On Monday, I went to Pesach seder at my Uncle Yuval's house in Nirit. It was a good seder--for some reason, as a child, I remember the seder taking forever, but now and in the past several years it has always gone by excessively quickly. Whether this is due to my age or the fact that my Israeli relatives are quite secular and blaze through the Hagadah, I'm not entirely sure. In any case, dinner was delicious, and it was fun to sit around the table with family I haven't seen in a while. A couple of minutes before we left, I did an interview for an Israeli radio station about what it's like to be an American in Israel for Passover, which ended up being very short but interesting, as I discovered that most of the customs I'm used to for the seder are Israeli ones that aren't necessarily followed by American Jews. I'm just taking a wild guess here, but I think it's probably because my parents are Israeli.
On Tuesday, my grandfather drove me back to Jerusalem. I went for a quick run in an attempt to make up for slacking off the entire previous weekend and then jumped down to Beit Ar-El to see if anyone was home. There was almost nobody there (most people were either still at family or off on vacation somewhere), but on my way out I saw Arielle Stein, who needed a place to stay, which quickly turned into more people staying over, so we all had a nice sleepover that night. I was the only person who actually lived here in the apartment, which was strange but cool.
When I woke up on Wednesday, I went to Ben Yehuda street (which was most likely the first time I've been there during the day) to meet up with Elie, a girl going to Dartmouth next year who is also doing a gap year. We went to get coffee and talked about our respective years and our anticipations for Dartmouth next year--it was fun meeting someone who's going to be there and also decided to take a gap year.
Upon returning to the apartment that afternoon, I went to the gym for a bit before heading out with Jordan, Sam, and Mike to hike from the Mediterranean Sea to the Kinneret, going all the way across Israel. I have wanted to do this trip for a long time, and it ended up being very fulfilling. Here is the breakdown:
Wednesday
We arrived at the Tel Aviv train station around 6 and took a train to Israel's northernmost coastal city, Nahariya. It was so far North that I have never even heard of it. On the train ride there, Jordan and I got into an argument about whether "babyface" is a word in Hebrew. It's not, Israelis just know some English phrases like that, but in any case, Jordan asked a young girl sitting in the booth across from us if Sam had a "babyface." We ended up making small talk without her throughout the ride, and, near the end, we asked her how old she was. I always think that Israelis look much older than they are, but typically this also works in reverse. We were guessing somewhere around 17 or maybe 18, only to find out that she was 14. This made it extra creepy when, after we got off, she asked Jordan (and only Jordan, out of the 4 of us) for his facebook. Anyway, we got off in Nahariya and ate a big plate of shwarma from a kosher for Passover place. We then walked north to "Achziv" beach, where we were planning on spending the night. On the way there, Mike refused to wait to poop, which ended in disaster, and we wondered once out loud "where can we get wood for a fire tonight?" before immediately seeing it to our left. It was quite a walk, and, once we got to Achziv, we found out it cost money to stay there, so we went to a beach nearby. That night we were up fairly late, because we got there late, it took us a while to start the fire (as it ended up, our god-given wood was wet and useless), and because a drunken Israeli from a group of people nearby spent an hour or so telling us that we HAD to make aliyah and become lone soldiers. After he finally left, we went to sleep.
Thursday
We woke up much later than we should have, at about 10:30. I consumed a disgusting breakfast of an avocado (for the trip, each person got 4 avocados, 6 apples, 4 cans of beans, and a bag of nuts) and we then proceeded to skinny dip in the Mediterranean, although with some hesitance as old people arrived at the beach. Here is a picture of us at the beach on the first day before leaving:
I remembered the tradition that many people have on this hike of taking a bottle of water from their starting point to their destination, and asked Mike to fill up his extra bottle with Mediterranean water. He was convinced I was playing an April Fools' joke on him (this Thursday was April 1st), but I managed to talk him out of it and actually get him excited about the idea.
We spent most of the afternoon following an unmarked trail along the path of a very dried-up riverbed. It was prickly and rocky and there were many thick patches of underbrush that we did not think we could go through at first, but we did eventually get to a green path that we were supposed to find. On our way along the green path, we picked some delicious lemons (never did I think I would love eating a raw lemon so much) and took a pleasant lunch break. We continued along this path much, much longer than any of us would have liked. Due to our waking up so late, we were still on this path (that kind of ran at the bottom of this canyon) when dusk struck and we heard the howling of coyotes in the distance. We then tripled our pace until we came to the black path we were taking out of the canyon to the city for the night (Abirim). On our way out using the black path, we had to utilize a flashlight--of course, Mike was somehow the only person who remembered to bring one. This entailed me walking at the front slowly enough for the people behind to mimic my footsteps, but later turned into a system of me running ahead with the flashlight and then turning back to light up the path. When we finally arrived in the city, we were ecstatic to be sleeping on the ground next to the sidewalk and happy that the day was over.
Friday
On Friday, we awoke at a reasonable hour and left Abirim. On our way out, we saw the people we had accidentally awoken the night before in their tent to check that we were in the right place. We were also discouraged as we could still see the Mediterranean Sea, but we headed out with resolve regardless. After hiking on highway for the better part of the morning, we came upon a blue trail we were taking that ran through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. It kind of reminded me of what I imagine Ireland would be like, except with more trees. We eventually stopped for lunch in this huge path crossing clearing on the side of a hill, where we filled up on water that some girl bathed in and was surely unsanitary.
While there, we also saw a stampede of goats and were reassured by a couple of people that we could not make it to our destination that day. We proceeded to ascend a mountain that we were told we should just give up at, and got a great view of both the Mediterranean and the Kinneret from the same vantage point. We then traveled along the Israel National Trail for the rest of the day until about 6, when we arrived at Meron, a giant campsite on a hill with many plateaus. We made a fire that night, talked for a bit, and quickly passed out.
Saturday
We awoke with the determination to make it to the Kinneret that day. We began hiking again along the Israel National Trail (orange-blue-white), which I have always kind of idealized:
The first part of this hike was quite easy, and we stopped in the middle of the morning at a beautiful waterfall area to go swimming.
On our way out of easyville, we were stopped by a park ranger who, I think due partially to our Americanness, stopped us and insisted that it would be impossible to make it to the Kinneret that day and requested (or should I say demanded?) that we stop at a place nearby and just call it a day. Mind you it was about 12:30 at this time, and we were used to spending most of the day hiking, so we placated him and then left regardless. The trail thereafter got quite difficult, with many uphill parts where we basically had to climb over boulders. After about two hours of this, however, the rest of the day devolved into the easiest trail thus far on the trip, consisting of pathways where it almost seemed cars had been before. The only issue for the rest of the day was dehydration, but we happened upon a freshwater pond and a group of people who gave us purification tablets in order to drink said pond water, so we ended up being fine. We arrived at the Kinneret at exactly 5:40 and gladly poured out Mike's water bottle. We then went skinny dipping once again.
On our walk to Tiberias, we met a German man who gave us directions who said (in fairly broken English) that he was in Israel because he was praying for his health. We arrived at the central bus station just as a bus to Jerusalem was about to leave, so the timing could not have been any better.
On the bus back, I had a long conversation with the soldier who sat next to me. She was about my age (despite my initial thought that she was MUCH older) and told me all about how she wants to leave Israel and move to America right after the army so she can find a rich man to marry. Oh, she said, but I should definitely make aliyah. Israel needs more Jews. Putting aside her somewhat hypocritical viewpoint, it was interesting to meet an Israeli and have such a long conversation with them. This is something I've been wanting to do all year, so I felt quite accomplished afterwards.
That night I arrived home and just relaxed. On Sunday and Monday, we cleaned up the apartment a little bit and all caught up with each other, but spent most of those days just slacking off, which I was totally fine with after spending three straight days hiking (my feet still hurt a good deal). Nathan got back Monday night, so we were finally all together again, which was nice. We went out to Ben Yehuda street and spent most of our time at Zolli's, which ended up being a great deal of fun as we met up with many of our friends from Beit Ar-El and all got to see each other after the break.
And then, on Tuesday, we returned to normal Year Course--well, kind of. But I will have to get to that tomorrow, it is late here and this has been kind of a long evening (it's Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day). I hope all is well with you and that we talk soon! If you are reading this, chances are I miss you a good deal and would love to speak with you. Take it easy!
:)
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