the bubble is about to burst

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Hello All! Here's another blog as promised. Right now I'm in Jerusalem for shabbat, staying with a couple friends from my program. We've had a very very quiet and relaxing shabbat, seeing as there isn't much to do around here once shabbat starts (stores close down and all). We made ourselves a nice little dinner, and have just been relaxing the whole time. Its also the holiday of Simchat Torah today, which is basically a big party of celebrating receiving the Torah from G-d back in the day.

Anywho, so when I left off, we had just finished with Yom Kippur and I had returned to Ulpan. Our last few days of Ulpan were a lot of fun. Classes were good, and we had some fun music lessons in there. In the afternoon/evenings, we hung out a lot, one because it was our last few days all together, and two, because it was our friend Bruno's birthday.

So on thursday, after our last day of Ulpan classes, we all packed up, and the bus took us to our respective new places to live. First, the music group got dropped off, and we were all in awe of their huge house. Next was my stop in Ramat EfAl, which all I'd heard about it was that it was a very nice neighborhood. The last of our friends continued on to their apartments in Jerusalem. Well, when we got there to see our new apartment, nobody was happy. It was a very rich suburban neighborhood, but we were stuck in this dorm-like situation, and no shops or cafes or anything we needed close to us. The "apartment" was awful, and we all immediately started complaining to our director. So, I have 4 roommates. Two of the girls left for the weekend, and me and the two other girls, my friend girlfriends Elisabeth and Vanessa and I stayed for just the night, and the next morning, we all got a cab to go stay with our Music friends in Ramat Hasharon.

It was great to see them again, even though it had only been a few shorts hours since we left! Haha. We stayed with them the whole weekend and it was really nice. We made our own shabbat dinner, in which I cooked a pasta dinner, and it was really cool to make our own shabbat. We also spent friday afternoon in Tel Aviv. First, we went to an art gallery, which a friend of our friend Daniel had invited us to. It turned out to be a exhibition opening of an Israeli artist who had died the year before, and his wife and family was there to, and they gave a speech. It was a little awkward for us since we didn't know who this guy was, but it turned out to be nice. The art was really interesting, so that was a plus. And the widow was also very nice, spoke to us, and asked us how we found out about the exhibit.

Saturday, we spent just hanging out at the house, but at night we went out for a walk around town. Sunday was pretty much the same. But Sunday night, me, Elisabeth and Vanessa returned to our horrible apartment in Ramat Ef Al because the next morning we had to get up at 6am to leave for our 2 day trip to the south!

Early monday morning, we dragged ourselves to the bus station in Tel Aviv and waited for our group to meet up with us. We drove south to the area of the Judean Desert, which is where the Dead Sea and Masada are. Our first stop was the ancient town of Qumran. Back in the days of the second temple (about 2000 years ago), a Jewish cult group had moved out here. They wrote thousands of scrolls, mostly Torah scrolls, and then stored them in jars in the caves. When the roman empire conquered the land of Israel, they came to this town, and destroyed it. In the early 1950s, some Bedouins (arab nomads) were digging in the area and discovered a bunch of these old scrolls, after changing hands and talking to many researchers, it was found that these scrolls were the Torah, and the government of Israel bought them, as well as several hundred others that were found later. It turned out that these scrolls (now called the Dead Sea Scrolls) included a complete Torah, that is almost exactly the same at the Torah is today, meaning that this is proof that the Torah hasn't changed in the last 2000 years!

From there, we drove to a high mountain point overlooking all of the dead sea area. It was a beautiful view, and I got some really cool pics. The dead sea is the lowest point on earth, and the sea is so salty that you can't help but float, and nothing lives in it, hence the name Dead sea. Currently, the Dead Sea is drying up by 1 meter per year! thats a lot. The problem comes from its 2 water sources, mainly the Jordan river to the north, and the Red Sea to the south. The problem is that both Jordan, and Israel use the Jordan river as a source for drinking water and other things, and have put up dams to direct the water for these uses, which has majorly restricted the amount of water that flows all the way down to the dead sea.

Next was a natural reserve park called Ein Gedi. They have natural springs there, so a bunch of us went swimming! It was a lot of fun. There were also a bunch of wild animals roaming around, including beavers building a dam, and some deer-like animals (don't remember the name!). We then drove to our final stop for the evening, a Bedouin tent!

First thing we did was take a camel ride!! If you've ever ridden a horse, you know how sore you can get, well camels are worse because they are bigger, and they walk awkwardly in comparison. But it was so much fun, and reminded me of my first camel ride on my first trip to Israel 6 years ago. The camel ride was only a half hour, and then we got our stuff to sleep at the Bedouin tent for the night. These are the tourist Bedouin tents, not the real thing, but you still get an idea about the real thing, and they teach you about the bedouin culture, and you get to eat the delicious bedouin food! Yummmmm. So the Bedouin culture is all about hospitality, and respect. So when they have guest they make sure to take care of them very well. Our host was also an amazing musician, so he also taught us about traditional bedouin music. So after we ate, we had the rest of the night just to relax and hang out, and a bunch of us played cards (which anyone who has ever played with me knows i'm horrible at cards). We all went to sleep pretty early (well everyone except me) because we had to be up the next morning at 4:30am!!

So we woke up the next morning, and headed straight towards Masada. Unfortunately, we didn't get there in time to see sunrise, but we saw the sunrise as we drove there. So, we hiked up Masada, which is a similar site to the town Qumran, also another Jewish cult area. It is a big hike and I was very out of breath when I reached the top. The story with Masada is Jewish legend. Basically, 3 years after the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they still hadn't been able to conquer the Jewish cult of the Essienes (spelling?) that were living atop Masada. The Romans finally started building a huge ramp to be able to reach the top of Masada in order to conquer it. When the Romans finally finished the ramp and were able to get up, they found all the Jews dead. The whole group had decided to take fate into their own hands, rather than wait for the Romans to kill them. The jews all killed eachother in a last stand against the romans. I know this sounds strange, but it was about the Jews standing up against the Romans. They knew that they would not be able to survive the Roman attack once they were able to climb the mountain, so they took things into their own hands.

From the top of Masada you have amazing views of the whole area of the Dead sea and surrounding desert and mountains. Finally we began the long hike down along the snake's path, so called because it weaves back and forth until you reach the bottom of the mountain. It was so exhausting and my leg muscles were shaking the entire way down! too much difficult hiking for me in one day. Anyway, when we reached the bottom, we finally ate a real breakfast, and then headed to a beach area of the dead sea to go swimming!

The dead sea is so cool to float in. You really can't help it but float, the water just bounces you up. It also burns a bit if you have open cuts or anything like that! So I didn't stay in too long. The water of the dead sea is supposed to be very healthy for your skin. The other thing is the dead sea mud. People come from all over to put the mud all over their body. You cover yourself in it and let it dry for a few minutes, then wash it off, and afterwards your skin is so soft. It is so much fun.

So after hanging out for a while, we ate lunch, and started to head back to our respective homes. It was sad again to leave our friends, but we all haven't spent that much time apart yet! Hehe.

As I mentioned at the top of this entry, today is Simchat Torah, so all morning and afternoon, there have been people coming out from the synagogue, dancing with the torahs and singing and having a lot of fun. Its been very cool to watch.

Ok, well this is definitely plenty to read now. Hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly from now on.
Love you all,

Leah

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Comments

[Mom]

Dead Sea Mud Packs
Yuke! This is a photo to remember! The camel ride sounds like fun. I know how much you like horse-back riding.