שבוע שלם...

On Tuesday, I spent all day in Jerusalem at an aliyah seminar.  Many different speakers came, and I learned some things that I hadn't known before--about the amount of money the government throws at you when you move to Israel along with many other incentives.  It kind of turned me off to aliyah, however.  To some degree, it's a catch-22.  I would love free money and easier military service, but I don't want to be treated like a useless citizen who needs Israel's help with everything.  Easily the most important part of the day was talking to other people at the seminar (like Alon and Noah) who are in similar situations to myself with regards to their citizenship and cultural upbringing.  Honestly, the seminar was somewhat a waste of my time.  One or two speakers would have been helpful, but so many different people came in with the same thing to say that it got to be irritating.  In any case, it was at least another chance for me to think about making aliyah and get answers to some questions I had.  I'm still not entirely settled on either side of the issue, though.

Tuesday night, Garin Tzedek had a meditation/yoga/"boundary breakers" activity at the Jewish agency on the other side of town.  All told, it was really excellent.  We all got to know each other better than we had before and spent a relaxing evening together.  After that, I headed home and went to bed.

Wednesday, I woke up and went to work at Cecilia's--nothing new or particularly funny from that morning, although Cecilia did tell me about a new gan that ended up being near Cera's apartment, so she works there now.  That gan now has both Vivian and Raffein--I had been wondering what happened to them!  Apparently, the ganim are split up by the Sudanese tribes, and Cecilia's is Dinka while the new one is Nuba.

A little while after volunteering, I went to Ulpan and immigration class.  Eti was in a tremendously bad mood in Ulpan, but then in immigration we watched a pretty cool movie about a Syrian man who is an illegal immigrant and drummer in America.  After this, I went home and we had a mifgash dira with Eli that went disastrously.  Roni showed up and decided that our apartment was so dirty that we are going to have three mifgashei dira this week to ensure that we've improved.  That night, Jordan, Simon and I watched "Adaptation," but I fell asleep in the middle and climbed up to my bed after (apparently) saying "I'm going upstairs."

Thursday, I woke up relatively early for the siyur to Ketura.  We were toured around the Kibbutz a bit by David Facter (who has lost a preposterous amount of weight, but still maintains the same humor while talking about artificially inseminating the cows) before going to the Kasui sand dunes.  Those sand dunes are possibly one of the most amazing places I've ever been to.  When I was there on Machon, we ran down them and watched the sun set and stars rise as it got dark, and I felt more alive while simultaneously insignificant and small than I had ever felt in my entire life.  This time was not as special, both because it was in the middle of the day and because the sand was still a bit wet from the rain earlier in the week.  Regardless, it was fun to run down the dunes.

We then got dropped off in Eilat--I went to the field school there to find out information about hiking up a beautiful mountain trail called Har Tzfachot for Friday morning.  This hike ended up being amazing, I'll try to put up pictures of it later.  The weekend was basically spent celebrating Ben Klein's birthday, which was lots of fun.  Even though everyone else got very drunk and I am still in no-drink January, it was a good time.  I honestly don't like Eilat that much though.  At its most basic, the city is just a touristy area.  We visited for the weekend, and yeah, we went on a pretty awesome hike, but the centerpiece of the experience was drinking--something we could have done in Arad or almost anywhere else in Israel.  The biggest downside to Eilat was having to pay the hostel we were staying at 3 shekels in order to use a towel for the weekend--if I'm going to pay three shekels for a towel, I expect that it will either be an excellent towel or that I will get to keep it.  Neither of these conditions were met.

On the last day we were in Eilat (Saturday), Cera, Lizzy and I met some really interesting people at the beach before we caught our bus.  One of the people worked for Hot (a big cable company in Israel) and liked mizrahi (eastern) music, advising me to stay away from Eyal Golan.  This other guy had never left Israel in his life, spoke absolutely no English, and was born and raised in the desert town of Be'er Sheva.  I feel like Eilat was his first time ever being outside of his neighborhood area--he seemed like a friendly country boy, if you know what I mean (he also had a provincial way of speaking).

Then, this morning I went to volunteering, which was the same thing as always.  Lots of kids came today, so there was plenty of work and I didn't leave until 4.  I then went to optional class, which was, as always, a joke.  After this, I helped teach adults English at חן 15 before heading home.  I went for a run with Nathan, who now finally has running shoes, before spending a quiet night here.  I'm running kilometers in just under 5 minutes, which makes my goal of finishing a 10k in 50 minutes for the Be'er Sheva race seem quite reasonable.  I'm excited.

Anywho, hopefully I'll put up some pictures soon and update more frequently--I know many funny things happened in the past week or so that I and you have now lost out on!  I hope all is well with you, and feel free to give me a call or send me a message sometime.  I'd love to hear from you--take it easy!