lot back in Jerusalem, which flows down towards the dead sea and floods the roads. Fortunately for us, it had been long enough since the rain that we only had to drive through 3 spots where the road was still a bit flooded and it didn't prevent us from getting back on time. Along the way, driving past the dead sea, we passed the plants where they extract magnesium and other minerals from the water. We passed mounds and mounds of what I later realized was salt from the plant. I didn't know exactly what to think of it. One of Jordan's main sources of income is the magnesium from the dead sea, and Israel definitely benefits from it as well. But at the rate that the Dead Sea is shrinking, something needs to be done. But what do you tell a country who is so dependent upon this one thing, that they have to stop cultivating it and find a different means of subsistence? Just something to do think about.
Check out the slide show of pictures of everything I just described!



So that was my trip to Eilat/Petra. The weekend took a lot out of me but it was definitely worth it! I think this is it for now. The next chunk of time I get, I'll continue on with my weekend spent up in Haifa, and from there classes and Purim. Hope all is well with everyone!

Bibi and a Relaxing Weekend in the Golan

We've just started our second to last week of Ulpan today. It's amazing how much I've done in the past three weeks and how quickly time seems to be going by. This past Thursday a bunch of friends and I went to hear Benjamin Netanyahu speak at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near the Tachanat Mercazit (Central Bus Station) downtown.(Getting read for the panel)

For those of you who don't know, general elections are coming up on Tuesday to elect members to the Kinneset. Whichever party gets the highest percentage of votes and thus the most members of Kinneset gets to choose the new Prime Minister. When I came, I had little to no knowledge of the political atmosphere in Israel. Now, I have a slightly better idea of what is at stake, what the parties hope to accomplish, and who is the choice for each party for the seat of Prime Minister. Likud, the party which Netanyahu represents, is more conservative. Kadima is Tzipi Livni's party, Barak belongs to the Labor party, and Lieberman I'm not quite sure. I still don't have the strongest grasp on the whole situation nor what all the different parties have to say, because I haven't been to rallies for all of them nor have I read up on all of them unfortunately. Nonetheless, being at the Likud rally was pretty exciting. Rachel and I got interviewed by a lady with an eyepatch who writes for a British publication called the Sunday Times as to why we were there to get a better feel for who was at the rally. It was part of a last minute attempt to gain support from the Anglos in the country, as there are approximately 250,000 English speakers in Israel. I would venture out to say that about 75% of the people at the rally were 50 or over which doesn't really surprise me. The couple sitting behind us were from Scotland, another man behind us from Toronto and there were at least twenty Hebrew University students there as well. The mistress of ceremonies (whose name I don't recall) spoke about how important it is Israel votes for Likud and therefore for Netanyahu. Netanyahu's main points dealt with areas such as Gaza and education (advocating more Jewish education as, he argues, this is our land and we must continue to educate our children on their heritage and traditions). He argued that any of the other parties would not help the economy as he promised to do. He promised to create more jobs like he did back before he was prime minister in the late 90's and to help the economy get out of the global crunch faster than other countries. His policies on the Arab-Isreali conflict struck me as the most interesting. He seemed to be more conservative than some of the other parties in terms of what he said he was willing to give up and what he wasn't. He spoke to never going back to pre-1967 borders and not wanting to split Jerusalem. He attacked Livni arguing that her policies would only aid Hamas to continue what it was doing. The longer I'm here the more I'm learning about what really goes on in Gaza and the territories from either soldiers I know who have fought there or from reading the newspapers online every day. The more I read and speak with Israelis the more I find myself stuck in the middle on so much of what is going on. On one hand, there is obvious humanitarian distress occuring in Gaza, but at the same time much of it is self inflicted. A lot of the PR that Israel receives is skewed; at first one story goes out that is not always the whole truth, and when the whole truth does come out, it makes the 16th page of the newspaper and is completely overlooked. But there is also definite tension within Israel itself between Arab-Israelis and Jews. There doesn't seem to be any right or wrong within any of this, and I feel that so many people are looking to blame rather than to truly figure out a solution that can work. If Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinians in Gaza, shouldn't that say something about how the Palestinians feel towards Israel? But at the same time, Hamas has been creating schools and hospitals, so it would make sense that Palestinians would want to vote for them. The good that Hamas does doesn't nearly outweigh the destruction the group causes and the ideologies of death it puts forth, but it something to take into consideration. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all of this, but it's given me a lot to think about while I've been here, especially because I don't feel directly connected to a lot of what is going on. I feel, for the most part, simply an observer and not a participant as perhaps many of the Israelis feel.

On a completely different note, I spent the weekend in the Golan, a beautiful area in the North of Israel on the Kinneret. We left here at 6:30 am on Friday and our first stop was to go repelling, on an omega (a zip line) and to take the country's longest cable car. The day turned out to be perfect for everything we did. We got to choose between the omega and repelling, but only three of us ended up repelling. We repelled down a 42 meter cliff and then took a ten minute hike back up to the top to meet the group. I'd been repelling before but not on a real rock face. While it wasn't the most exciting thing I've ever done, it was definitely exhilirating. There's something to be said for walking over the edge of the cliff, letting go of your body, and trusting that what you're strapped into while hold you the whole way down. You get to control how far you bounce and how fast you go depending on how much slack or tension you give yourself. It felt great to be back in a harness and tied into the belay system, definitely made me miss the ropes course at camp :-). After we took the cable car back down, we were off to our second location: ATVing.(The leader of our caravan, one of the instructors who happened to have failed basically everyone he tested. He turned out to be a really cool guy) (I'm driving the second ATV from the front)
I realized once I got there that I had never actually seen an ATV before. It took a really long time for every took take the driving test and to be put into caravans and sent off. Not everyone got to drive the ATVs, so they got to drive these small off-roading Jeeps instead. A lot of kids failed for various reasons, but fortunately I passed and was able to take a passenger. It's really difficult to steer one of those things! The gas is controled by a little thumb lever on the right handle and the break is on the left handle In order to turn you really need to put all of your strenght into turning the handle bars. We were the second to last caravan to go out which lead to some craziness later, but the trip itself was fantastic. We began by weaving in and out of vineyards and then set off to the top of one of the Naftali mountains, which turned out to be about a 45 minute trip in all. (View from the Naftali Mountains)
When we were driving on the road we got to step on the gas and let ourselves go; it felt fantastic. The view from the top of the mountain was also something I will never forget. Spectacular. When we returned, we found out that the bus had already left with most of the kids to go eat lunch because we were running so late. We had to wait for the last caravan to return before we were bussed to the restaurant, only to find out that we couldn't sit down and eat and had to take the food to go because the restaurant was closed for shabbat and it was already almost shabbat. Unfortunately, we later found out, we missed the amazing hummus and guacamole in addition to salads, but the food we did have was really good. It was a little cold, but delicious. The only problem was we ate at around 3:30, 4, stuffed ourselves cause we hadn't eaten much other than chocolate rugelach, chocolate, and drank shock (chocolate milk in a bag) the whole morning, and we were supposed to eat dinner again 2 hours later at the hotel. That part of the day was extremely rushed between eating on the bus and not having a ton of time once we got to the hotel to relax and change for shabbat. Kabbalat shabbat was nice, different than I was used to because the men and women were separated, as the hotel was shomer shabbat and catered to an orthodox crowd. Dinner was amazing. It consisted of at least 4 different courses and lots of little things. Basically I ate enough the whole weekend to sustain me for the week but unfortunately food doesn't work like that :-). It was a relaxing weekend- we went out to the Kinneret and hung out on the beach for about two hours, looking at what stars we could see, and just chatting about various things. Shabbat morning we all slept in, did some more beach walking, a lot more eating, singing, praying, and at 7 pm we were back on the bus headed to Jerusalem. It was a short getaway but definitely worth it. A bunch of us want to all pitch in for a tent and go back to the Golan where there is great hiking and camping. It's the most lush and green part of the country because it's right next to the only fresh water source.

Right now, I'm getting ready to go the student center where I go every week, but this week is Tu B'shvat, one of the major agricultural holidays, so they are doing a seder with nuts, fruits, chocolate and apparently sushi, after which I have my learning session with Tsipora, an orthodox woman in the community (part of a dollars for learning program-i get paid to learn). After that it's back to finish some homework and crash because I am exhausted! I'm hoping to go to the zoo this week, so we'll see how that goes. Again, Tuesday is election day, so we don't have classes (but we do on friday the 13th to make up for it). A bunch of us might go early to Gan Sacher to play frisbee, but it might be raining. Don't have any definite plans right now and that's ok with me. I like being spontaneous especially here. Hope all is well in the states. I'd love to hear from you!

P.S. Kristen- you should comment so I know you're alive :-)