"200 Shekels!"

Tuesday morning, I awoke and went to Cecilia's gan. This was business as usual, although I've started to expand my repertoire with the children--I now laser in on their noses with my finger and chase them around, in addition to other games (such as hoopa hoopa rider, a game my grandpa played with me where you shake someone up and down in your lap, sing some weird song to them in yiddish, and then end with dropping them lightly).

That night, at about 5:45, a group of people met at the mall to go back to 15 חן (the building Cecilia's gan has moved to now, because for some reason she has moved out of her own place) and teach Sudanese children English. The kids were quite rowdy and it was hard to herd them all into the building in the first place, much less teach them. This time, all we did was administer a placement test, so that next time we can break them up into groups based on their knowledge and teach them relevant things. Many of the kids knew almost no English, so it seems we have a lot of work to do--I'm excited, to say the least. After the kids' class, we were supposed to have an adult class, but only two Sudanese showed up, and they were there for a Hebrew class with a different person. We need to talk to Peter (the community's education minister) about this, although I mentioned it to Joseph (the head of the community) when I met with him on Thursday.

Anywho, after that, Garin Tzedek hosted "Fear Pong" at the Ulpan. This was a pretty fun activity--if you've never played, it's basically like beer pong, except there are 4 teams and 4 tables, and instead of beer you use water. On the bottom of each cup is a dare, and when someone on the team opposite of you makes a shot, they choose a person on your team to do the dare before they see it. The event was a great amount of fun: lots of people showed up and did some ridiculous dares, and Scott got his ass kicked (everyone made sure when we were making teams not to put any good people on Scott's team, because they thought he would be excellent).

Wednesday morning, I woke up and went to Cecilia's gan once again. I'll put up some pictures of the kids soon--they are all very cute, but can become vicious and pugnacious when something doesn't go their way.

I think working in a gan has given me a lot more patience. My favorite thing about it is when I am trying to calm a kid down and they end up falling asleep in my arms. Knowing that I've somehow conquered their wailing and crying makes me feel accomplished and ecstatic. At the end of one of these sessions, I always think to myself, "damn right you're asleep." There is nothing quite like that feeling. :)

Wednesday afternoon, I went to Ulpan once again. Eti is a great teacher--much better than Hana in Bat Yam. This time, we went over the names of some animals and the names of the noises they make, and then made skits with a moral. Eti assigned us the animals we were going to be, and I was a hippopotamus. Nathan and Karin were in my group--Nathan was a monkey and Karin was a deer. What we ended up doing was having Nathan and Karin come up to me relaxing in a pond to ask for water. I denied them quite harshly, and then, less than a minute later, went up to them to ask for food. They, of course, denied me--and the story could have ended here, with the moral that you have to share. Instead, I proceeded to eat Karin. Then, Nathan snuck off and poisoned my water. We initially had me die from getting back in the water, but the final version had me coming back to the pond, sniffing it for poison, realizing that Nathan was trying to kill me, and then devouring him. Thus the moral of our story ended up being "assholes finish first." After Ulpan, I went to my mandatory class about immigration. It's a good class, although I get this sense from the teacher that she hates all of us. We watched an Israeli movie about immigrants moving into the Negev called "סוף העולם שמאלה", "At the end of the world, Left." It's a pretty out-there movie, and some parts of it are somewhat softcore porn, but I've seen it in my Ulpan class in Bat Yam before this, so I wasn't too surprised. Many parts of it were in French, though, so this time, when we watched it with subtitles, I understood a lot of subplots I hadn't when we watched it in our Ulpan class.

We got let out of class early, so I headed home and went for a quick run before our activity with our madrichim that night, which ended up being watching the movie "Into the Wild." It was a pretty good one, and it was the first time I'd gotten to see some people in a while, which was nice. The movie was a little frustrating at the end (Nathan was VERY aggravated), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. After this, I went and hung out at Cera's apartment for a little bit, then headed home.

Thursday was possibly one of the worst siyurim (tours) I've ever been on. We went to Be'er Sheva, a big city nearby, to meet the Bedouins there. Bedouins, as I think I've said before, are an Arab people who used to be nomadic but are more or less sedentary now. We started at a Bedouin shuk, which was by far the best part of the day. Nathan, Scott and I bought a frying pan for the apartment for cheap (20 shekels, about 5 dollars). As we were trying to get it, I used my secret haggling technique, which consists of bargaining upwards (i.e. a vendor tells you that a frying pan costs 30 shekels, so you say "200"). This may sound foolish, but it's worked for me before in Battery Park in America. Once, a man was trying to sell me clearly fake (or stolen or both) sunglasses for 10 dollars, and I said a hundred, and he was just like "aright then, a dollar" and I bought them. Unfortunately, it would appear that the mentality of shuk owners here is much different, because when I offered 200, the guy just said "fine, I'll gladly take 200." We promptly walked away. After the shuk, we went to the tent of a Bedouin woman (a taboo in their culture) who is unmarried (a taboo in their culture), and owns her own business (a taboo in their culture) selling organic cosmetics (a taboo in their culture). We got served tea and listened to her sister talk about her life for an hour or so. It was interesting. Then we went to a memorial for soldiers who died acquiring the Negev, which was cool and had lots of strange architecture. After this, our tour guide, Amir, left us. Amir was extraordinarily hairy--he had hair groping up his back that came out of his shirt and seemed like it was trying to wrestle his head hair down. He reminded me of Magilla the Gorilla. After he left, we went to downtown Be'er Sheva (a big city nearby) for lunch. Then the siyur ended. Although some parts of it were interesting, the siyur on the whole was just boring and drawn-out. I guess I expected more exciting siyurim in the Negev, since there are so many cool hiking opportunities in the area.

Thursday afternoon, Scott, Nathan and I were the only ones in the apartment. After I went for a run (I am doing kilometers in less than 5 minutes now, a new high for me), we cleaned up a bit and had pasta with delicious sauce (specially prepared by Nathan). That night, we watched the movie "Alpha Dog" with Anna, Miki, and Cari. I would tell you how I felt about it, but I fell asleep in the middle--it was good up until then though. For some reason, I was just wiped that day. Friday, Scott and I woke up late, as Nathan left for Jerusalem in the morning. We went on a hike with Cari, Miki, and Jordan in the Northwest part of Arad, following the blue trail and then the red one. It was a good hike, and about a third of the way in we found a hole in the desert that we want to explore sometime later on (we went there again today, but had to head back before we arrived because it was getting dark). Judging by timing how long it took a rock to hit the bottom of the hole, which we could not see, it's about 12 meters deep or so. It should be exciting to explore once we take the necessary precautions (such as bringing climbing rope, among other things). After the hike, we had a joint Shabbat dinner and then watched the second Harry Potter before Scott and I returned home to sleep.

Today was kind of just a relaxing day to stay home and get some things done--cleaning, writing, putting pictures up, etc. Like I said, we tried to go back to the hole, but it was getting darker and we were descending deeper into the wadi, so we decided to head back. I have heard coyotes and other animals screeching in the depths of the desert at night sometimes, so I thought it wise to give it up.

And now Scott and I are back in the apartment, awaiting the arrival of almost everyone back to Arad--most people left town this weekend. I hope you have had a שבוע טוב, a good week, and an excellent Shabbat! I am sure I would love to talk to you sometime, please, send me an e-mail or call me on skype or something!