Over the Past Week......

Over the past week or so nothing much has happened here. Today we are 10 days past halfway! :)
My grandparents left last Sunday night so we have been getting back into our usual routine. The most major thing that I've done over the past week was audition for HMS Pinafore, the musical which my class will be putting on in the spring. The singing audition was much more difficult then the acting audition for me because I do not like to sing very much. I'm not thrilled with acting either, but acting is much better then singing. A family friend of ours, Avital, happened to be studying in Israel for part of the time that we are here. Avital is an amazing singer and actress, so she kindly offered to help me and gave me some great tips on singing and acting. Thank you Avital!

My mom and I have, as usual, gone for many long walks around Jerusalem. On one of them we were walking down a very busy street when out of the blue I stopped and said, "Oh my god! Look! A turtle!" In the middle of the sidewalk there was a 5 or 6 inch turtle! It was very cool but odd to see a turtle in the middle of the sidewalk. That is definitely not something I see in Portland.... I have also been doing a bunch of school work. Though I'm still ahead of my class in most subjects! :)

Over the past week or so, more or less since the halfway point, I have really been wondering what we will do for this half of the trip. We have been to almost everything of interest in Jerusalem and going to the Old City gets old after we've walked around it almost everyday for the past two months. We are going to Eilat, the southern most point in Israel, towards the end of March and I'm really excited for that but I'm not so sure about what we will do until that. When we aren't constantly busy, I really miss Portland and my friends. This evening it was raining and my mom and I were walking home from the grocery store and she asked me why I wasn't wearing my hood, to which I replied, "Because the rain reminds me of home." I've had a lot of fun experiences happen in Portland while it has been raining or pouring and walking home while getting wet from the rain reminded me of them. Anyway, I hope we keep doing exciting events for the remaining 41 days of our trip.

Mitzpe Ramon

Mitzpe Ramon is a huge crater in the southern part of Israel. People here call it the "Grand Canyon of Israel." That is a bit of a stretch. It is a rather large crater, but definitely not compared to the Grand Canyon in the US. Because Mitzpe Ramon is in the Negev Desert, everything in the crater and around it is all the same dusty, sandy, tan. When we first arrived at the crater the view was quite amazing but quickly lost its amazement because everything looks the same. The rock formations are cool, but once you've seen hundreds of rock formations in less than an hour, they sort of lose their coolness. We arrived in Mitzpe Ramon at around 1pm with my grandparents and their friends, Bonnie and Rob. My grandparents and Bonnie and Rob are neighbors and friends in Burlington, Vermont. Once we settled into our hotel, my parents, Rob, and I went off for lunch knowing that after lunch we would go hike down part of the canyon. Bonnie and my grandparents went off to visit one of my grandma's friends who lives in the town of Mitzpe Ramon. For lunch we went to the one café in the tiny town of Mitzpe Ramon. The food was very good at the café. I got a Greek sandwich, which had roasted red peppers, super fresh feta cheese, big delicious olives, and baby lettuce in a fresh-out-of-the-oven ciabatta bread. The sandwich was definitely one of the best I have had in Israel. A fact about most Israeli meals is that they are almost always HUGE. Appetizers are usually like the size of entrees in Portland. This fact was completely true about my sandwich, when they asked me if i wanted it on ciabatta or whole wheat bread and I said I wanted it on ciabatta I didn't realize that they were going to give me the entire ciabatta! So I only ate half of the sandwich. After lunch, we walked to the visitors center because that is where the hotel said we could pick up a map about different trails. When we got to the visitors center they told us that we didn't have a lot of time because people have to be back on the main road by 4:30pm and it was already 2:30pm. We were a little upset about this but still made our way towards the rocky and dusty trail that would take us down to the bottom of the trail. We decided that we would walk part way down the trail and do the rest the next day. The trail was very rocky and steep and was very difficult to climb down. It took quite a while to get down the first part, but after a while there weren't as many rocks and the trail got a lot easier and we moved faster. We probably got about halfway down before we decided to turn around because we were getting tired and it was getting near 3:45pm. For my parents it took around as long as it took to get down to get up, I ran up the trail. I don't really know why I decided to run up but it was definitely a great workout. I made it up at least three times faster than my parents did. Once we got back from the hike and had showered, all seven of us went out to the other restaurant in the town for dinner. I got a bowl of soup that my dad and I were going to share and then he would share his chicken with me. The first part worked, but because I didn't like the chicken I ended up eating a lot of bread for dinner. Breakfast the next day wasn't any better than dinner the night before. Breakfast consisted of very stale bread, wilted vegetables, and some disgusting jam. This hotel definitely wasn't known for its breakfast! But lucky for me, I still had the other half of my sandwich from lunch the day before! That sandwich had never tasted better. :) After "breakfast," my parents and I decided that we weren't going to go down the crater again because my mom's knees hurt and it was already really hot outside. So we decided that we would just walk around the rim of the crater. The walk around the rim looked the exact same as the walk in the crater except that we weren't walking on a hill. The only difference was toward the end of the walk when we saw a group of at least twenty Ibex! The Ibex were so cool to see up close! My dad had gone home to shower so my mom and I were just sitting on a rock taking a break when I turned my head and said, "Mom! Look! Ibex!" They were just sitting there and when a big tour bus drove by they didn't move. So lucky for us, they weren't scared of humans. This was good because we could get close to take pictures. Mitzpe Ramon was definitely an interesting experience!

Fulbright Trip

Over the 9th and 10th of February my parents and I went on a trip up north with Fulbright. Fulbright is the organization that awarded my dad the award that allowed us to go to Israel. My grandparents are also here for the next 2 weeks and because the Fulbright trip was picking us up in Haifa, a beautiful port city in the north, the morning of the 9th we decided to go up to Haifa, with my grandparents, the night of the 8th. My grandparents would then pick us at the end of the Fulbright trip on the Sea of Galilee. On the way up to Haifa we stopped in Netanya, a beach town around half and hour drive north of Tel Aviv, for a walk and lunch. The beach was beautiful. The sea was bright blue in parts and greenish blue in parts. The Mediterranean Sea is one of the prettiest oceans, in my opinion. Once we arrived in Haifa and went to our hotel, the Hotel Nof, at around 7pm we took a walk and then went to bed because my parents and I knew that we had an early start the next morning. But before I went to bed a made sure to take a nice hot shower!! Hot water is a rarity in Israel and we don't get a lot of it at our apartment. The morning of the 9th we quickly ate breakfast, said good-bye to my grandparents, and met the tour guide and the rest of the Fulbright people to begin our two day tour up north. Our first stop was a Tunisian synagogue near the beach town of Akko. There were a lot of mosaics in the synagogue. They were all amazingly put together and that clearly pain off because they were all beautiful. The one on the back wall was of the town of Akko. However, there were also mosaics on the ceiling and even some on the floor as well. This synagogue was definitely one of the most beautiful ones I have ever seen. After the synagogue, we went to Akko. In Akko we saw the jail house where prisoners were kept as recently as the early to mid 20th century. One of the neat things about Akko is that when the excavators found it, it was completely buried in sand. Since Akko is a huge town, it was hard to imagine the amount of sand. After exploring the jail, we went to the Knights' Halls. The halls were wear the Roman Knights would be if they were in Akko. The halls were huge and they were all made out of stone, so it got very cold in the halls during the winter. Knights even died from the cold. After Akko, we went to lunch in a Druze village. The religion, Druze, is a form of Muslim though it was made from parts of Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim. Druze cannot marry a person who is not a Druze and nobody can convert to being a Druze. Lunch was made up of pita with many dips and salads, which were pretty good though not the best that we've had. When we thought that the food was done coming and we were all full, they started bringing out pieces of chicken and lamb. The chicken and lamb were very good and perfectly seasoned and grilled, but we weren't hungry anymore so we didn't eat a lot of the chicken and lamb. When very full and done with lunch, we continued our tour to a Circassian village. Circassians are also Muslim though not the typical type. They came from the Ottoman Empire and parts of Russia, though later on some of them moved to the Middle East. The Circassian man that talked to us about he and his people was in Circassian attire. Circassian attire consists of long robes (some with patterns) and tall wide hats. Whenever the man giving us the presentation on Circassians pointed, his sleeves fell over his hands, which made him look like Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. :) After the presenter mumbled stuff to us (his English wasn't very good), we went to our last stop for the day, Kfar Blum, a Kibbutz hotel in the Hula Valley which is near the Golan Heights. Kfar Blum was much different then Kibbutz Hatzor. Kfar Blum was much more like a place that family reunions would take place. (It was like a hotel, just the rooms weren't connected to one main building.) Our room was very nice and had hot water!!! It was so nice to take another hot shower! The next day we started early again because like the day before, we had a lot to do and see. Our first stop of the day was a water fall in the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights is the area in the far north east of Israel. It is the part of Israel that borders both Lebanon and Syria. It was sort of freaky driving on the narrow roads of the Golan Heights seen signs saying "WARNING! DO NOT GO BEYOND THE LINE. LAND MINES." When the Golan Heights still belonged to Syria, the Syrians put land mines down to help keep outsiders out. The water fall was beautiful. Though it wasn't very tall, it was still beautiful. When the water splashed at the bottom of the water fall it was picture perfect. After the water fall visit we went to Gamla. Gamla is an area that people can hike, though we didn't have time to. Also, Gamla was a village on the top of a hill that the Jews fled to when the Romans were coming after them. All that is left now is ruins. For my mom, dad, and I, our next stop was our last with Fulbright. Our last stop was at the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is beautiful; especially the day we saw it. It was calm and a beautiful greenish blue. The sea looked even more beautiful with the sun shining on it. After we saw the Sea of Galilee, we said our goodbyes, especially to the bus driver, Chaim who we became good friends with, and my grandparents picked us up so that we could continue traveling with them. The two days we spent with Fulbright were very packed with lots of adventures!

The Mount of Olives

Today my mom and I went to the top of the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a large hill (mount) that has huge cemeteries covering its slopes. Most of the cemetery is Jewish, though a small portion at the bottom is Christian. This was the second time we walked up the Mount of Olives. We went up around a week in a half ago with Ellen. This time my mom and I decided to not cut through the Old City to get to the Mount of Olives. We walked around the outer wall of the Old City and then went into the mini-valley that is at the bottom the the Mount of Olives. In this mini-valley we saw a goat herder with at least 50 goats. Some of these goats weren't your typical looking goats; some had spots, some where black, and some were just playing odd looking. After taking a minor break in the mini-valley and watching the goat herder, we decided to continue our walk up. This time on our walk up, we decided to go in and walk through parts of the cemetery. We saw a few graves that had blue paint on part of them. We wondered what this meant and walked to one of them. At one of the graves that had a big blue rock on it, there was a Jewish man who was praying and spoke English. We asked him why a few of the graves had blue stuff on them. He told us the people in buried in them were important people. The grave that had the blue rock on it that we were standing in front of was an important rabbi from 300 years ago. We don't know who this rabbi is because he told us his name in Hebrew and we don't understand Hebrew. Once we climbed up to the top, we went to this hotel called the 7 Arches. When Ellen was here and we went up the Mount of Olives with her, we went into the 7 Arches because we needed a break and though it isn't a very nice hotel, it is basically the only place that you can stop at and take a break once at the top of the Mount of Olives. Mom and I went into the 7 Arches today because we wanted a break and because it was freezing outside, and the 7 Arches is heated. After we had had our fun at the 7 Arches, we decided that it was time for lunch seeing as it was already noon and we had to get down the Mount of Olives to get to a place for lunch. On the way back we decided to walk through the Old City. While we were thinking of places we could go for lunch my mom remembered that she had heard about this fabulous restaurant called the Village Green. The Village Green is on Jaffa Street, Jaffa Street is around a ten minute walk from the wall of the Old City. It was difficult to find the Village Green because everybody we asked about its location had no idea where it was. When we finally found it we found out that is was vegetarian and was all like salads, odd soups, and other healthy vegetarian buffet stuff. I really wanted something with meat, so my mom and I decided to go to the Thai restaurant that we saw up the street. The portions were huge at the Thai place, though the food was good, it was nothing like the Thai food that I'm used to. When we finished lunch, we decided to walk to Mahane Yehuda, the big farmers' market, to buy some food for dinner tonight. While we were at Mahane Yehuda my dad called and said that he was at the central bus station and that he could meet us at Mahane Yehuda in ten minutes, so we got to walk home with dad. Today was a fun day!

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem is the memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. It is truly an amazing and eye-opening place. The Children's Memorial was the exhibit that got to me the most. When I went inside the exhibit it wasn't like any other museum exhibit I'd ever seen. It was a dark room with hundreds of mirrors and just 5 candles. The candles reflected off the mirrors making the exhibit seem endless. While you walk through the exhibit a narrator's voice is saying the names of children who died, how old they were and where they were from. While my parents and aunt stayed for a few minutes but then were ready to move on, I wasn't ready to go yet. The exhibit really captured my feelings and made me truly realize what pain and fear these children had to feel. And why? Because of their religion. Something that they couldn't choose. Though my family doesn't know the names of our relatives that died in the Holocaust, we know they suffered because of something they couldn't control. Another exhibit that really amazed me was the Valley of the Communities. The Valley of the Communities is a 2.5 acre outdoor space that has 107 tall stone walls, creating room type spaces that connect to one another. On the stone walls are the names of over 5,000 cities that were annihilated during the Holocaust. Walking through the Valley of the Communities was fascinating and shocking. I knew that Jews died in many cities but I had no idea that the number was a high as 5,000. As I walked around the exhibit and read the names of the cities, I recognized a fair number of them. Greece had a wall or two, I had no idea that Hitler managed to have Jews killed all the way in Greece. After we were done with some of the exhibits we walked back to the entry building and talked to a man, named Yehuda, who we later found out was a Holocaust survivor. He was from Ukraine and managed to make it to Israel right after it had become a Jewish state. Talking to Yehuda really made me wonder what it would've been like living during a time like the Holocaust. Tons of people wanting you and your family dead. I could never imagine having people who used to be my friends, all of a sudden wanting me and my family dead. But that was how it was during the Holocaust. The Nuremberg Laws were passed to figure out who was Jewish. People were considered Jewish depending on what religion their four grandparents were. If a person had three or four Jewish grandparents, they were considered Jewish. But if they only had one or two Jewish grandparents they were considered mixed breed. In the beginning of Nazi Germany, mixed breed people weren't as hated as full out Jews. However, that quickly changed. When walking down to the Valley of the Communities you walk past a train car. The train car was one of the actual "cattle cars" that were used to transport the Jews from towns to the concentration or killing camps. Seeing the train was rather horrifying because it wasn't very nice looking and it was flat out tiny compared to the number of Jews that had to fit in it. Jews would have to ride in these train cars for days and nights. On the front of the car is a little platform that is higher than the rest of the car. A German soldier would stand on that platform to make sure that no Jews would escape, if a Jew did try to escape he would shoot them. The train car exhibit was a rather scary one for me. Everything at Yad Vashem is put together very tastefully and with lots of effort. That assures me that though the Holocaust is over, and that the new generation Germans are much different than the last one, the people and families who died and suffered in the Holocaust are not, and will never be, forgotten.