WINTER TRAVELS PART 1

Fans of my previous iMovies India: Snapshots and Tel Aviv Summer (the latter can be viewed here) may be pleased to know that I am working on some new movies about my Winter Travels.

I started to create a movie that included everywhere I've been since leaving Israel in late October, but it was getting a bit long so I've decided to break it into parts. Part 1 covers Scotland to Bath/Wales, and Part 2 begins in London and ends...well actually it's not finished, so I don't know where it will end yet!!

So without further ado, may I present Winter Travels 2007, Part 1. (Please view with the sound turned up)

New York, part 1

I've just returned (to Summit, NJ) from a weekend in Manhattan, staying with Aviva in the upper West Side. New York was fun! I went out to mingle with the locals on Fri and Saturday nights, I caught up with a few different friends in the two days - and I met one of my third cousins on my mum's side of the family. For the genealogically uninformed, your third cousin is someone who's great-grandparent is brother or sister to your great-grandparent. (As an aside, I believe that I am, in addition to being myself, also my OWN third cousin several times removed, but that is another story). I'll be here in Summit, enjoying the company of Sue, John, Xander, and Buffy until Tues when I am headed back into the city to take up temporary residence in Brooklyn thanks to the always helpful and hospitable Jeff, who just so happens to have an empty apartment there. THANKS JEFF!!

And the Beddy goes to.... [drumroll please]

I'm now in New Jersey, having completed my UK/Ireland/Denmark travels. Sadly, due to a lack of prolonged Internet access in many of the last few places I visited, I've barely blogged about the last month of my trip. Happily, I'm now in the land of the free! Free wifi that is, since the neighbours seem to be community-spirited enough to want to share their wireless internet connections :) So hopefully I'll have a chance to make up for the backlog.

In the meantime, I feel it is in order to spend some time thanking the wonderful people who have enabled my worldwide wanderings by giving me a warm bed (or inflatable mattress) and a roof over my head, not to mention dinners, breakfasts, cups of tea, travel advice, personalised tours, pickups from airports and train stations, and so much more as I traipse across the northern hemisphere. Since September, I am grateful to have stayed in ten different friends' flats and houses in five different countries. To those who have hosted me: I love you and thank you all!

In your honour, I have created a virtual award which I call the "Beddy" (Like an Emmy or a Grammy). I'll start with the European and Middle East Beddy Awards*

Would the following people please step forward to receive their Beddy!

Best Bed - The Kennedy family (Limerick)
Best Inflatable Mattress - Sonja and Henry (Bath). Honourable mention: Andrea (Copenhagen)
Best Location - Alon (Tel Aviv)
Warmest Flat - Andrea (Copenhagen). Honourable Mention: Ben and G (London)
Best Shower - Ben and G (London). Honourable mention: The Abrams Family (Liverpool)
Best Television Evenings - Tracy and Caroline (Edinburgh)
Best Internet Connection - Adam (Bristol). Honourable Mention: Tracy and Caroline (Edinburgh)
Best Sandwich recommendation - Adam (Bristol, England)
Best Home-Cooked Dinners - Tracy and Caroline (Edinburgh) Honourable mentions: Adam (Bristol), Sonja (Bath)
Best Bonfire - The Abrams family, (Liverpool)
Best Wine A tie: Tracy and Caroline (Edinburgh), Sonja and Henry (Bath)
Best Cat Companionship - Neer and Orit,and the Black one and the White one (Haifa). Honourable Mention: Tracy, Caroline, and Nigella (Edinburgh)

AND FINALLY
Special Beddy Award for Personalised Tourguiding - Tracy (Edinburgh), Adam (Bristol), Ben (London), Aine (Limerick)

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!! You are welcome to post your acceptance speeches here....

*The North American Beddys will follow at a later stage

Remembered scenes

I've been in London for the last few days, having great adventures my first time in this world-famous city. I've been doing lots of museums and markets and gigs and the theatre and all that good stuff - so much so that each day I finish quite tired and without the physical or creative energy to write a blog entry about it...so for now I will offer you my photo album on Facebook and save the London stories for another time.

Meanwhile, I've been meaning to write about some of the images from everyday life in Israel that I don't have pictures of. Since I can't create an iMovie montage of these little scenes and vignettes, instead I'll have to describe them and if you like, you can make the montage in your head...

1) Dirty skinny street cats, hundreds and hundreds of them, everywhere, on every street and next to every dumpster in Israel. Their piteous state did not, of course, deter me from attempting to make friends with them, usually with little success.

2)People in cars winding down their windows at traffic lights to ask directions either from the driver in the car next to them, or a passing pedestrian. I'm sure this happens in other places, but certainly not in New Zealand - at least not with the absolute commonplace frequency that I'd see in Israel. I think in New Zealand, if we're lost, we make a solid effort to figure out where we are for ourselves, and then, only when this proves impossible, do we pull into a gas station to ask for help. In Israel, people obviously drive around with no idea how to get where they want to go, but have no qualms about this because they can just ask someone while they are driving. It's so obvious! Who needs GPS?

3) Old people and their Thai or Filipina caregivers. Since the first and second Palestinian intifadas, Israel has brought in thousands of foreign workers to do all the low-paid jobs and manual labour that no-one else wants to do. This includes the job of being caregivers for very elderly and disabled people. Many times I would be sitting on a bench in a park or a Tel Aviv boulevard and see one such elderly person sitting limply in a wheelchair, perhaps having suffered from a stroke or degenerative illness, with a young Asian carer by their side. Sometimes there would be a whole group of them, because the caregivers would organise to get together with one another perhaps to break up the loneliness of being a stranger in a strange land. It made me a little sad to think about these two different groups of people, the immobile elderly and the foreign caregivers, each a little isolated from the people around them because of the barriers of language and the ability of the average passerby to, well, pass them by without any interest or interaction. One could write a much longer social commentary on this....

4) Ugly wedding dresses. If you find yourself in one of the more beautiful spots of Israel - like Neve Tzedek, the Bahai Gardens in Haifa, the ports of Akko or Yafo for example - in the late afternoon when the light is golden, chances are you'll stumble across at least half a dozen brides and grooms with their wedding photographer. And chances are that at least 60 percent of those brides will be wearing something that takes your breath away...with its utter hideousness. We're talking layer upon later of ruffly frills (like the kind you see on those decorative toilet-roll dolls), wench-like corset bodices, sometimes made from an attractive see through mesh (because everyone wants to see the bride's midriff on her wedding day, do they not?). My personal favourite was a blood-red dress, complete with the ruffles and bodice, not to mention black lace trimming and a bride-of-frankenstein hairdo to go with it. Now before you accuse me of being overly judgemental and insensitive towards tastes different from my own, please note that I deliberately did not take pictures out of respect for the fact that these people, on the happiest day of their lives, of course thought themselves to look beautiful. And I'm willing to accept that one woman's sense of what is hideous can be another's sense of what is beautiful.

There are lots of other scenes and images of course, but those are a few I really wanted to remember.

Wifi rage!

As my family and friends know, my fondness for the Internet is so great that people often accuse me of being an “addict”. I don’t know whether or not this is true, but I do acknowledge that I have certain behaviours and propensities that suggest how important it is to me to have clear and unfettered access to the Internet wherever I am. In the presence of a free wifi connection, I can happily sit for hours on my laptop, needing no other company or stimulation to pass the day. However, when I can’t find a connection, I can become quite agitated and impatient. I spend a great deal of time thinking about all the emails or chats that I’m missing out on, or frustrated that I can't look stuff up or book things online, and wondering when and how I can get my next “hit”. Usually I can manage a few days without it, if I absolutely HAVE to (say, when out in the desert, or at sea, or engaged in outdoorsy-type activities). But when I’m in civilization nothing frustrates me more than the inability to look stuff up or email people or do whatever it is I spend so much time doing WHENEVER I WANT TO. To me, that’s freedom. I honestly believe that free wifi access in public places is every person’s birthright. Thus, my greatest rage is reserved for the cafes, hotels, and airports who have the AUDACITY to provide wireless internet access that you have to PAY for! Wifi should be free!! Free, damnit!! I’m the one who’s killing my shoulders lugging my laptop around the place, all you have to provide is the access! How can you justify charging the highway robbery prices you charge? $30 for an hour?? I’ve already bought a damn coffee at your café, give me my free wifi, you monsters!!

Bite-sized chunks of kulcha

Yesterday I had a fun day of wandering aimlessly and, at times, purposefully around the port city of Liverpool.
Before coming here I really didn't know anything about the city, apart from it being the home of the Beatles of course (See me here with my mate John?). However, I didn't do the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, or the Beatles Museum, since I was on my own for the day and both of those seem like they'd be more fun to do with a friend. Instead, I apportioned my day into small chunks of culture. I did a one-hour bus tour of the city highlights, hit a couple of museums, and then wandered around town admiring the beautiful architecture and taking in the city's vibe. Did you know that Liverpool with be Europe's "Culture Capital" in 2008?

One of my bite-sized chunks included a visit to the Tate Liverpool which this year is hosting the famous/infamous - Turner Prize, "a contemporary art award that always provokes debate and is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe". Luckily this year there are no dismembered cows or pickled sharks or condomed Virgin Marys or whatever it is that typically upsets people. My favourite of the four entries was this guy who dressed up in a Bear suit every night for 10 nights in a row, and filmed himself wandering around alone in the empty lobby of the Berlin Museum. A commentary on the cold war, amongst other things. Guy in a Bear suit. Artistic genius!

Beware, the Jumper-Ooters!!

I've been getting a good taste of Scottish history in the last few days, with visits to the Scottish landmarks St Andrews, Stirling Castle, and the William Wallace Monument. But thus far the highlight would have to be last night's Witchery Tour, a night-time tour of the more ghastly and ghoulish bits of Edinburghian history. The tourguide is himself one of the unfortunate victims of the city's once merciless justice system; an executed highwayman who goes by the catchy moniker of Adam Lyal(deceased). Every night, Adam leads a group of thrillseekers around on a walking tour on which he tells stories about life in the burgh in the 17th century and later. Witch torture, hangings, as well as stories of the fetid and disgusting conditions of life in a city of 40,000 people without a sanitation system. As we wended our way through narrow "closes" (alleyways running between buildings), stairwells, and backstreets, we were startled by "jumper-ooters" - costumed spooks and ghouls who would burst out unexpectedly from dumpsters at appropriate moments in the stories. It was all in good fun - the costumes were so cheesy that there was no chance of real terror - but the old startle reflex kicked in a few times!

My 15 minutes

The day before I left Israel, I was interviewed for a NZ TV Music-documentary series that's going to screen on C4 or maybe TV3 in April 2008. It's going by the working title of "Musique Voyage" (I think), but the guys who I met said they might change the name.
In the series, Nick D and his camera crew (James) travel to exotic countries like China, India, Israel, check out the local music scene there, get local bands to do covers of classic NZ songs, and do little spots with kiwis living or visiting in those countries. In the case of Israel - me!
We did the interview in front of the fountain in Kikar Dizengoff. Nick asked different kind of smalltalk questions about Tel Aviv and what it's like to live there, which I tried to answer intelligently and not seem like too much of a dork. I wore my New Zealand earrings, a gift from Robyn, especially for the occasion! So New Zealand readers, look out for me on NZ TV in April. And international readers, if you want to see me onscreen I guess you'll just have to content yourself with my own home-made productions :)

Sinai

I am writing this posting while sitting in Tracy's living room in Edinburgh, having arrived in Scotland this afternoon for my first-ever visit to the UK. There's lots of fun and exciting travels ahead for me in the next month, but for now it's time for a bit of wistful reflection on my last few weeks in Israel.

In previous posting I talked a little bit about my semi-retired-bum lifestyle living in Tel Aviv, and of course you'll have seen my little iMovie showcasing some of my favourite minutes of the summer. My happy period of residence on the mattress on Alon's living room floor came to an end on Oct 15, when my friend Brenna arrived from the USA to do a little touring and visiting with me before I left the country. Brenna arrived at what Laura refers to as "the ass-crack of dawn", and after a few hours' rest we flew down to Eilat (the city on the southern tip of Israel, on the Red Sea coast) to begin our desert adventure. We were lucky to make our flight; the pre-check-in security people, having virtually waved me through after a few token questions (and a gushing exposition by my questioner about how much she loved her recent trip to New Zealand), decided that OF COURSE Brenna was suspicious and spent at least half an hour asking her a million questions, making her unpack her bags and inefficiently swabbing down everything in there two or three times to test for explosives. Once it was painfully evident that she wasn't a security risk, they spent another ten or so minutes asking more redundant questions and casually swabbing everything over again, before finally letting us through to run to our plane in the nick of time.

After a night in Eilat, we crossed the border into the Sinai peninsula and headed down to Dahab. The Lonely Planet's description of this town as "like the Koh Samui of Egypt" was spot on. Dahab is the independent traveller's relaxation paradise, and is known for its excellent diving and snorkelling sites, not to mention Nargila and milkshakes. In three days we packed in three dives and a dawn hike up Mount Sinai. This would have to be one of the most memorable multisensory experiences of the last six months. Here's how it goes: You take a minibus from Dahab at 11pm, speed through the dark desert night with a leadfooted Egyptian driver who does his seatbelt up every time you pass through a checkpoint and undoes it the moment the minibus has passed through. Finally after two hours, you arrive (at 1 am) in a dark carpark full of vans and coaches, where you are meet by young Bedouin man who says, gruffly, "my name Moses. Go this way". Switching on a flashlight, you follow him as he sets a brisk pace walking up the mountain path. Out in the desert, with no light pollution, the stars are incredible. In the darkness you can just make out the profile of the mountains around you, and you get a feeling that they are going to be incredible when you see them by daylight. As you make your way uphill through the darkness, camels suddenly appear, sitting patiently by the side of the path. Bedouin men ask "Camel? You want camel?". Nay, no camel for us! We hardened hikers scoff at the thought. But after passing dozens and dozens of camels, climbing ever upwards, you start to wonder, just how high is this mountain? And are we doing these camels out of a job? "You want camel? Good camel!" says another Bedouin. You start to feel a little bad for the camels. They probably are good camels. But, you came here to hike up the mountain, and hike it you will. After half an hour, you look back down and take in the the incredible sight of hundreds of flashlights snaking their way up the mountain, showing you how high you have already walked. How many people are climbing this mountain tonight? (You start to wonder). It looks like hundreds, is that possible? After about two hours, sweating, still in darkness, you reach the end of the "slope" part of the climb and begin the final ascent up the stairs to the top of the mountain. Hot and sweaty, step after step, huffing and puffing, you finally, finally reach the almost-top where a series of Bedouin huts await your arrival. "Come come, coffee tea chocolate chai! Blankets! Come inside, warm inside!". After warming yourself with a cup of tea, you climb the last few steps up to the top of the mountain and find a "spot" to wait for the sunrise.....



With the sun finally up, it's clear that the mountains really are as spectacular as they promised to be in the dark of the night...



And the parade of humanity starts to pur back down the mountain, this time taking the thigh-killing "other stairs" down to the famous Saint Katherine Monastery nestled at the base of the mountain...

Tel Aviv iMovie

During my period of semi-retirement I have been a little creative and productive and produced my first Israel iMovie!

NB. PLEASE WAIT FOR THE WHOLE THING TO LOAD BEFORE PLAYING, AND MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR THE SOUNDTRACK!

I've never uploaded a video onto my blog before, and it's definitely not as good when it's compressed into Quicktime - it will be much better and sharper on the DVD version. But you'll get an idea of how things have been - and your feedback is welcome!

The Bum's Life

So, since my last blogposting, I have graduated WUJS, set up camp in my friend's living room in Tel Aviv, been back to Jerusalem twice (once for Yom Kippur, and once to eat in a friend's Sukkah). In general, I have been living the life of an unemployed bum - or as I prefer to think of myself, semi-retired!

It feels like there's not much to write about, but my days are surprisingly packed with errands and activities. I spend a lot of time making travel plans and arrangements for my upcoming trips to the UK and New York area, and for my friend's upcoming visit to hang with me in Israel. Between myself and Laura, my co-"semi-retired" Canadian friend, there are always shopping missions - like going to the Old City in Jerusalem to buy Shesh Besh (backgammon) boards; going to my favourite Jewellery co-op in West Jerusalem to buy a hamsa necklace, going down Sheinkin st in Tel Aviv to buy boots for my ordeal in the Northern Winter; etc.

For "free" fun, there is the beach, wandering around Tel Aviv taking pictures of Bucket Tubes, watching friends' pirated DVDs on the computer, and sitting on a park bench on Rothschild Boulevard staring at passers-by.

It's still very warm here, even though it's already October, so I'm still wearing the same clothes I've been wearing all summer. It's hard to believe that soon I will be shivering in the cold wet damp and maybe snowy UK and North America!

Precious sleeeep

So - moments before going to bed tonight I semi-remembered (then verified with my good friend the internizzle) that daylight saving in Israel ends tonight. Although I normally mourn the end of DST, in this instance I'm rather pleased since I have to get up early tomorrow to shlep back to Arad. One hour more of precious sleep! How fortunate!

Walk sit pray stand pray sing sit eat stand walk sit pray stand eat more drink sleep (Repeat x 3)

And so ends three days of Jewish Holiday! This Year, Erev Rosh Hashana (the eve of the New Year) fell on Wednesday Night. This means that Thursday and Friday were Rosh Hashana (I) and (II). Then, we roll right over into Shabbat (Friday evening and Saturday). In Jerusalem terms this means that everything closes for three straight days, and most people (the religiously observant at least) engage in the sequence of activity described above.

Two days of New Year? Yes, that's right. Why, I hear you ask? Hmm, good question. This is one that I've wondered about for several years. You see, I am aware that many Jewish Holidays are traditionally celebrated for two days OUTSIDE Israel (the first/second night passover seder, for example). Why? Because in times past, the Hebrew calendar depended on witnesses in Jerusalem appearing before the Sanhedrin to report that they'd sighted a new moon, and hence the beginning of a new month. If no moon was sighted (let's say it was cloudy), the month would be deemed to begin on the next day - and it would be clear on which night each Jewish holiday for that month would fall. However, Jews exiled in Babylonia couldn't necessarily know that a new moon had been sighted in Jerusalem and hence they would celebrate two nights in a row, to ensure they didn't get the date wrong.

So, let's now put aside the fact that we no longer need witnesses to tell us when there is a new moon. WHY would this two-day rule apply in Israel? According to my research on the Internizzle,

"On Rosh HaShana this problem was compounded. Since Rosh HaShana was the first day of the month, immediately upon the Sanhedrin's declaration it would be Yom Tov (actually earlier because of the doubt). It would therefore be prohibited for the messengers to leave the city limits (techum) of Jerusalem. Thus no one outside of Jerusalem would know when the Yom Tov began. It was therefore necessary for all residents of Israel as well to keep two days of Rosh HaShana.

BUT - further reading shows that in Israel, once a "fixed" calendar had been introduced in the 4th century, Rosh Hashana become a one-day affair INSIDE Israel and remained a two-day chag OUTSIDE Israel. According to Rabbi David Bar-Hayim, whose article I found on the web, it was only in the 12th Century that the two-day observance was re-introduced back into practice in Israel by some powerful European rebbes who migrated back to Israel. It's all quite interesting - you can read more about it here

Jerusalem Week 2007

Shana Tovah U'Metuka to all the J-crew out there!
Shout-out to Oren!

I'm writing this posting from the Holy City of Jerusalem where I've been for the past week, spanning the final days of 5767 and the first few of 5768. It's been a very interesting week of walking tours and visits to various sites.



Some highlights:

- Touring the Christian Quarter of the Old City, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and visiting various churches on the Mount of Olives

- A walking tour of Abu Tor, an old Arab Neighbourhood, and the Haas Promenade which gives a commanding view of the whole city of Jerusalem. (I've been there before but it's always impressive)

- A day looking into the world of the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) society, including a guided walking tour of Mea She'arim and surrounding shtetls

- Visiting ZAKA - a religious volunteer organisation that goes to the site of terrorist attacks, accidents, car crashes etc and helps to aid survivors and to recover every body part and piece of tissue so that those who have died can be given a proper burial

- Visiting Hadassah Hospital and learning how they deal with mass casualty events (Israel is, unfortunately, world-leading in their preparedness for these kinds of emergencies)

- Going to a friend's Very Orthodox wedding!

I have been getting a little slack on the photo-taking, but you can see a few pics on my Facebook album here

Goodbye King George!

Not the Monarch - the Address.

Woe unto me, tomorrow is our last day living in the Rooftop Ghetto apartment at 37 King George!! This marks the end of our PSJ Internship period. It's been a great 2+ months. Living in central Tel Aviv was fabulous, even with the suffocating humidity. I enjoyed my internships, even though they didn't particularly relate to my professional experience (well actually #2 did but I haven't blogged about it yet, and didn't manage to progress with it as much as I'd hoped).

I'm very happy with what I did for the Heschel Center. The website isn't complete yet, but that's largely due to the fact that we need a graphic designer to help us to realise our "vision". If you want you can check out the work in progress, that is, the website. Please note that it's not finished yet!! (But if you see bugs you are welcome to let me know).

OH and if you want to be on the mailing list to receive the exciting Heschel Newsletter that I created, post a comment or email me and I will add you to the list!

From here it's onto Jerusalem for a week of WUJS activities, then a break for Rosh Hashanah (I think I'll be in Jerusalem participating in some nice Kesher Outreach courtesy of HUC!). Then back to Arad for the final 2-3 days of BBQs, "graduation", packing up our rooms, etc. Then I'll be couch-surfing for a month or so... with a possibility of a house-and-cat-sitting position for a couple of weeks in the middle... FINGERS CROSSED!

Tiyul B'Tsafon (Trip in the North)

Last week we had a week in the North of Israel. Highlights included two hiking trips in the Golan Heights, along streams that feed into Lake Kinneret; on one section of the first hike, you had to actually swim through a waterhole to get across. I didn't take my camera so unfortunately I haven't got any photos from that day. Another day we hiked the Banias stream, where there were also many optional swimming opportunities. We came across an old tank, Syrian, along the streambed. No-one's quite sure when or how it fell down there, but I guess it was probably in 67.

We also had the chance to visit two important somewhat unnerving lookout points. First the Ben Tal lookout, which overlooks the Syrian border (I remember coming here in 2001), and second, a lookout hill in the Northeast of the country which looks over Lebanon. Standing there, one can see quite clearly, only a few kilometres away, a huge Hezbollah flag flying on the hill.


We did heaps of other things too; live floating down the Jordan River on inner tubes; visiting the Rosh Hanikra caves, and going to Rosh Pinna and Safed/Zfat. Yada yada yada....it was a good week!

Rachel and the Watermelon: A Love Story

Blog vs. Facebook

Yes, my blog has been rather dormant lately. I see the problem as twofold: First, I am becoming increasingly lazy. And B) Facebook has reduced my ability to write updates about my activities to one or two sentence "status updates". I will continue my lazy ways by posting for you my Facebook Status updates for the past couple of weeks (In reverse order) :) THEN - this is the fun part - you get to IMAGINE all the stuff in between the status updates! Instead of me telling you in boring detail what I've been doing, YOU CAN JUST MAKE IT UP FOR YOURSELF BASED ON THESE CLUES! Isn't that great? Isn't Facebook SO much better than a blog?

Today
Rachel is eating the newest bestest watermelon YET! 11:27pm
Rachel is possibly eating too much fruit. 7:36pm
Rachel is developing a very unhealthy dependence on spinal adjustment. 12:24am

August 25
Rachel is sorry she made Laura walk home 5 kms. 11:57pm

August 24
Rachel is eating popping chocolate. 11:57pm

August 23
Rachel is in Haifa for the weekend. 11:43pm

August 19
Rachel is going away on a tiyul for a week...bye! 7:30am

August 18
Rachel is hoping to have a bucket-tube some day. 2:08am

August 17
Rachel is a name in the bible (not the Bolstad bit). 10:44am

August 16
Rachel is dot dot dot. 10:56pm

August 15
Rachel is cooking eggplant for the first time in her LIFE. 7:05pm

Rachel is only listening to NZ music today. Starting with The Black Seeds. 9:08am
August 14
Rachel is only wanting to listen to Beck today. Only Beck. Perhaps even only Guero and Guerolito. 3:45pm

August 12
Rachel is spider pig, spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does. 11:14am

August 10
Rachel is part Lisa, part Homer, and a little bit Ralph. 1:03am

August 9
Rachel is unable to clean her room. Why? One word: entropy. 10:24am

August 8
Rachel is so bad at sleeping she even dreams that she is sleeping restlessly... 3:10am

Rachel is waiting. 2:02am

August 6
Rachel is puzzled by friends who say things like "oh sorry, I'm just not a Facebook person". 6:53pm

August 5
Rachel is hoping to enter a watermelon-eating contest. 10:28pm

August 4
Rachel is going to the beach to get even more sand permanently embedded in even more obscure parts of her body. 2:24pm

August 3
Rachel is having a nap. 4:53pm

August 2
Rachel is drinking a homemade watermelon cocktail and she is a drink-making GENIUS. 11:12pm


July 31
Rachel is making identikit pictures AND gorging on Watermelon. 6:48pm

Rachel is making identikit pictures. 10:24am

Wellystalgia

I am a famous photographer! Ok, not really, but one of my photos of Days Bay has been chosen for inclusion in this cool little web application called Shmaps Wellington. If you go to "Trips and Activities" and "The Great Outdoors" and "Days Bay" there you will find two pics - one by me!! Famous!! And I didn't do anything... they just found the photo on Flickr and asked if they could use it for their shmap.
Anyway cruising this site is making me go all Wellystalgiac :)

Internship #1: The Heschel Centre

Apologies that I've been a little slack on the blogfront lately...busy...lazy...you know....
Anyhoo, here's the first overdue posting about my PSJ internships. Internship #1 is for an organisation called the The Heschel Center. Their focus is sustainability education and leadership - they do so many interesting things, from operating a "Green Schools Network" to supporting local governments to develop policies and projects geared towards bringing Israel towards a more sustainable future. My main projects there relate to redevelopment of the English-language website, and newsletters for English-speaking supporters and donors to update them on all the fabulous work being undertaken by the Heschel Center. For the first month, I have a fellow intern working with me (Emilie from Northern California), and for the second month I'll be flying solo. In between the website and newsletters, all kinds of other jobs pop up, including editing reports, producing a promotional postcard/folder, etc. I like the people in the office, and the kitchen setup is very great for making coffee and chatting. The office is only about 15 mins walk from my apartment - as a matter of fact it's probably about the same distance as it was from my Mt Vic flat to NZCER! I walk down this street called Nachalat Binyamin, which seems to comprise about 10 solid blocks of fabric stores. Seriously, almost every store seems to be a fabric store. For 10 blocks. One of these mornings I'm going to take some photos to show you.

Our Slum

...And here is the slum next door, where we sometimes go to pick up someone's weak but unsecured wifi signal.......

Our Apartment

Here's a few photos of the inside of our apartment; my room is the one with the purple towel hanging over the back of the chair.

Elegant Slumming

Tomorrow it’ll be a week since I moved to Tel Aviv to start phase two of my WUJS programme – the PSJ (Peace and Social Justice) internship. Although it’s only been a week there’s lots to say about this new chapter in my Israel adventures, so I’ll try to work through them in a systematic kind of way….one blogpost at a time….

THE APARTMENT
I’m living with 3 other WUJys in an apartment on King George St, which, if you don’t know Tel Aviv, is very central to all the good stuff – the markets where you can buy fresh produce, jeans, bread, tchachkas, and whatever else your heart desires; cool cafes and shops.The beach isn’t so far…. (OK, so it’s kind of a shlep on foot but not for a hardened Welly walker!). The apartment itself is pretty small for four people, but fortunately two of our roomies have kind of taken to living elsewhere so it’s mostly just me and Laura, a cool Canadian social worker. The apartment interior is brand new; the fridge, toilet, and pretty much everything else still had the “brand new” labels and stickers on them when we moved in. The apartment backs onto a little park, with some fun kiddie playground equipment and a dog exercise area. We are on the 4th floor, with no elevator, which means shlepping up the stairs every day…which is probably a good thing as that’s about the most exercise I’m getting these days….apart from swinging on the playground swings of course!

In the apartment, there’s a door in the living room that opens onto an open roof/balcony thing. This might have had great potential for evening lounging, except for the fact that it is a complete garbage heap. Really. See, the building adjoining ours is a completely abandoned slumville. Meaning: it’s a dirty dirty mess filled with abandoned dirty and broken furniture. There is more dirty broken abandoned furniture on the roof/balcony that connects our building to theirs, not to mention large piles of bashed up gib board. I assume this came from our apartment when they were ripping out all the old dirty crap before transforming it into the modern chic interior we have today. Fortunately, Laura and I are doing our best to redecorate the apartment so that it’s more in keeping with our environs. We call our style “ghetto”. This look is achieved by finding various not-too-dirty additional elements of furnishing and dragging them into our apartment to make it more homely and/or practical. Thus far we have brought in a couple of mattresses, and a filthy broken wardrobe which we cleaned up and used to string up a “privacy curtain” for Laura, whose bed is in the living room. There are some dress mirrors in the slum that would be nice, if we could figure out how to unscrew them from the wall…..

Anyway all in all there isn’t much to complain about, apart from the LACK OF INTERNET (this shall be the subject of another blogposting), and the location could hardly be better. Oh – importantly the shower has great water pressure. I thought I should mention that, especially in case Greg is reading this….

Family time...

Mum and dad have been visiting for the last week and a bit, keeping me entertained while I'm on my mid-semester vacation. Although they're not here for that long, we've managed to do a lot of different things, including:

* Lazing around by the pool at a Hotel by the Dead Sea with my "adopted" Arad family (pictured)- very needed after a long trip from New Zealand via Bangkok....

* Two days in the area near Haifa, where we visited an artist's village called Ein Hod, also The Atlit Detention Camp, where Jewish refugees were put by the British during the British Mandate period (prior to 1948), swam at Habonim beach, met friends in Haifa for dinner, and had a quick peer at the famous Bahai Gardens


* An afternoon in Safed, an ancient mountaintop town which gave birth to much of the mystical Kabbalistic tradition

* Driving up the Hula valley - highlight, the Naot outlet factory shop, where I bought some very nice pink sandals...

* Sunset and Dinner on the beautiful Golan Heights with our friends Razia and Ekel

* Walking around the excavated remains of the ancient city of Bet She'an, followed by a wander through the somewhat-touristy-yet-actually-impressive scale models of Mini Israel (Their slogan is brilliant :"See it all....see it SMALL!")



* Wandering around the Old City of Jerusalem on foot, and touring around the whole city on a sightseeing bus

* Catching up with friends JoEllen and Shoshanna in Jerusalem, eating well, and torturing my poor dad with the endless quest for the perfect pair of earrings (which requires us to look in every shop, of course....)

* Drinking endless cups of delicious Mint Tea

Mum and dad only have a couple more days here, and tomorrow we're off to Tel Aviv. It's been very fun having them here to visit, and I acknowledged the importance of their long long journey by snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister in order to hang with them instead! (True story). In two days' time, boo hoo, they have to return to New Zealand, and I will be moving into an apartment on King George St. Here's hoping (for my sake and yours) that I'll have a good internizzle situation in my new home....

Last week in Arad... :'(

I can hardly believe it, but I only have 5 more days until the end of the first half of WUJS. This means only 5 more days of full-time living in Arad! I have quite mixed feelings about it; on one hand, I am VERY excited about moving to Tel Aviv to start my PSJ Internship (this will be the subject of future postings), and to live a little more in the "real world" of Israel. On the other hand, I have grown very attached to my little desert hometown, and the WUJS routine, and there are many things I am going to miss....

Anyway, this week has been yet another busy one. I had two fieldtrip days that I really want to write about:

TUESDAY
This week, a theme of our learning has been "The Holocaust in Israeli Consciousness". Like many people, until now I have always associated Holocaust memorialisation in Israel with Yad Vashem, which I visited in 2001 on Birthright. While I think Yad Vashem is an excellent and important place for all visitors to Israel to see, one can't deny that it is a deeply harrowing experience to spend a day there. This week, with WUJS, we travelled not to Yad Vashem but to a place Massuah up near Netanya. I'd not heard of this place before. As their website explains,

Massuah considers education the most significant way to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Its educational approach raises fundamental questions about the essence of humanity, the people and the state, education, and culture, which lead to issues that are relevant to the world in which today’s young people live.

We had a few discussion workshops with the Massuah educators, and we also visited a couple of exhibitions at their museum, all of which were thought-provoking. The most remarkable event of the day, however, was our session with a Holocaust survivor, Shlomo Perl, whose unbelievable story was turned into a well-known film, Europa, Europa!. To briefly summarise, Shlomo survived the Holocaust by pretending to be an ethnic German, and incredibly found himself enlisted into a prestigious school for the elite Hitler youth! For four years he lived with a bizarre dual identity - Josef the German Hitler Youth, and Shlomo, the hidden Jewish boy that he was, worrying that he could be discovered at any moment. I hadn't seen the film before, so this story was completely new to me. Shlomo told us a little bit about what had happened to him, and then we watched the second half of the film with him. All I can say is, if you haven't seen this film, go and lay your hands on a copy ASAP.

WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday we had a whole-day PSJ seminar about civil rights in Israel. For this, we visited three different organisations in Jerusalem. First, the Israel Religious Action Centre. Next, Open House which is a community centre for gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people in Jerusalem. This was a timely visit, as Open House has been at the centre of a significant controversy in Jerusalem for the last few years. Namely, they are the organisers of the annual Gay Pride parade which has the Orthodox religious leaders of Jerusalem up in arms. We watched a DVD about last year's attempt to have the parade - which was fought bitterly against by some members of the ultra-orthodox community and religious members of the city council, to the point that the police were too worried about security and forced the parade to be cancelled and replaced by a rally in a local stadium. What I saw in the DVD - the intolerant, cold-hearted, cruel way in which the gay and lesbian community was treated by the parade's opponents - the death threats, the inhuman things that were said - convinced me how important it was that this year's parade should go ahead. Some of the most disturbing scenes were of an anti-parade rabbi going into the West Bank to meet with Muslim Clerics, not on a peace-building mission, but to unite together against their (perceived) common enemy - the GLBT community. Sigh. By contrast, the GLBT community itself presented an inspiring model of Israeli society in which Jews, Palestinians, gay and straight people, religious and secular, everyone, whoever they are can coexist peacefully and warmly with one another.

I said our visit was timely - it was in fact the day before the 2007 parade which, I just read online, went ahead in a largely peaceful manner, thank goodness!

The final stop on our tour was to a place called Mavoi Satum. This was also a very very important place to visit. However to explain what they do, I also have to explain a bit about how "marriage" works according to Jewish Law (Halakhah). (Readers who already know, never mind!). But now it's kind of late and this posting is already kind of long, so it's going to have to wait for another time I think.....

Jen, this is 4 u!

Kibbutz life

So, months and months ago when I started telling people in NZ I was coming to Israel, at least half of the time people asked "Oh, are you going on a kibbutz?". And I would explain that no, I was going on a study-and-volunteering programme called WUJS, in a small town in the desert, etc etc.

However this past weekend, we did have a kibbutz experience - of sorts. We were lucky enough to spend a few days at the beautiful Kibbutz Ketura, deep in the southern Arava desert valley. But if you've start picturing me out picking dates or mucking out cowsheds, I'm afraid I'll have to disabuse you of that imagery. Our Kibbutz stay was purely educational. We did have to get up super-super early, but not to attend to agricultural matters. Instead, we had a Friday morning Desert Arts workshop. There were three options: Desert photography, Desert Painting, and Desert Midrash. I chose painting - over the last few months I have become deeply enamoured of the desert, and have been heard to lament on more than one occasion that I haven't any paints which I might use to feebly attempt to capture some of the indescribably beautiful lights and colours before my eyes. So a few hours with watercolour paints seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up. Unfortunately I remembered almost nothing my mum had ever taught me about working with watercolours, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience...



The rest of our time on Kibbutz was very relaxing. Ketura is a religiously pluralist community with "egalitarian" Shabbat services, and it was very nice to experience a Ketura Shabbat. We had ample free time to spend at Ketura's AMAZING swimming pool, and we had a few other activities designed to give us an insight into Kibbutz life (for example, we did a simluated "Kibbutz democracy" exercise in which we debated and voted as "kibbutz members" on real issues that have come up in this or other kibbutzim in the past. Shortly before we left Ketura late Saturday evening, we had a tour around the whole kibbutz, which has an impressive agricultural industry including dates, dairy cows, and a world-leading algae factory! Our final stop was at the cowsheds, where we were lucky enough to discover one of the cows in the process of giving birth! Sadly she was not far advanced enough for us to see the whole birth, and although she was working fairly hard to push it out, we had to leave her with just the two hooves of her calf poking out into the world.

Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Programme

So I am back in Arad after 8 days at the 19th Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Programme. It was a very densely packed week-and-a-bit; filled with seminars and discussion groups from morning to night.

I was thinking about whether I could summarize some of the highlights or content of the Fellowship, but I'm so tired right now I just can't think straight. I had to leave a little bit early, in order to get back to Arad for my WUJS programme, so sadly I am missing the closing banquet tonight :( As is often the case, some of the best moments of the week came about in the social interactions and conversations between Fellows. I have made some new friends, including some awesome Israelis, who I'll definitely be staying in touch with while I'm living in Tel Aviv; and friends from Europe and the USA who I may visit in my post-Israel travels.

The last couple of nights a few of us took to Lake Kinneret (a.k.a The Sea of Galilee) for evening swims and beach bonfires. Every day I was transfixed by the beauty of the lake - the colours of the light and the landscape seemed to change every time I looked. I regret that I was a little slack in terms of taking photos, but since I'll be up there again in a few weeks, I figure there will be more opportunities. And first I have to deal with my photo backlog from the Negev Tiyul and Eilat... time to start some uploading, methinks!

Oy, such a shlep!

Friends and blogfans will already be familiar with my exceptional capacity for fake losing stuff. This week I had my first fake lose since arriving in Israel. As I mentioned in my last posting, I spent a few days in Eilat (the southern tip of Israel), at the very recommendable Beit Haarava hostel (Clean bathrooms, very friendly staff...). On Sunday morning, I was on the bus on my way back to Arad (via Be'er Sheva), only 30 minutes into a 3-4 hour bus trip, when I realised I didn't have my cellphone. Crisis!! But funnily enough, for some strange reason that morning I'd picked up one of the Hostel's card and put it in my pocket. So, putting on my most earnest please-help-me-I'm-from-New-Zealand expression, I borrowed a cellphone from a fellow passenger and called the Hostel. The manager found my phone at the table where I'd had breakfast and then we tried to work out what to do. Two of my WUJy friends were still at the Hostel so we agreed that when they woke up he'd give them the phone and I should call it to arrange a plan. Lucky that I actually knew my own phone number! So the rest of the bus ride I kept calling and calling until I could speak to one of the friends. The phone ended up with Melanie, who I spoke with just as she was boarding the bus to Haifa.

My original plan had been to spend the night in Arad, then go to Tel Aviv in the morning for a meeting regarding my PSJ internship, then to meet a bus at Ben Gurion Airport to be taken up to Kinneret for the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Programme. But since I was phone-less (and hence practically paralysed) I altered my plans to include a train trip from Tel Aviv to Haifa to pick up the phone, then bussing and taxing to Teveria and Kinneret. So yesterday and the day before, I spent approximately: 8.5 hours on buses, 1 hour on a train, and 1 hour in taxis. I have travelled so much of Israel in two days!

From this experience I have learned several things. 1) Once again, Israel is SMALL! 2) The please-help-me-I'm-from-New-Zealand face really works 3) Things always work out OK, and 4)Of all the things you can fake-lose, a cellphone is perhaps not the most important (c.f. wallet, passport), but is certainly one of the most logistically inconvenient things to organise to get back! How do you even arrange a place to meet with someone when you don't have a phone?? And how on EARTH did people get by when travelling in the past??

South - North

In the next week I'm going to be travelling the country almost from end-to-end. Tomorrow we leave EARLY (6.30am) to start our 3-day hiking tiyul in the southern Negev - in the sweltering heat, I fear..... We'll finish on Thursday evening in Eilat, on the Red Sea, where I'll be spending the weekend. On Sunday or Monday I'll head northwards, to Kinneret (or "The Sea of Galilee") for a week of Nahum Goldman Fellowship Programme. Friends and family will recall that I spent a week on this same programme in Mumbai India, back in 2005 (see cool photo montage!)

I will try to post updates when I can, in the meantime blogfans, keep the comments and emails coming, I love love LOVE to hear from you :)

Bruchin

Here is a pic from the Bruchin settlement in the West Bank. You can always see more photos on my Flickr site (see link on right hand side of the screen....)

Beyond the Green Line

Today we travelled across the Green Line. This is the common name for the border around the West Bank (border may be the wrong word, as it's yet to be agreed upon as a border - rightly or wrongly, there is no Palestinian state yet for Israel to share a border with). A quick and woefully incomplete history: The green line was originally the UN armistice line established between Israel and the Arab countries that it fought during the 1948 war of independence - Egypt, Syria, Jordan. At the end of the 1948 war, Gaza was part of Egypt, and the West Bank was part of Jordan. Israel later recaptured both of these territories during the 1967 war, and for the last couple of decades many Jewish settlers have come to live here, both in places that were historically inhabited by Jewish communities, and in newly-built settlements, strategically dotted amongst Palestinian towns and villages.

Anyone who has read a newspaper or seen a television in the past 40 years will know that the question of who is entitled to live on each side of the Green Line - and who holds sovereignty over these lands - sits at the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (intertwined with security and terrorism, religious radicalism, unfortunate political decisions, and collapsed efforts to negotiate of course). This is the iconic struggle of our times - as evidenced by the world's obsession with it. And of course, there is a lot more to the story that what one ever hears in the news. I'm putting a disclaimer here that I'm not going to be able to adequately comment on what I know about the settlements, nor what I think about them. It's too hard in a blog and I am still processing my thoughts!!!

The purpose of our trip was to visit a small Jewish settlement - Bruchin - to see what it was like, and to hear from some of the settlers why they have chosen to live here. Only an hour earlier, we met with the head of Peace Now/Shalom Achshav, an Israeli organisation that favours the dismantlement of many (but not all) settlements in exchange for security and a final negotiation of borders with an independent Palestinian State. The Peace Now representative gave, I thought, a fairly cogent analysis of the situation. His view was that even if Israel's future in giving up the Territories looks bleak, and may not lead to peace, the alternative is even bleaker. Retaining control over around 4 million Palestinian Arabs, when it's inconceivable that they can (or would want to) be integrated as full citizens of Israel as long as Israel hopes to be a Jewish State, is part of what I've heard called the "demographic argument" for the two-state Israel/Palestine solution.

But of course, things are never so simple. A two-state solution seems like the only viable solution to me, but there are so many question marks and barriers to this happening. Would a Palestinian state be economically viable? Would it guarantee a safer Israel - or, as some fear, would it create a platform for even greater violence? Would rockets and missiles begin to rain down on Israel - as they are on Sderot and Ashkelon today? Even if Israel was willing to go ahead in good faith, as history has shown, even the most comprehensive offers to date, like at Camp David and Taba have been rejected - not negotiated, rejected - by the Palestinian leadership.

We met with several women at Bruchin - these were not the crazy lunatic settlers that one might imagine from the news, but a group of pleasant and quitely well-spoken young mothers who invited us into their homes. Although they didn't express wildly objectionable opinions or attitudes, I found their reasons for choosing to live in the West Bank neither convincing nor realistic. They certainly don't see themselves as barriers to peace - as many do - but expressed a desire to just get on living peaceful lives in their peaceful settlements. At the root of their conviction is the religious belief that Jews are supposed to be living in these lands, as part of the Land of Israel given by God to the Jewish People. Although they more or less avoided representing themselves as political, of course this religious view is also tangled up into a political position as well - this land clearly wasn't just sitting there empty, ready for Jewish people to come and set up house wherever they pleased. On the other hand, it's also clear that this logic works both ways - many within the Palestinian political and religious community have made it clear that establishing a state in the West Bank and Gaza is only "Phase I", with "Phase II" being a Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and is entirely free of Jews.

At the end of our day, we went to visit a temporary village in Israel (undisputed Israel) where many former residents of the Gaza Strip settlements - Gush Katif - have been put while the government creeps at a snail's pace towards building them new homes and communities. I was a little surprised to find myself touched by, and sympathetic to, the situation of these people, at least as represented by one woman who spoke to us about what it was like to be forced from their community after decades of hard work and commitment to cultivating the land, with very little meaningful compensation to date. Once again, she didn't say anything that I could outright disagree with or dismiss, and there are many things about the Gush Katif communities - including their deep valuing of community life itself - which were worthy of admiration. Last year, I thought that the unilateral disengagement from Gaza was both inevitable and neccessary. I pretty much still think this, but looking at Gaza today, it is hard to see how exactly the withdrawal has made things better (again, for complex reasons). Today, even more than before, I feel sad about the minorly and majorly tragic impacts of the conflict on so many people - Israeli and Palestinian. And that's about as good a summary as I can give right now.

Tripping

I have about 10 mins to blog before I go downstairs to be picked up by my adopted Arad family. They invited me to come to Tel Aviv with them for the day, as they have a series of family engagements and they thought I might enjoy tagging along. The downside is that I had to wake up at 6.30 am this morning :(
It's going to be a week of tripping around this week. On Sunday we have a field seminar north of Jerusalem (it's a controversial one, I hope to blog about it afterwards!). Then on Tuesday we set off - another early morning start I'm afraid - for our 3-day tiyul (hiking trip) in the southern Negev desert. We'll end up in Eilat, so i will probably stay there for a few days, before heading up to Kinneret for my "other" Israel programme - the week-long Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Programme. So much coming up!

Gotta run!

Shavuoooooooot

The elongated set of ooooo's in the header indicates me clutching my stomach and groaning after two days of continuous eating....we have just finished celebrating the chag (holiday) of Shavuot - which, among other things, marks the time when the children of Israel were given the Torah on Sinai. This is a holiday that hasn't featured prominently for me in the past - mainly I associated it with eating cheesecakes (it's customary to eat dairy foods on Shavout) - so I really enjoyed the way we celebrated it here at WUJS. For one thing, I ever knew
(or more likely, I once I knew but forgot) that it's also customary to stay up and learn during the night - because the naughty Israelites FELL ASLEEP when they were supposed to be waiting with bated breath to receive the Torah on Sinai. We had a really interesting set of seminars, including one with a reconstructionist Rabbinical student looking at some excerpts from the Talmud regarding the mitzvot (commandments), and a session with Alon (our director) discussing Israel's Law of Return vs Law of Citizenship(very thought provoking and not a little controversial), and finally we read Megillat Rut, (The Scroll of Ruth, who is thought of as the first person to convert to Judaism). We only stayed up til 2 am. but it was fun to learn so late at night. Luckily I had drunk coffee in the afternoon ....

Apart from the learning, we have eaten almost non-stop since Tuesday night. I'm happy to be eating again (after my brush with illness) but one of these days I am going to have to learn to stop when my stomach starts to actually hurt!!

Alive and well :)

I just want to report that I am alive and well and feeling much MUCH better after two miserable days. I had a continuous headache for about 48 hours, really uncomfortable, and then yesterday even though I hadn't eaten for almost a day I started to vomit up stomach fluid, blechh. I went to the doctor's clinic and they filled me with IV fluid and tried to figure out what was wrong, but they could't. So they prescribed me some antibiotics and sent me home, saying if i didn't feel better in the next few hours, I should go to the hospital to get more tests. So, since I didn't feel any better, that's what I did last night. I got even more IV fluid (I was "like dry bread" according to my doctor), and my BP was low even for me - something like 89/48? They did more blood and urine tests, and even ordered a C.T. which was a weird experience. Hours and hours later, they couldn't find anything on my tests but meanwhile I was starting to feel better! So they discharged me and I slept well last night and I'm even eating again, thank goodness!!

So it's all a mystery, I wonder if it was some kind of virus coupled with fatigue and dehydration that did me in?

Pain in my head :(

I am not feeling so good today. Yesterday afternoon I started to get a headache which got progressively worse, last night I was awoken by a throbbing pain in the back of my head which has kept me in bed for most of today :( I'm not too sure what the problem is, at first I thought I had pulled something in my neck but now I'm wondering if I have a bit of a something, maybe something flu-like? Although other than the pounding brain and general fatigue, I don't have serious nausea (just lack of appetite). Not sure if I have a temperature as I don't have a thermometer. Anyways, it's all generally not so much fun. I'm drinking lots of water and keeping myself from dying of boredom by listening to scientific american podcasts on my laptop. Here's hoping that I wake up feeling a lot better tomorrow morning!

ani lomedet le'at, le'at....

I just want to report that I am slowly slowly developing a smallish vocabulary in Hebrew, such that I can tell people where I live, where I'm from, and make generally banal observations about the world around me ("She's very nice" "I want to learn Hebrew" "I am walking to the mall" "That is a big dog" "Those flowers are pink" etc etc). As well as recognising perhaps about one in ten words in the average Israeli's sentence. We've already learned about three dozen verbs, which is very useful. However so far we've only learned present tense - hence I feel I'm a bit stuck in an ever-present present which is frustrating when I want to tell someone either what I did yesterday, or what I'll be doing tomorrow. So at the moment I talk like a real immigrant, mixing my tenses ("Tomorrow, I go for a walk") (Yesterday I wash my dishes"). You get the idea.

Hebrew is one of those annoying languages where everything is either masculine (zachar) or feminine (nekevah). Which is, of course, endlessly troublesome for English speakers. You have to learn every word in its masculine and feminine forms, as well as masculine plural and feminine plural. I'm glad I learned French at school, as this prepared me a little bit for the complexities of learning a gendered language. It's funny though, now that I am learning Hebrew, stupid French words and phrases keep jumping into my head and getting in the way. And my adopted family in Arad think I speak Hebrew with a French accent. I interpret this as a signal that there's only space in my brain for one second language. Hebrew and French are going to have to fight it out between them to see who gets to set up camp in my grey matter....GentleLanguages, take your corners..... [dingding!]

Whose Desert is this, anyway?

This weekend (Fri/Sat) we had a Shabbaton out in the Desert, staying with a lovely group of young people - students from Ben Gurion university (in Beer Sheva)- in a small student development village called Adiel. Adiel is part of the Ayalim Association. As their website explains, the Ayalim Association

"was established in September 2002 by a group of young army veterans and today it is comprised of 300 student activists, from a total of about 5,000 students that seek to join each year.

The association works...... to promote the establishment of villages for students and young entrepreneurs in peripheral areas about which there is an Israeli consensus—the Negev and the Galilee.

These villages will form the basis for permanent settlement and social involvement, while channeling the goodwill and energy of many young people in Israel for national service as part of their personal fulfillment."

The idea is that so many Israeli students come to the desert (Beer Sheva) to study, yet very few remain to make the desert their home. Ayalim is a modern Zionist movement which sees a big future for Israel in investing and developing sustainable communities in the Negev. The students who live in the Ayalim Villages form communities that support existing desert communities, bringing youth and vibrance and contributing time and energy to these communities.

Our weekend in the desert was a fitting end to a week in which we've been getting to know a lot more about the complex relationships between this desert and the people that live in it, and the people who don't. Although the Negev comprises 60% of Israel, only a small proportion of the population lives here. Yet there are many pockets of inspiring "pioneering" activity - for example, Be'er Milka, a community very near the Sinai Border which so far comprises only 13 families, living in trailer homes while they develop their agricultural businesses and plan how to build their community.

Earlier this week, however, we saw a different side to the story of life in the Negev. This was our study seminar on Bedouins of the Negev, led by Ye'ela, a Jewish Israeli anthropologist who works for a Bedouin Regional Council NGO. As one might expect, there are big problems with/for the Bedouin population in Israel. Many Bedouins live in unrecognised villages, meaning that they are not permitted to build such basic infrastructure as roads, schools, and in many cases, running water. For whatever reason (the reasons differ depending on who you ask, and can lead to heated debate amongst Israelis), there is an enormous mismatch between Bedouin needs/culture/aspirations - remembering that these are citizens of Israel - and Israeli government policy with regards to settlement in the desert. It's all extremely complicated and I certainly don't think I can do justice to this issue in one blog posting...but as the title suggests, even here in the desert where there are no green lines, there are still some problematic question about who can or should live here, and on whose terms.

PS. Hi Carmit, my newest blogfan :)

Shabbat, Old Skool-styles

This weekend I spent Shabbat in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was quite an experience, staying with two friends (one of whom is Orthodox) at a religious women's hostel in the heart of the Jewish Quarter.

Although I don't normally keep shabbat (ok, I don't ever keep shabbat), I really enjoyed the Old-Skool Shabbat experience. The Jewish Quarter is full of Yeshivot (schools for study of Torah) and many many Jewish outreach programmes and experiences. We took advantage of one of these - Shabbat Hospitality. What happens is on Friday nights, after Shabbat comes in, you can go and meet a very comedic guy called Jeff Seidel who will send you to the home of a Jewish family for Shabbat dinner. You can do the same on Saturday for lunch. We went to two different homes and had two exceptional meals with our generous hosts. The people were so welcoming and I really appreciated the opportunity to glimpse inside Jewish Orthodox life. Although Orthodox Judaism is not for me, I am endlessly fascinated by people who seek to live every aspect of their lives in keeping with the codes of conduct and teachings of the Torah. As always, I heard and saw things I could relate to, and things that I couldn't relate to at all. At times I felt connected to K'lal Yisrael and at other times, felt like a separate species of Jew from my hosts. But this is Israel, and the longer I am here and the more I read and learn, the more complex this place becomes for me.

This past week I have also become more conscious of the "bubble" that we could potentially be encased in at WUJS, in our quiet little desert town. Just outside our carefully and richly designed programme lies a country that is rent by religious, cultural, social, and political tensions. Some of these tensions are beginning to become the centrepieces of our seminars and fieldtrips. Tomorrow, for example, we are going to visit some Bedouin sites to find out more about the issues and challenges for this group of people. Next week we will focus on "Jerusalem's seam line" - the East-West divide that sits at the heart of so many of Israel's deepest problems. We look at these issues in our seminars too. There is a lot to think about.....

Moonlight hiking

A few nights ago we went for a moonlight hike in the desert with a man called Dov, an enthusiatic amateur archaeologist and lover of the desert who regularly guides walking tours to the many interesting and historical sites near Arad. He loves the desert and it shows.

Although the full moon failed to come to the party (it was cloudy), it was a remarkably warm night, and the aroma of jasmine as we walked through the suburbs to the edge of the desert was intoxicating. It was so interesting, we went to these caves where people lived and built huge water storage tanks in the ground to catch rainwater and sustain their desert lifestyle. According to Dov this all happened in the Byzantine era,c.1500 years ago. These amazing archaeological sites are literally a stone's throw from the edges of Arad - yet few people even know they are there.

Very busy!

I feel like I haven't been blogging as often as I really need to, to keep y'alls up-to-date. The problem is that there is SO much to blog about (what we're learning, what's going on at WUJS, our tiyulim, etc) but so little time to blog! Many days we have nary a moment to spare, in between classes and homework and group activities. So, my apologies blogfans...I will try to write something interesting soon :)

Mud, mud, glorious mud

One of the benefits of living in Arad is that we're only a 20-minute drive away from the lowest point on Earth (on land, that is). Yes, I'm talking about the Dead Sea. 418 metres below sea level, home to Masada, Ein Gedi, and dozens of luxury "Spa" Hotels.
For those who haven't been here before, here's what to do at the Dead Sea: Have a bit of a dip (marvel at the sensation of floating so buoyantly in the water, take some pics of yourself or someone else floating on their back while reading a newspaper, etc.). Then, rinse off, exfoliate with big sea crystals so you're ready to shmear yourself with Dead Sea Mud, all over, lie in the sun for a bit, then rinse off again in the super-mineralized Dead Sea waters.

After doing this, your skin feels sooo slippery smooth and silky that it would make a baby's bottom feel like sandpaper by comparison. So smooth that one has to remind oneself not to spend too much time rubbing one's own newly smooth skin and cooing with pleasure, lest one attract the wrong kind of attention.

However, things aren't all sunshine and lollipops for the Dead Sea itself. The water levels are dropping, due to diversions of water from the Jordan River further north, and evaporation ponds associated with the Dead Sea mineral works. It's been proposed that a canal be built to transport water from the Red Sea or the Mediterranean. See, the 400m drop in height from sea level means it could be possible to create hydro-electric power and a desalinisation plant. Since the Dead Sea lies on the border, this would be a cooperative project between Jordan and Israel. You can read more about the proposed idea here. (NB. I just fixed this link, thanks Ben!)

Another thing I'm getting used to (Part 2)

...is calculating the time difference to New Zealand so I know when it's possible (or should I say reasonable) to send text messages, and when emails are likely to land in my inbox. Since you guys (I'm talking to you guys in NZ) are 9 hours ahead of me, my morning email check is usually a joyous one, as I discover all kinds of new and exciting messages and info from home. But after that, the rest of the day is an email desert because you guys are all sleeping (or you should be!). And, like the email addict I am, one "hit" a day never seems to be enough.

Before I left Welly, Josie gave me a bit of traveller's wisdom. She said "Now Rach, I have to warn you that when you are away, you will be emailing your friends and family and they will email you back, but they might not reply as fast as you would like, but just remember, it doesn't mean they don't love you". I know now exactly what she means. Actually most of my nearest and dearest have been great at staying in touch, so I have news and updates almost (if not) daily. But of course, as they say in the Air New Zealand TV ads, "being there is everything" - and I have to admit I miss "being there" - even though "being here" is amazing and exciting and I'm very glad to be here. But if only I could teleport home for the occasional weekend visit...

Things I'm getting used to (Part 1)

Y'know how it is when you move to a new country, and at first things are kind of weird and different, but pretty soon they start to seem very routine? Here's a few things that I'm getting very used to already:

1) Showers with three taps (one for hot, one for cold, and one for on/off).
2) Going out for a walk or run, and coming across a herd of camels grazing in a vacant lot.
3) Squeegeeing the bathroom floor after a shower.
4) Drinking tons and tons of water even when i'm not thirsty

ummm... I'm sure there are some other things...will have to add to this list later!!

The WUJS routine

I have now been here at WUJS Arad a little over a week, and I'm just beginning to get clear on our general weekly "routine". Up till now it's been a little confusing because we had an "orientation" week, and then we began this week with Yom HaZikaron (memorial day) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day), so things have been a little frenetic. Today we spent most of the day at a Yom Ha'atzmaut BBQ in a local Arad park, chilling, eating, reading, and playing (or in my case learning to play) shesh besh.

But anyway here's a precis of a normal week: We have Hebrew Ulpan (Hebrew language classes) for 3 hours a day on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesdays, we do a"study tour" - basically a field trip to learn about some topic by going to see it. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays we also have seminars in three different streams: Judaism stuff on Mondays with Artie Fischer, Israeli society and culture stuff on Wednesdays with Steve Israel, and Middle East Politics stuff on Thursday with Neil Lazarus. On Sundays we also have special stuff according to which WUJS track we are on - e.g. Arts (AP), Land Language and Society (LLS), or Peace and Social Justice (PSJ) - I am PSJ. So there is also a whole series of trips and seminars related to that. Sundays and Mondays we have some sort of evening activity. Classes end 5.30pm on Thursday, and we have Friday and Saturday off as our weekend.

Busy Busy!!

It's great though, I am loving being a student again. Next week we also get to meet our "adopted families" - these are local families from Arad who we can go and visit, practice our Hebrew with, etc. I am not sure how much Hebrew I can learn in the 2.5 months I'm in Arad, but I really want to because I hate not being able to talk to Israelis in their own language!

As for other "routine" aspects of life, I haven't joined a gym yet but I think I probably will. The two gyms here are tiny, one is very expensive but has a pool, and the other is cheaper. I am missing Les Mills a lot, but in the meantime we have been doing a lot of walking, a bit of hiking. A couple of times I even got out of bed in the morning and went for a run. I kind of need to, as we seem to spend a lot of time eating here!

Lying in the middle of a crater

I have just returned from a 2-day tiyul (trip/hike) in the Negev desert. As our "opening tiyul" for WUJS, we went to the large and small Makhtesh (crater - but a very specific kind of crater formed by geomorphological processes, not from a volcano or a meteor or comet impact). The first day we hiked down into, and across, the small makhtesh and camped in tents on the outer rim. Today we walked through a beautiful winding canyon to the Arava valley. I was a very happy camper (though it seems not all the WUJys are cut out for camping!).

The Negev is so beautiful, and our guide - another Rachel - had a gift for eloquently weaving together stories about the natural and cultural history of our surroundings and helping us to appreciate where we were at each moment.

At one point, after lunch, she had us lie down in the middle of the makhtesh just to listen to the sounds and the silence of the desert. Once everyone stopped shuffling their feet and zipping their bags, the silence was blissful. A few weeks ago in Welly, I think it would have been pretty hard for me to imagine myself lying in the middle of a crater in the Negev....

I am so happy right now

It's a good thing that I am so easily pleased. Right now I am about three strawberries short of complete bliss, having just come back from the once-a-week Arad shuk (market) with a "granny wagon" loaded to the brim with fresh fruit and veges. Those of you who know me will already have detected the two key sources of my current joy: yes, I have a brand new granny wagon, it's not quite as beautiful as my red tartan one in Welly (hope you're enjoying it, Michelle!), but very capacious and I can already tell it's going to get a lot of use! And of course, there are few things that I love more in this life than a granny wagon loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, and here in Israel fresh produce is unbelievably good and unbelievably cheap. In the face of such temptation I couldn't hold back; when my wagon was groaning and threatening to capsize under the weight of my delicious bounty, I knew I had to stop. Adding this to the bread, tuna, and giant tub of hummus I bought at the supermarket this morning, I am set for the week, thanks very much!!