life force

i had a great time in israel, but i am going to love munich i can tell.

the air is crisp, cold (4 degrees C), and fresh.  i feel relaxed.

No big deal

Serenity (not the valley or the ship)

After the constant verbal male harrassment and pollution of the otherwise lovely Cairo, staying with my cousin Tami and her family on Moshava Kinneret in the Galilee is such a nice wind down.  Cairo was great, but I was so dirty and sweaty and always lost.  I stayed with a great guy in CSing that Courtney Robinson connected me to.  I saw Sufi dancing and pyramids and the synagogue Rabbi Ben Ezra rebuilt.

I then weathered a terrible 19 hours of travel.  A 10 pm night bus out of Cairo was not a treat.  I was the only single female traveler on it.  And while people left me alone, I got a lot of looks.  Deciding to actually sleep on it, I took a sleeping pill, which helped, but left me disoriented at all stops.  It was only once I was safely in Tami's car in Haifa and I told her did I realize that taking a sleeping pill in that situation was probably not a real smart thing to do, safety wise.  I arrived in Taba at 5:30 am and walked to the border and crossed into Israel by 615.  Took a cab to the bus station in Eilat (that ride was more expensive by 5 shekels each time I took it) and sat until 8 am for the bus to Tel Aviv.  That bus got in at 1 pm.  I sat until the 1:30 bus to Haifa.  Arrived at 2:45 pm and waited until 3:30 for Tami to pick me up near some tech center.  Then we drove to her house on the Moshava.  At 5:30 I finally sat down in her house and ate some homemade food.  

Then we went to a ceremony run by the moshava's children for Rabin rememberence day.  Didn't understand a word.  Then a lovely dinner and bed.  Today I woke at 10 am, tried to make breakfast and get online.  Neither worked.  Very confused went back to bed.  Apparently the power went out around 9 am.  Slept until 2 pm when I was woken for lunch then read a bit and went to the lake to swim.  Then dinner and a nice talk with Tami and Amit. 

Tomorrow, however, Lior's father is leaving Tiberias at 930 am from his sisters, which saves me a ride but ruins my sleeping in plans.  So I'm getting up at 7 am and going for a morning kayak and swim in the lake with Amit, then catching a bus to Tiberias, where Lior's dad will pick me up.  I'll be in Tel Aviv by 11:30 am.  On Friday midday I switch to Uri and Ella's, where I will stay until I leave Israel on Monday.

Honestly, my family is so wonderful and so are my friends.  I miss Adel, his cat, and Christina, who made Cairo so wonderful.  But I also love being with family.  I know that some day I will go to Egypt again and see other parts (especially Sinai), and of course I will come back to Israel.  So for the first time since getting to Israel, I'm okay with the idea of leaving.  Something to do with the Kinneret...and overwhelming sense of peace and, yes, serenity.

I did this thing

where i got kinda spontaneous.  anyway i'm in cairo, egypt.  i saw the sufi dancing show and then the pyramids of giza.  guess which i was more in awe of?  

i go back to israel on the night bus tomorrow (monday) and arrive at the taba border somewhere around 4 or 5 am.  some  night bus, huh?  where do i go then?  no idea.  gotta call tami and see if her and ahmit are at home or in eilat.  if home, to the kinneret, i hope.  otherwise....uh....tel aviv i guess.  no idea.

Fwd: picspam

1. Amsterdam.

2. A quote by Janathon Saffron Fower in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam.  How accurate.

3. Rhine River Valley, Germany

4. Lock bridge, Koln, Germany

5. Yup, I am a child.

6. I fell asleep on the curb across fromt his synagogue in 2004.  Prague.

7. What a tourist! 

8. Going for a dip in the Dead Sea.

9. Bird watching in the Hulah Valley

10. Ba'hai Gardens, Haifa, Israel

11. The same.

Ani lo mevinah Ivrit.

And I don't understand Russian either.  But thanks for assuming I did.

 

I'm in Israel now, have been for almost 2 weeks.  We spent a few days in Tel Aviv, met my dad's cousin Uri and his wife and kids (Ella, Ron and Hadar, respectively) and then went to Jerusalem.  After that we went to visit family friends Raz and his family down on Moshav V'at Kikar, I think.  A Moshav is a place where the community works and farms together like a Kibbutz, but people have private property and such.  Their moshav is by the Dead Sea and they grow dates.  Really really good dates.  Their tiny daughter is adorable, but after 5 minutes in a car with her I was ready to throw her out the window.  This is why I am not having children.  Ever.

 

After the moshav we picked Evan up in Tel Aviv (he chose to stay with Uri) and went to Haifa.  We stayed in an empty apartment that mom and dad's friend owns with her siblings since their mother's death.  But no one had been there in a LOOOONNNG time.  How do we know?  We found a bird skeleton on the couch.  No feathers, no organs, no skin anymore.  Just the skeleton.  It looked really cool, but I felt bad for it.  From that apartment, we went to Safed, Moshav Kinneret (where dad's other cousin Tami lives with her family who is awesome), and some other town or two.  Tami and her husband are marine biologists and they invented a sunscreen that neautralises jelly fish stings.  Totally safe swimming. 

 

Now we are back in Tel Aviv.  On Monday my parents and brother leave Israel.  I will take a bus to Jerusalem to see Rachel Marder (who I ran into at Simchat Torah services at some synangogue), Mari, and MichelleAran, both of whom are at the University of Jerusalem for the year.  Then I will go to Eilat and snuba diving I hope at the reef Mark told me is amazing near the Princess Hotel.  From Eilat I am going to Cairo, Eygpt to see pyramids and stay with a friend of Courtney Robinson's.  From there back to Haifa to spend a day with Haley Panneton, who has started her year of university there.  Hopefully another day at Moshav Kinneret (the lake is probably my favortie place to be in in Israel) and a night at the cousins'.  Then back to tel Aviv for my last 4 or 5 days to stay with Lior half the time and Uri half the time. 

 

The 25th I go to Munich, hopefully not all the way to Prague (gonna try to not get on my connecting flight).  I fly back to London on October 29th at 7 am (gross).  If I have the time in Munich, I am going to go to the Dachu Concentration Camp. 

 

I will be back in London for Halloween, although lord knows where I am going to stay.  I've got 3.5 weeks in the UK.  I'm hoping to visit Wales (yay, AshKitty!), Manchester, Liverpool, York, Bath, and maybe Brighton or the Costwalds to visit Hermione's family homestead.  I fly back to California on November 22nd and plan to spend the following month in a complete depression (save seeing Natalie) of having to live in Elk Grove and not Israel or London. 

 

Man, when I put it like that, my trip is practically over.  (It's moments like this I have to remind the depression to wait until I get home.)

 

And in really important news, I am now the owner of bright pink (yes, Meredith, pink) jeans that Lior didn't want.  Hehe.  I love them.