Best Siyur Ever

Sunday night I and Nathan went over to Jake's to play some Beirut, which was pretty fun (although we got our asses handed to us).  Then we went to a park and hung out, swang, played frisbee, and played some guitar until the cops told us we had to leave.  The first time this happened, I thought it was reasonable--the first time, people were being fairly loud and smoking hookah and generally being obnoxious.  This time, however, and the past couple of times (but particularly this one), we weren't being loud.  We were playing the guitar and singing with hushed tones.  Honestly, I begin to suspect that the police just drive around looking for groups of teenagers to break up.  I heavily doubt that someone in the surrounding apartments called, because it would have been almost impossible to hear us unless they were sleeping with the window open and had a two-way walkie-talkie in their room and next to us.  But anyway.

I went back to the apartment that night after meeting Adi's boyfriend, and she called me and told me she had a lot more friends who were at the beach with her--but I really had to be up early the next day, so I couldn't go.

Yesterday, I was supposed to be at Ulpan at 6:45 so we could go to Jerusalem--hence I planned to wake up at 6.  However, since I sleep like a brick, I woke up at 6:45 and rushed to Ulpan, getting lucky enough to catch a bus.  Ephy woke me up because he was annoyed by my alarms that had been going off since 6--he was also going with me.

Speaking of Ephy, I keep having these terrible dreams where parts of Year Course are over and I can't remember them, and Ephy has to describe them to me, and I can never tell if he's lying.  In the first dream it was all of Year Course, and in the second it was the latter two months of Bat Yam.  I hope this doesn't happen.

So we got up preposterously early to go to Jerusalem, and everyone was tired (Simon hadn't slept all night:

)

To go to the Kotel, the holiest site in Judaism, which is the only remaining wall of the (twice) destroyed temple:


We went to Jerusalem so early to hear Birkat HaCohenim, a blessing that the Cohens give to all pilgrims during Succot (the pilgrimage holiday going on now).  This was pretty boring, because, as you can see, the Kotel was packed, and it was impossible to make it to the interesting part (the wall itself).  After standing outside for 2 hours, we finally met up again, and walked around Jerusalem a bit.  We got lunch, and then took a tour of Me'ah Shearim (100 Gates), an extremely religious neighborhood.  This was actually kind of interesting--the people seemed almost Amish, refusing to use anything made past the 1800s--they watch no television, don't use computers, etc.  Some of them were also very offended by the presence of people "less" religious than they--near the entrance of the neighborhood, a girl covered her little brother's eyes as he walked past us so he wouldn't see.  Later on, a child told Noa (our madricha) to, literally translated "Shutup" and "Shut her fucking mouth" when she told girls to walk ahead of us.  The tour guide, Nir, told us that he has often been yelled at when he's taken groups through the neighborhood.  As we ended the tour, we were sitting on some stairs, and a woman approached us and asked us to leave so she and her husband could go upstairs to their home without having to have their children see us.  Just how religious are these people?  Many of them don't believe Israel should be a state until the Messiah comes, hence, they don't pay taxes, don't go to the army, and some of them even feel this strongly:

It makes me feel secure knowing that these people live in Israel.

Anyway, after that we returned to Bat-Yam and I took a long nap before going to the beach, where I got entirely too drunk for my own good--if I wasn't sure of them before, I'm now positive of my limits.

Today, however, was the best siyur ever.  We went to Zichron Yaakov, a city about 20 minutes away from Haifa, and spent the morning in a museum for a Zionist spy group in WWI Palestine, fighting against the Turks.  It was fairly interesting.  We were then given an hour to go get lunch, so Simon, Ohad, Scott and I went to a delicious kebab place.  It started raining very heavily, which was cool (I always think the rain in Israel is amazing).

After, we went to a place by the beach where they harvest tchelet, the dye used in making the tzitzit on a tallas blue.  While there we watched a short film and created the dye of the raw materials, then went snorkeling for the snails that the dye is made of.  It was extremely fun, we got to put on snorkeling gear and just walk out into the ocean by ourselves.  I didn't find any of the snails, but Simon, Nathan, Aaron and I did find this massive crab that looked like it could kill us.

And then we returned home.  In all regards, today has been an excellent day.