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??

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!!