Long post but covers a lot of time...

Old City

We went into the old city for Jewish History class. But this post isn’t about classes so I will talk about my free time there. During lunch me and my friends decided to hit up all the food places that looked good. We only made it to two before we were stuffed and out of time. The first was a fallafel and shwarma stand. I got french fries in a tortilla thing with ketchup and a diet coke. Classic. The next place we went was this like weird desert place. We all got our own food but we all shared too. I got a crepe with white chocolate and toffee pieces and two scopes of ice cream/gelato (not sure which it was). One flavor was Snickers, the other was Oreo. Then Maddie and Andrew (my friends) got waffles with Carmel ice cream/gelato and covered in white chocolate, carmel and whipped cream. Then Arianna (another friend) got this like sorbet that was passion fruit and had like seeds in it and I think the other flavor was blueberry. Later on our teacher gave us a dancing break. We went and played this like kinda dancing game thing with these Israeli middle school kids and that was pretty fun. Very confusing but fun. Then later there was a man playing the guitar and singing and we went and sang with him and danced around being goofy and stuff. 

Masada

We woke up super early (2:30am) and got on a bus and headed to Masada. We slowly hiked to the top. Hiking/activity in general is not my strong suit so it was a little hard for me. When we got to the top I wasn’t feeling too hot and I threw up a little, so that wasn’t too fun. I saw a cat running around, I mean cats are everywhere here so I don’t know I was shocked. Probably just because we were on top of a giant mountain that I struggle to get up and here was just this little cat chilling having a great time. We then ate our breakfast and watched the sunrise. I ate my leftover pizza from the night before. Then we had services looking out at the view. The sun was being reflected off the dead sea and it was really beautiful. After that we walked around with our Jewish History classes and learned a little about the history of Masada and looked at the ruins. We got to see a rabbi sitting in a little room writing a Torah. I guess he like goes to the top of Masada often and just sits and writes Torah in a little glass room so that tourists (like us) can watch. Then we had a very serious conversation about the conquering and the peoples decision to have a mass suicide instead of being taken into slavery. I decided that what they did was probably the best solution even though its a hard choice morally, physically and spiritually I would have done the same. Then we went over to this little outlook type thing and yelled and our shouts bounced off the nearest mountain and made some pretty awesome echoes. After that we made our journey down Masada. While we were walking down if you looked at just your feet and the ground and like walked near the edge kinda it looked just like the scene in Holes when he is walking up the mountain with the pig to let it drink from the stream. I got very excited about my Holes experience and me and my friend, Arianna, sang songs most the way down including the Holes song. When I got to the bottom we had some free time while we waited for everyone to get down as well. So I went to McDonalds and got some fries and a diet coke. Classic. Then we walked to the hostel which was like a 2 minute walk down the street. Once we got there we went and had lunch. Schnitzel and pasta as usual. Then we got our room assignments and pretty much just hung out.  We had shabbat at the hostel.

Waterfall

We left the hostel in Masada on our busses and went for a little drive to some little hiking place. When we got there we began our hike. Halfway through in turned into a water hike (walking in the stream). At the top of the Stream was a lovely waterfall. We all played in the waterfall and lounged about in the sun on rocks. Then we hiked/walked back to the busses where we sat at picnic tables and had lunch. There was a little shop where I got ice cream and diet coke. Then we headed out and went to another little rock place. Here we went propelling. We climbed some rocks, propelled, kicked back, and some small child-monkey climber gave us tea he made. 

Dead Sea

We went to a spa type thing. We basically just ate, sat around, went into the dead sea. Rubbed mud all over ourselves. I went into one of the sulfur baths inside the spa. We had some food and kind of just relaxed. 

Bedouin Tents

We got to the bedouin tents in the evening of some day. I honestly lost track of days and times while we were off of school. It all kind of molded into one big trip. At the location we got in our tent and basically it was a giant tent with a divider in the middle. Boys on one side, girls on the other. We got our cute little bedouin mattresses (foam with pretty designs) and then went to dinner. Truest statement: Bedouins make some good food. We had chicken, rice, potatoes, and pita-tortillas. Then we had cookies and tea. After that we had relaxing time. We sang some songs around the bon fire. We went star gazing. Then we all crowded into the tents and eventually everyone stopped talking and we all fell asleep. In the morning we woke up and had some more Bedouin pita-tortillas. I had mine with chocolate spread and strawberry jelly. Then we went and road camels. Me and Arianna road together on the last camel which  is weird because we were the first people the get on the camels. After our little leisurely camel ride we went into another tent and a Bedouin man gave us some coffee he made. Super black coffee, my dad would have loved it. Then he told us about Bedouin culture and played us some traditional music and taught us how to grind coffee with this weird coffee grinder they have. After that we packed up and headed to the busses. 

Gadna

Sunday: We went to David Ben-Gurion’s grave and learned a little about him and got split up into our army groups. Toured the college thing there. Then we went we stopped at a market and got some snacks. Then we headed to the base. Got to the base and got our uniforms. Ran around setting up beds and doing army junk. I really don’t remember much of the first day.

Monday: Woke up and had our field day. Took the bus to a place down the road. Here we learned how the army is in the field. We rubbed our faces in mud, we “learned” how to break our shadows so we don’t look like humans. We put plants in our uniforms. We ran away from “grenades”, we made forts and gave a demonstration on how it was used effectively. We saw a scorpion in the fort we made. Then we had lunch. Army food = not good, army food in the field = worse. We had like cold hot dog salami things with some bread and then there was like tuna, corn and sweet pickles, but I just ate some salami and bread. Luckily there was carts there that you could get food at and we got schnitzel sandwiches with fries. Then we went back to learning. We had a discussion on weather Israel should be, or if all Jews should just live in America and have a Jewish state together there. It was very interesting. In my opinion I don’t think there should be a rule/law about it. I think people should be free to live where they want to. A Jewish state in the US would be a kinda cool idea, but at the same time it could be considered anti-Semitic and most of my friends aren’t Jewish, so if I was forced to live alone with a bunch of Jews in our own state, I just wouldn’t be happy.  Then we headed back to the base, and by headed back I don't mean on busses. We walked back, 3 miles. Not only did we walk back, we also did a crawl (very painful) and we had to carry supplies, I carried the stretcher with some other people for awhile. We walked to David Ben Gurions grave (2nd time there) and learned more about him. And then we went back to base and did more army stuff. Running around, cleaning, pushups, the usual. 

Tuesday: Learning day. We all thought we would be sitting in class rooms all day. We were very wrong. We sat in gazebos and learned about guns and how to use them properly and we talked about morals and the morals of the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). Then we spent over 3 hours, I swear it was at least 4,  serving food and cleaning the dining area. After everyone left when they were done eating we started the real cleaning. That took us about 2 hours and 50 minutes so our time beat the people who did it the week before. Winners! We had to squeegee the floor for so long. I don’t really know why squeegeeing is such a big thing in this country but it really is. Then we had more lessons, we ran around more, and did more typical army stuff.

Wednesday: Shooting day. We learned our last lesson on guns and then headed to the shooting range. I was sitting down and at some point in time after we left the kibbutz I got hurt (I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, it just happened) but while we were at the range it got worse. I was in too much pain to shoot the guns. Sad day. Once we got back to the base I ate some lunch then slept till the doctor came. After I saw the doctor I slept more until it was time to go into Be’er Sheba to get medicine and visit the doctor there.

Be’er Sheba Adventure and the Hospital: On the ride me and my counselor had a lovely conversation about the last book of Twilight. She was explaining it to me because I hadn’t read it and I am currently reading Fifty Shades of Gray, which fun fact, started out as Twilight fanfic. Anyways after our very interesting conversation of the weird world of humans drinking out of blood bags and baby demons clawing their way out of their mothers we finally got to Be’er Sheba. We went to the pharmacy to pick up medicine for all the other sick people in my program. First off the pharmacy was a hobbit hole. There was a normal room and then a little hallway branching off from behind the counter and I swear it went on for miles back there. Little old ladies kept coming out of this hall (Hobbit hole). One of the Russian ladies at the pharmacy decided she didn’t want to give us the medicine because she thought that I was an immigrant worker and that the rest of the medicine was also for immigrant workers. So while this crazy Russian lady yelled at my counselor in Hebrew I just cracked up. I was laughing so hard. Then she finally left and one of the other ladies decided to give us our medicine so that we would leave. This was like 30 minutes after the store had already closed. So we head over to the hospital to get me checked out by a doctor. The main emergency room wouldn’t take me so I had to venture over to the other side of the hospital and the lady at the reception desk gave us awful directions so somehow we ended up on a roof of some building and we fell into a small hole because it was covered in leaves. Small reminder, we were there for my hurt leg/ankle, and I fell into a hole. Much pain. Ok so we finally find our way to where we are supposed to go. The guy gives me a cup to pee in and another cup with this scary pink stuff. I threw that away, not sure what I was supposed to do with it, but it ended up in the trash. Then they wanted to run some blood tests so they drew some of my blood. It was such a weird sensation. After he stuck the needle in my arm I could feel the blood being sucked out of me. It was crazy weird. After that he was like “well your tests will be done in an hour so go get food”. So we called up my Jewish History teacher who lives in the area so that he could give us a good place to eat nearby. So first after we talk to him we got lost trying to find the place. We find it and when we get near, we are like “great he sent us to a bar”, well we went inside and it turns out it wasn’t actually a bar, it had a bar on the other side but it was like a nice little sandwich place. So we ordered our food and while we are waiting some guy falls to the ground. We heard his skull just like smack against the ground. He started having a seizure and his eyes rolled back in his skull and it was super crazy. Well we helped as much as we could and eventually he seemed "better" and he was sitting up and drinking water waiting for the ambulance. We got our food and headed back to the hospital just as the ambulance had arrived to get the man. We got back to the hospital and my doctor was busy so we sat on the floor and ate. I got a pickled-lemon chicken stir fry sandwich. Then the doctor said that I needed to get x-rays, so I got some x-rays. We ran around a little more at the hospital. Finally we got back all the results and they said that I am perfectly healthy and fine and so we left. On the way back we stopped to get gas and the dude who worked there pumped it for us even though it was a do-it-yourself station. He was wearing a cool army snowsuit. Abominable snowman in green. We got back to the base at about 1:30am and I crept into my tent and went to bed.

Thursday: Wake up at 5:40. I didn’t get the chance to sleep much. Final day in the army. We mostly just cleaned. We had a “lesson” with the highest ranking commander and she told us a battle story. It was about a plane hijacking on its way to France and it was hijacked and taken to Uganda. All the Jewish passengers were kept prisoner and the rest were released. In the end they were saved and the only person in the IDF that was shot was the commander who died a few hours later. After our talk we had our closing ceremony and some people got awards. Two of the guys from my group got awards, I was very proud of them. Then we went to finish cleaning. My group was folding blankets and rolling sleeping bags and putting away mattresses. Near the end my leg started to hurt again, but worse than before. I lost all feeling in my right leg and left arm, the only feeling was occasional rushes of pain. Some guys from my group helped me get to the doctor on base and by the time we got there my left arm had feeling again but my right arm had lost it. I laid down there until the feeling came back in my arm and then one of the soldiers helped me get my stuff and get into a car. My counselor then took me to a doctor. The doctor there said that I should go to a hospital. We called the head of my school and he wanted me to go to a hospital I hadn’t been to yet instead of the same one in Be’er Sheba so we headed to Jerusalem. Before we left we went and I said bye to everyone and grabbed some lunch. Two slices of pizza and a bag of fries and an ice cream bar and diet coke. Then we headed out. On the way we stopped at Aroma and I got some mint Lemonade. I eventually fell asleep. Woke up when we got to Jerusalem and went into the Hospital. Basically went through the same thing there as the last hospital. Got another blood test except this time they left the junk in my arm incase they needed to hook me up to an IV later on. I met a really nice lady who was there who was originally from New Zealand. We talked for a bit. One of the other heads of my program, Judy, came and hung out with me and my counselor, Elah. We went down to the food area I got a diet coke. Classic. And we watched some nature documentary. Then we headed back up and kinda just sat around waiting. Eventually we were all very tired and bored and entertaining our selves by talking in British accents and just being really funny. We took videos to send to the rest of the group who was in Eilat at the boardwalk. Finally we got released and went to get pizza. We headed back to the kibbutz and I got settled into my room. Since everyone is gone in Eilat I have a queen size bed and room to myself. I treated myself to a luxurious shower and shaved my legs for the first time in what felt like forever. Then I curled up in my big bed and turned on Land of the Lost and went to sleep.

Today

I slept in till 12 then went and ate some lunch. I never thought I would enjoy Tzuba food so much. Then me and Elah went to Jerusalem to return the rental car. After that we took the bus back to Tzuba and I went to my room and relaxed. Tonight we are having Shabbat dinner with her husband’s family. Tomorrow we are relaxing and then going to see a movie. I may be missing out on Eilat but I am having a pretty good time just relaxing and getting better. I haven’t felt too much pain in my leg either which is really good. Back to school soon so I am just taking advantage of my last few days of vacation.