so long, farewell, auf wiederzehn, goodbye

my last post. i am safely home. it was a long flight, but with only a few hitches. other than that, im good. not too much jet lag i dont think, but we'll see. its only 6pm in israel right now. when it gets later, ill see how i feel.

somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight, someone's thinking of me and missing me tonight

im in tel aviv, at Gali's house. gali is grandma rose's cousin tuvia's daughter. she is very nice and speaks english. yay. her husband i only met for a moment, but he seems very nice too. she has three kids: roni, the 16 year old girl, iyal, the 14 year old boy, and nir, the 6 year old boy.

nir loves me. hes so cute. he made me sit and watch him play video games, and they're all in english so he just clicks until something happens. sometimes ill help him out by telling him what the game says to do. hes really smart too. he has this dvd that teaches him random english words, and he went to new york and some other places, and hes picked up a lot of english. he knows the alphabet, how to count up to 12, and some simple phrases like what is your name. and random words like butterfly.

iyal is really sweet. hes really good at english too. hes been really nice and translating things for me if i dont know what nir is saying.

roni is nice too. her english is not very good, but a little better than my hebrew. she seems very interested in what kind of parties i go to, and how many boyfriends i've had. i feel bad dissapointing her and telling her i live in a tiny town where we dont go to clubs on friday night, we just hang out with friends.

at 3pm tuvia is comming to get me and take me back to his apartment where ill be spending my last night...ish. its not really a full night if i have to be at the airport at about 430am.

i already miss it here. but i miss you all much more so im really excited to come home.

i dont see what anyone can see in anyone else, but you

so today i have no friends. and i have to move all of my stuff. and i have no where to go, cause i dont want to pay bus fare, and i have walked everywhere already, and its no fun shopping on jaffo st if i cant buy anything, so i dont want to do that either.

last night i slept over at my ukranian friends house. he's an oleh haddash (new immigrant) and left the ulpan early to move to jerusalem where he got a job. so i hadnt seen him in a while, and it was really nice to see him again. we stayed up really late talking (or attempting to talk, our only common language is hebrew, and neither of us are super at it, but he is better cause he doesnt know english so it has to be), and he left his appartment at 530 to go to work! luckily, his roomate was there until about 8. she is really nice and also ukranian. i left at 7 to go back to my hostel, and went back to sleep.

at about 930 i woke up, and went to the old city to go see the church of the holy seplecure (i think thats what its called) i think its where jesus was reborn. it was pretty cool, except, it was sooooo crowded with tourists (myself included) that it didnt feel so special or holy. you know when you walk into some place sacred, whether its sacred to you or to someone else, you can feel the importance. it has a sort of reverence, and commands respect. but it was sooo crowded with people taking pictures and yelling and and stuff, that it couldnt command respect from these people so it lost all its...meaning i guess. its quite similar at the cotel. i mean, a lot of people go there to pray, but there are so many people who go to the wall, put their hand on in, turn and smile for the camera and walk away, that it takes away from the holiness of it. its quite a shame.

i walked around the shook for a bit, and then ben yehuda and the surrounding roads, but i didnt want to stray too far because at 230 i had to meet chris to give back his phone (which i did just a few minutes ago) and now am completely cell phoneless. but dont worry, i did get a calling card when i ran out of minutes, mostly to call tuvia if i get lost cause im now taking 2 buses and a taxi to his house rather than him picking me up.

and that brings me back to now. with nothing to do until around 4 is when i struggle to the bus station, and start my journey to tel aviv, the last israeli city i will see until summer.

ani lo yodat ma lasot akshav. ani margisha mamash lo normali. ktzat atzuv, ktzat smicha, aayifa.... ma lasot?

its time to let go of everything we used to know

i took the test, we'll see how i do. after the test, most of the ulpanists hopped into taxis and said their goodbyes. some even left before hand. sad. atzuv.

as for me, i stayed until sunday morning. on thursday, i went out with my friend from the kibbutz, lior. we made dinners together most nights. i also went out with my friend andres from the ulpan. we went out to haifa one last time.

on friday, nothing much happended. at night i went to the kibbutz pub one last time with the few remaining ulpanists. we said goodbye to our bartenders our pub friends, and pretty much anyone we could get our hands on. then we went to ultrasound, the club on the kibbutz, but it wasnt quite the same without the whole group so we went home relatively early.

on saturday i had a mini freak out when i realized i hadnt finished packing, and i didnt like the way i had packed, so i unpacked everything, and repacked. (i know think i still didnt do a good job and want to repack when i get to tel aviv.) i also forgot that the ulpan is over, thus no saturday night ulpan dinner. so i was quite hungry.

sunday i woke up early, and packed up my last little bit, had my last heder ochel breakfast - a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, a little red pepper, a very little bit of lettuce, some cottage, and some cheese. then corrine, the den mother of the ulpan checked my room, gave me my deposit of 400 nis (abt 100 $) and my friend sarah and i struggled like no other to the bus stop. thank god some nice old man in a wonderful van saw us and took pity. he took us to the road where it was only about 1/4 mile to the bus stop. so we probably saved about 1/3 an hour and a lot of energy. i came to israel with a medium sized suitcase and a backpack. i left with an EXTREMELY STUFFED medium sized suitcase, 2 backpacks, and a large tote bag. where did all this stuff come from? lo yodea!

so we finally made it to the bus stop, read some very strange graffiti, and shoved our stuff on bus 960 to jerusalem. my ipod stopped working on the bus, about 30 seconds in. sad. atzuv. about 2 hours later, we arrived in jerusalem, and took a taxi to the Jerusalem Hostel, which is on Jaffa st, right next to ben yehuda st. great location. we dropped our stuff and headed to lunch, and then off to Yad Vashem (the holocaust museum). we got there around 1pm. at 5, we were about 1/2 way through, and they told us it was closing and we had to leave. after that, we made our way back by bus to our hostel. the bus cant go too close to our hostel because of all the construction, and we wanted to window shop a little as well, so we got off pretty early and wandered all around. we went to a little shook and looked around for a bit, then continued on our way back to ben yehuda. we ate a nice dinner at spaghettim, and then headed to bed.

this morning we went back to yad vashem to finish what we started. i tried to look on the computer in the Hall of names for kalkstein from hannover, but there were no results. after that, we headed to the old city where we had a tour of the tunnels under the cotel (western wall). it was pretty interesting, and the tour guide really liked me cause i was the only one who could answer the question of why we pray at the western wall (its the closest we can get to the holy of holies). then we walked back to the hostel, and sarah left to go to tel aviv. her flight is at 730 tomorrow.

so now i am alone in jerusalem. tomorrow afternoon im gonna struggle with all my stuff to the bus station, and travel to tel aviv where tuvia will pick me up thank god, and i can stay with him.

as for today and tomorrow, i hope to meet my friend later tonight after he gets off work. but well see. i kinda doubt it will happen, especially since i dont have a working phone anymore- i ran out of minutes and i have to give it back to the guy who gave it to me tonight anyways. frustrating.

oh and mom. you know how you always meet someone from umass? well, of course my friend sarah on the ulpan just graduated from umass. but then we ran into the father of someone from umass at the holocause museum, and then, there are these girls who are staying at the hostel in my room, and one of them went to dearfield academy, and used to live in amherst, so she knows all these kids that i know. crazy.

יש לי היום מצוין yesh li ha yom metzuyan

today is the end. in 3 hours i am taking my final exam. im not freaking out about it at all. no matter what i get, i get a certificate that says ho many hours i did. and i should either get a kita bet or kita gimmel score. definately not an alef score. in a bit i will study up until the test, and it will be great.

Tuesday was my last day of working with the kindergarden. Karen, the head woman who organizes the schedule and stuff came by my class, Gan Oren, to give me a present (chocolate) very nice. There was a birthday that day too. (Hen)חן turned 5. the way they do birthdays is really cute. they put a little paper star medalion under one of 5 plates (because he is 5) and then play music and he dances around the plates. when the music stops he looks under on of the plates, and goes again and again until he finds the medalion. his family comes to be with him too, even his grandma (cause they all live on yagur) then he and some other kids hide under blankets and someone in his family taps a head and asks if it is Hen, and the kid makes an animal sound, and the family member says if it is or isnt Hen, then continues until they find Hen. Then he gets a card from everyone in the class, and they all give him a hug, sing happy birthday (the hebrew version of course) and sit down to have cake. first they get bamba and chocolate. bamba is what all israeli kids grow up on. it looks like cheese puffs, but isnt quite. then they sing this little rhyme that goes something like 'today is your birthday and you get chocolate cake. how does it taste? YUM!' and he sticks his finger in and licks it. then they cut it up and give it to all the kids.

after that, i had to leave! i was sent to another gan- they were 2 years old. i was kinda pissed that they moved me on my last day, but the kids were soooo cute it was okay. and as soon as i got there, we went on a tiul ( a walk) to the kolbo (convenience store) and hung out there on the grass. on of the kids, Ila, LOVED me. she kept holding my hand and grinning at me, and later when we went back to the gan, she ran and jumped on my lap. i played trot trot to boston with her and she couldnt stop laughing. it was realy cute. they had lunch about 1/2 hour earlier than gan oren does, so i wasnt really hungry yet, but the teachers like forced food on me. after lunch, they said i could go back to gan oren, so i did, and guess what. it was lunch time! so i sat and had lunch with the kids, and then i left, and went to the heder ochel to have lunch with my friends. (by have lunch, i mean i sat and talked with them while they ate)

on tuesday night, we had an end of the ulpan party at a nice restaurant in Tichon, the town about 15 minutes east of yagur. it was nice. everyone came and we had food, and each class did a little performance. my class sang backstreet boys You Are My Fire and threw in a few hebrew words every now and then. kita gimmel gave everyone in the ulpan awards. they did really stupid awards, and i got 'most likely to not pass through the security at the airport' cause i have so many piercings. ha. ha. not that funny. then they gave us little packets with a cd full of photos of our time here, ulpan yagur t-shirts, and a little paper that says stuff from ari and our teachers. you know when you are in kindergarden and your teacher writes your personality report on your report card? like, 'ella is very social and likes to play with all the other children. she especially likes to play with blocks.' stuff like that. thats sort of what this was. my teacher, Batia said i was brilliant (woot woot) and the ulpan director Ari said i was awesome too. pretty cool.

yesterday was wednesday, and i got up early (7:30) to go to Gan Oren, to say goodbye to them. it was kinda sad cause it was just a regular day for them, they said goodbye and the teachers made me a card and gave me more chocolate and hugged me goodbye, but they have 2 ulpans per year, so im not that special. and i just started working there as well. but it was nice to say goodbye. then i went to my teacher Batia's appartment, where she had made breakfast for our class. it was awesome. she has a really nice apartment. we had salad, and toasted pita, and some other food that i dont know what it is but was really good, and cake, and all this stuff. we played games and said goodbye. it was nice.

pray pray pray, pray i make pa

i got my test results for my oral exam. i did okay- i got a kita bet score. i was hoping to get a kita gimmel score, but its okay. i feel pretty good about the writing and reading test. i took a practice test today, and it was great cause i sped through it, so i got some really long breaks. then when we went over it, i got all the kita alef and bet stuff perfectly, and some of the kita gimmel stuff as well. so i feel pretty good about that.

i have a week left of the ulpan, then i am off to jerusalem on sunday the 29th. im gonna spend a few days there, then go visit tuvia and his family in tel aviv before heading....HOME!!!!!!!

yeah im a bit excited, although feel really weird about leaving the kibbutz. its been my entire life about for 5 months. thats a long time. it will be sad, but im still soooo excited!

Whenever I feel afraid I hold my head erect And whistle a happy tune So no one will suspect I'm afraid.

yesterday we went on our last tiul. we left at 7:30 like always, and headed to this huge cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites. it was pretty cool. the tour guide would point out ones that looked like moses, or snow white and the 7 dwarves, or people on a mountain, or some kind of food, or a hedgehog. it was pretty cool. really really humid and warm tho.

after that, we went to my favorite spot. we went to these limestone caves where jews hid from the romans during the great rebellion. in the first cave, there were small tunnels underground that we had to crawl through and it hurt our knees, and there were a few sharp turns that were hard to do. it was also pitch black and every other person got a flashlight. when we got into the room, it was really big. and we could walk around for a bit. then we crawled back.

the second cave was huge. it was a series of tunnels and caves, all man made. the tunnels were even smaller, and it was harder to get through them. but it was sooooo cool. i got really dirty but it was soo cool. i was lovin it hard core.

after that we had lunch, and drove on to the negev where we stayed in a beduin camp. as soon as we got off the bus, we hopped on some camels and took a nice little ride. i rode on one with raf. we named it kendra. the one behind me kept getting a little to close to me, and i heard they bite and stuff so she kinda freaked me out, but she was nice and we named her bumblebee.

after the camel ride, we went in and got settled in our huge ass tent. then we went to this welcome ceremony for just our group where a Bedouin man talked to us and told us about the Bedouins. they have to be hospitible to people who show up to their tents. when you come to a tent, you have to cough to show your presence (3 times- 3 is a magic number) then you are offered 3 cups of coffee, because coffee is expensive in the desert, so it shows respect. 3 cups because 1 is for welcome, 1 is for security, and 1 is just for fun. they gave us Bedouin tea and coffee and then made us bedouin pita stuff, which was....amazingly good. then the man played music and this huge russian guy alexey (previously alexey gadol cause there was another alexey who was smaller, so he was alexey katan-which means small and gadol means big- but sadly, alexey katan left us to go to jerusalem where he got a job in a furniture store making furniture. sad) got up and started dancing and singing all over the place. it was funny.

after that, we had some free time where we just hung out, and then had dinner where we sat on the floor, 4 around these tables and they brought out meat and rice and their special pita and veggies and tehina. it was SOOOO yummy!!!! oh man. i wish i could eat like that all the time. they russian guys next to me ate so much they could not sit up and ended up spralled all over the dinky little mattresses we were sitting on.

after dinner we had a drumming circle. it was really cool. we all sat around with drums, and this guy came and taught us how to play them, and we got some tunes going, and i was all into it until these stupid dati girls came and crashed our party. there was a huge group of them and they jumped in and started dancing and stole a drum and started screwing it up and just pissed me off and i didnt appreciate their presence at all, but what are you going to do. it was fun before they came.

after the drumming circle, we sat around a fire and talked about what we liked about the ulpan (in hebrew of course) and where we were going afterwards. it was sweet, but i was soo tired, after a long day of climbing and crawling, and not having had my 4 hour afternoon nap. my friend sarah and i took a walk outside the compound a little to see the stars. there were soo many. it was beautiful. when i went to sleep, i didnt move an inch until the morning. i slept so soundly.

we woke up around 630 and packed up, and then went to breakfast at about 7. then we got on the bus and drove to masada. that is where king Herod build a huge beautiful palace. then a hundred or so years later, it was used during the rebellion against the romans. they built over some of herod's beautiful artwork to make more practical additions and whatnot. the romans built a seige wall around them, and one day broke into the palace. by the time the did, however, it was night. so the romans decided to wait till morning to fully defeat them. by the time they arrived the next morning, they found everyone dead. the soldiers had killed their wifes and children, and then picked clay tablets with names on them from a pot as to who they had to kill. then the last soldier killed himself. 2 kids and a woman survived and were found hiding in the northern palace. crazy. its also the place with the first synagogue.

sadly for me, we went down from masada on the Snake Trail. i had a little bit of a panic attack from the height. i t was terrible. i couldnt decide weather to sit and cry or run. and i couldnt really talk to anyone cause i had to concentrate on controling my breathing and walking, and i was shaking all over. my friends tried to talk to me and were kinda pissed i just blew them off until we got down and i could talk and they saw i was still shaking and were all concerned and nice again.

sadly, our program organizers have no time planning skills. so we didnt have time to go to en gedi like we were supposed to. im kinda pissed, but i guess ill just have to go their with birthright someday. but we did have 3 hours to spend at the dead sea. pretty cool! pretty fucking cool. we went in for about 20 minutes, had our fun, and then i lay in the sun and passed out. i didnt do the mud, cause we had to buy it and it was expensive, and mia said not to buy it cause it encourages the destruction of the dead sea. so i didnt. then we went back on the bus and watched sex and the city the movie on the way home. a pretty good trip.

hard work.

heres whats happening here: (in list- my favorite form)

1) it has not stopped raining and thundering and lightening since yesterday morning. its grey and wet and dirty and grimey out. ani lo sameach im ha geshem.

2) i really like working with the kids, although it is quite exhausting. yesterday i worked first with the around 1 year old kids for a few hours, and then got moved to oren, the 3/4 year olds. that is when it started to rain, and the kids ran out to see it, all excited.

3) it is too cold for the clothes i have. i need a scarf, and i am hopefully going to get one soon from a shook in jerusalem, where you can get 2 very pretty scarves for 30nis (about $8)

4)next weekend i am hoping to go visit marsha elentuck in karmi'el.

5)on november 9, i have my big oral test. at the end of the ulpan, i have to take a test so i can get a certificate that says i was in class for 500 hours, and my score and level for the class. i need it to get credits for college. (how many credits do you think i can get for 500 hours?) i am not very good at speaking hebrew. i mean, comprehention i am pretty good at, and writing i am even better. i can conjugate and understand. we have been practicing the reading part of the test by reading old short stories and answering the questions in class. thats what i have to do on the 26th of nov. ive also been practicing the writing part (also on the 26th) by writing sipurchiks (short stories) on specific topics. batia (my teacher) gave us a list of the possible topics we will get on test day, so i have exactly what i need to study for that. but speaking, i am not quite as good, and its sooner so i am more nervous. i have to spend a few minutes telling two people from jerusalem about an exciting trip i went on. i have to write out what i want to say this weekend, and my teacher is going to correct it on monday. then i can memorize it, and practice with batia, and all should be well. but the jerusalem people are going to ask me questions, and i may not be able to answer them. so i am kinda freaking out just a little.

6) on nov. 11 we go on another tiul to the negev. we ride camels, sleep in a Bedouin village, the whole shebang. its an over-night tiul. im excited.

7) i was thinking that weekend (the 13th) i would go to jerusalem with my roommate Melissa. but i feel bad missing a day of class for a tiul, and then a day of class for me in one week, and soo close to the test. but i REALLY want to go, so i dont know what to do. im going to talk to Melissa about it and see what she thinks.

8)its almost the end. tomorrow is the last day of october. then its november, and in no time i will be home. wow.

Jerusalem, if i forget you, let my right hand forget what it's supposed to do

yesterday i went to jerusalem on my טיול (trip) with the ulpan. there was a lot of traffic because there were riots there, but dont worry. the most we saw were a whole bunch of soldiers in riot gear. not on rock or rioting looking person. it was totally safe. but we were late. it took about an extra hour to get there.

our first stop was mt. herzel. that is where all the important people are burried- all the soldiers who die in battle, and most all the important politicians. we were only there for 1/2 hour cause we were soo late, and it kinda sucked cause we barely had time to see everything.

then we went to the 'Jerusalem Time Elevator'. it is a disney style 'ride' where the seats move and you watch a movie about the history of Jerusalem. it was kinda stupid, but the information was good.

we went to lunch at this look-out point. we could see all of Jerusalem. if you look way to the right, you can just see a grey line on top of the hill. that is the wall separating the west bank from east jerusalem. fun fact, that wall was built by the same people who build the border wall between mexico and the us. i learned that at the United States Social Forum, not here in israel.

after that we went to the old city and saw the cotel (western/wailing wall). i didnt realize it was segregated. that kinda pissed me off. there were a bunch of women praying there, and only a few men. but because of the segregation, the proportions of the wall allotted for men to women is about 2:1. ( can you see the partition?) so all the women were cramped in a little section and the men had way too much room. but i went up and stuck my prayer in the wall. it was cool. you are supposed to walk backwards from the wall- not to turn your back, so corrine, mayan, alexis and i tried for a while. i was the only one looking over my sholder and leading us all so we didnt run into people. after a good enough distance we gave up and walked away.

we met Chris at the wall too. Chris used to be on the ulpan, but decided he wanted to study judaism more than hebrew, so he moved to a yeshiva in jerusalem. he is also the older brother of james, a boy still on the ulpan. Chrish is the one who gave me the phone i have been using here. we were all happy to see him, and he came with us to ben yehuda st.
(This is Chris giving us his 'shimshum shady' on the bus. he rapped slim shady on the Tel Aviv tiul, but as he is more jewish now and shimshum (sampson in hebrew) is his hebrew name, he did the shimshum shady rap. will the real shim shady please stand up. please stand up)
we were dropped of near ben yehuda st and given an hour to roam. it was a lot of fun, no a lot of time. i ended up buying hannah's Hanukkah present, and 3 pairs of earrings (3 for 25 shekles! thats like 3 for 6.75!) and they're really pretty. then i got some food and we made it back to the bus just in time.

the ride home was long and we were tired, but we made it back finally and i fell into bed.

today, i had to get up really early- 630! but it was so i could work at my NEW JOB in the gan yeladine! that means with the kids. i didnt know i eat breakfast with them too, so i got up early to eat. then corrine took me to the office, and then to Orin, the older kids. they were about 3/4 years old. very cute. when i got there, they were having their music lesson, so this (very pregnant) woman Ila and i (i got confused all day weather they were speaking to me or her cause our names are soo similar) cleaned the bedrooms (they have cute little bunkbeds for naptime! its sooo cute) after that, we sat on VERY short tiny chairs at VERY short tables and had breakfast. the adults sit with the kids and we all eat together. then we went outside to play. it was pretty intense cause the women dont speak much english, and the kids dont speak english at all, and speak really fast with baby voices like lisps and stuff. its hard enough understanding when babies talk in english. and when they cry its impossible. but there werent many crying or troublesome kids. they were mostly good. then they all went in to pee, and then to play inside. Ila and i cleaned the bathrooms. then i went to play with the kids, and dazzled a group of girls, especially this one names Leah, with my oragami skills (i can make a dog face, and a fortune cookie thing that was really popular in first and second grade back home) they loved it. then we all ate lunch, and i left.

i'll be gone till november

im sorry its been a while, to all my adoring fans out there i am sure you are quite upset with me. but the truth is not much has happened. i go to class on monday, wednesday, and friday. class is pretty good, except my only girl friend in that class just left. she decided it was too hard for her (which it was) and went down to kita alef. it was a good move for her, but im sad. i still have my roomate (who is very quiet) and Lena (the CRAZY russian girl) to fight the awful testosterone class. but its still not quite as good a class. i like the boys well enough, but put them together in a room for 8 hours and expect them to do work? i dont think so. melissa and i try really hard to concentrate and do our work, but every break we practically run out gasping for breath.

i go to work on sunday, tuesday, and thursday. i used to clean toilets, but i couldnt take it anymore. i had asked ari a few months ago if maybe i could change jobs, but he didnt really try to do anything about it and i wasnt dying so i didnt push it too hard. a few weeks ago i started dying. i really really REALLY dont like cleaning up after other people's nastyness. i am a clean person. i clean up after myself. spit and toothpaste on the sink, hair cloged in the drain, and pee on the toilet really grosses me out. especially when i have to clean it up and i know its not mine. so i started pestering Ari. today i came to work and corrine told me Lena was taking my job and would i show her what to do. on tuesday i start my new job, working in the Gan Yeladin! (thats the daycare/kindergarden type thing) i am very happy about it. i get to play with babies and spend time with actual human beings instead of listening to my ipod and scrubbing toilets! yay. so thats good.

other than that, i am going to jerusalem tomorrow on a tiul (trip). i am very excited. it will sadly, be my first time. we are not going to the holocaust museum, because it takes too long, but thats okay. i plan to spend about 3 days there out of my week after the ulpan. we are going to the cotel (the wall), ben yehuda st, and some museums. we get a disney style movie about the history of jerusalem. the chairs move and everything. it will be a lot of fun.

more pictures from turkey

(in a cave by the waterfalls on our hebrew tour. we met some very nice israelis)

(alexis and i at the other waterfall)


(the turkish bath in the hotel. we got bubble massages on the marble table. the blue thing is a foam pillow type thing)

(this was the only sea life at the Sea Life Resort. we decided to take part in the sea life theme...if you cant tell, we're making fishy faces)

(this is the entrance way to the hotel. )

gobble gobble!

(on of the 3 outdoor pools)


(making sea life faces infront of the only sea life there)
you know how different countries make different sounds for different animals? like in america dogs go bark, and other countries they go yip or arf or whatever. i wonder what a turkey makes in turkey? i should have asked, but the turks i met dont speak much english. americans dont go to turkey.

SUNDAY
this past sunday, my 2 friends sarah and alexis and i went to anatalia, turkey. we stayed at the Sea Life resort, right on the beach. there were also 3 outside pools, one inside pool, and 2 water slides. and it was all inclusive. i think i probably got all my money back just on the free diet cokes!

we arrived sunday night. we made friends with 2 girls who were on our tour with us (eshet tours) they lived near elat. they came with their parents and younger brother. they were really nice- the whole family, and they helped us out with all the hebrew that people were trying to communicate to us. when we got to the hotel, they gave us dinner and then we went to bed.

MONDAY
the next day we went on a tour of anatalia (a city in turkey) with our israeli group- kinda sucked that it was all in hebrew, but we worked it out, understood enough and the what we didnt understand there was a really nice woman who's brother moved to london, so she speaks english and she told us what was going on. we went to these really pretty waterfalls. it was pretty cool. really beautiful.

after that, we went to a turkish delight factory and got some turkish delight. then we went to a leather factory and they tried to sell us leather winter jackets. they didnt go over that great for all the israelis who dont need winter jackets cause it is never cold.

when we got back, we went to go to the inside pool, and ended up in the steam room, and then sauna. there we met these two brothers and a sister who live in boston! they took their mother here cause they are muslim and she always wanted to come here (they're pretty old, in their 40s and 50s). they told us that a group of people go out every night to this club. the hotel organizes it, and would we like to come. of course we said yes, and that was how we met tanya. tanya works for the hotel organizing fun things like concerts and getting a bus to go to clubs and stuff like that. shes from the ukraine but really wants to move to the US. she really liked us, the only americans there, and looked soooo sad on thursday when we told her we were leaving.

that night, there was a HUGE lightning storm. like huge. night turned to day huge. the hotel lost power several times, and water kept seeping in under the doors. the club was an outdoors club, so we couldnt go. but not to worry, the hotel has its own discoteque! it was just a tiny room, but everyone who wanted to go to the club that night just went downstairs to dance. there were a whole bunch of people who spoke english- a bunch of germans and some brits. everyone was really nice. we had a great time dancing, although we were pretty disappointed not to see the club.

TUESDAY
tuesday we went to the hotel's turkish bath. we all got a turkish peeling bubble massage, and then a regular massage. the peeling bubble massage was crazy cool. they lay us down on this big marble table thing and pour water over us. then the use this scrub glove thing to scrub our dead skin off. it was funny cause they didnt know much english so they kept saying 'here please lady', or 'okay lady? too hot lady?' (reffering to the water of course).

after the scrub glove thing, the took these light mesh bag things and filled them with bubble mixture, and then swung the bag around to make bubbles, and swept them over us. the bubbles just floated over us. it kinda tickled, but felt soooo cool. like a blanket of liquid air type thing. unfortunately, i wanted to watch, so my eyes were open and i got bubbles in my eye. it really stung so i tried to explain it to the guy utill he gave me a bowl of water to was the bubbles off my hand so i could rub my eye. after that i kept my eyes closed tight. my masseuse gave me a massage in the bubbles. it was really cool. then he had me sit up and rinsed all the bubbles off of me. in the turkish bath, there were little marble bowls with faucets for hot and cold above them. in them are metal bowls with which to scoop up the water and pour it on you. he poured bowl after bowl of water, mixing up the temperatures. sometimes it was sooo cold but quickly followed with nice and warm water. then he put a towel over my head and dried off my hair a little, dried my face, my ears, nose, eyes (like you would a 3 year old- i just stood there) and wrapped me in a towel.

then i got a regular massage with no bubbles. it was a full body massage, and felt mostly good. he said my shoulders were fucked up and much too tight (i think, his english was god aweful) and spent a good deal of time pushing all his weight on them, which kinda hurt. he even used his elbows! he also said it was strange that when he tried to push my feet into 1st position (heels together, toes pointing straight out) it was sooo much harder than when he did the opposite ( im pigeon toed but didnt know how to explain that). my masseuse was kind of a character. he liked to talk a lot, and gave me a short history of turkey, and asked me all kinds of questions about america. everyone at the hotel loved that we were american. of course i had to say i was from new york cause massachusets was 'in europe somewhere?'

after the massage, we went to the pool and hung out with our new friends from the last night at the hotel's disco. then we had dinner at the hotel's special mexican restaurant. it wasnt very mexican, but it was pretty yummy anyways, they had eggroll type things but with cheese in them, and some kind of soup and salad, and then fajitas. there was no ordering, they just brought course after course.

tonight we were going to go to the club. it was soooo much fun. i danced with a group of germans, and sarah and alexis found some israelis from a different hotel who came on the bus with us. we got home around 330 am and PASSED OUT.

WEDNESDAY
we just missed breakfast, which was only from 7-10 am. luckily, the snack bar opened at 11am, and at 1130, two women made these turkish style quesadillas. they were SOOOOOO good. we hug out by the pool pretty much all day. we did go to the beach for a bit. but mostly, we hung out by the pool, made friends with the 2 bartenders, and got diet coke after diet coke. after a while, when they saw us coming they just immediately started pouring 3 diet cokes, but then made us stay to talk to them. the girl bartender LOVED us cause we snuck her french fries. the boy bartender thought we were so strange. but he liked us too.

for dinner, we went back to the mexican restaurant, but this time it was an italian restaurant. we had made reservations both nights for 7pm, for mexican and then italian. apparently, the restaurant is whatever you reserve. different people got different styles of food. it was not quite as good as the mexican, i thought, but still pretty good. the salad had anchovies on it, and even though i took them off it made me gag to try to eat it. but other than that, it was pretty good.

we went to the club again that night, and met some more cool people. there was a group of guys from iraq. they were fun and danced with our group, but i could not understand a word they were saying. i had a good time, although sarah didnt feel great but went anyways. she slept on a couch outside the club for most of it, and alexis was dissapointed that the israelis from the night before didnt go. i danced with the brits and the germans, and the iraqis, and had a grand ole' time. we went home and went to sleep again.

THURSDAY
we woke up early, knowing we only had a little bit longer to be by the pool. we got breakfast quickly, and hit the deck. we read our books, lay in the sun, went on the waterslide a few times, had lunch with the iraqis, slept by the pool, and pounded back diet cokes. we played ping pong with ron from tel aviv and said goodbye to the brits and germans, and went to the airport with ron (who was on our tour) and the rest of the israelis to go back to israel. it was sad.

the flight was 1 hour, and we made it just in time to get on the 2 hour train ride to haifa. the train was FREEZING and i was going through diet coke withdrawl. i got home, watched an episode of bones and fell asleep.

god i have a hard life. :)

my house is hard to find but i'll give you directions, you can visit sometime

happy holidays everyone!

i didnt fast for yom kippur... i know im a bad jew. but i had to work, because i am taking an extra day for my sukkot holiday when i go to turkey (next week!). and i also didnt go to services, cause they were in hebrew with a bunch of old israeli people who dont like us ulpanists and are kinda rude. the bait kenesset (synagogue) is TINY so being squeezed in with them, trying to follow and get some sort of meaning out of the hebrew, while on an empty stomach, and then after that going to work seemed just not....right. i thought i would feel more jewish here, in israel, the land of the jews. actually i just feel more american, and im okay with that. the people here are not JEWISH, they are ISRAELI. there is a difference. i kinda like the american jew better than the israeli jew. i dont know, its hard to explain. im having a good time and trying to learn as much as i can, but i am definitely excited to go back to the states.

today during work, a few kibbutzniks needed to work on some water pipes, so they shut off our water. i kinda need water to clean, and they didnt let us know when they were going to shut off or turn back on the water, so i got to leave work rather early. yay. i had to work 3 days in a row, which i really didnt like. so while i was supposed to be working but there was no water, i straightened my hair. it looks kinda silly cause its a short and curly hair cut, so straight it looks weird and not layered properly.

we gotta get outa this place, if its the last thing we ever do

this weekend, as you know, was rosh hashanah. Eli (marsha's husband) and Jordan (Marsha's son- pronounced yarden) came to pick sarah (my friend from the ulpan) and me up from yagur and take us to their house in karmi'el for the long weekend. they picked us up on friday afternoon and took us to their BEAUTIFUL purple house. it was gorgeous! it was like living in art. there was beautiful art on the walls, and arty lamps and the house was designed in such a way that it was small but kinda very open. their garden was full of colors and there was a fish pond with a few steps to create a small waterfall type thing down to another small fish pond. and there were little bits of mosaic put all around in the stones that made up the pathways. and there was mirror mosaic-type stuff on some of the walls. it was really a beautiful house.

and karmi'el is a beautiful city. it is very well kept up, clean and the gardening is beautiful too.

on friday night sarah, marsha, and i went to services. she introduced us to some of the people there (most of them spoke english fluently) the rabbi asked if i spoke russian cause ella is a russian name. it was kinda awkward, but he was nice. the service was all in hebrew which was hard, but we picked out a few things. there was a sign hanging which i found particularly profound. it said 'da lifney mi at omer' which means 'know before whom you stand' it was very beautiful.

after the service, we went to marsha's friend's house for dinner. her name is marcie, and we had dinner with her, her husband simon, her 3 kids, her daughter's boy friend, jordan, and eli. one of marcie's kids is named natan. he looks EXACTLY like charlie from Lost. EXACTLY LIKE HIM!!! and none of them except for sarah knew the show, so we couldnt share our exciting news with them. but they were all very nice. marcie is from america and simon is from london, so their whole family is bilingual, as is marsha's family. so it was great cause we had a nice english speaking HOME COOKED MEAL. it was delicious! so many different kinds of salads, and potatoes, and other veggies for me to eat (of course they all had meat as well) then we talked for a while until sarah and i were falling asleep in our chairs.

(this is at a park in karmi'el. it was a lot of fun there! )

the next morning we woke up around 11 and marsha showed us around karmi'el and the surrounding villiages. we went to a really cool little store in the vegetarian community (all these little settlements were set up on mountains to over look the arab villiages, although its not a big deal cause the arabs here are generally very peaceful. but anyways, each settlement started out with a general theme, like vegetarian or a special type of meditation, or that sort of thing) then we went to have coffee at a beautiful community where i bought a very nice sholder covering thing. i thought i should have one in case i needed to go to services again, cause i had to borrow my friend's shoulder covering for the services on friday (for some reason all my dresses are sleeveless!

(this is a view of the kineret from one of the settlements we went to)

after that, we met up with eli and jordan for lunch in an arab villiage and had some of the best humus i've ever had. and guess what. IT RAINED. it is officially winter. there was a rainbow and everything. it rained for about 10 minutes. and ever since it has been raining for 2-5 minutes every so often. its kind of exciting. that evening, some of marsha and eli's friends came over for cake and coffee. this was a little less english, but it was still fun. it was nice to hang out with older people who had real lives right now to live, and not be in this fantasy life here on yagur in the ulpan. the food was good and the bed was big and comfy.

this morning, we got up relatively early, and marsha took sarah and i to the golan. we went to an artist villiage, and sat at a cafe over looking the kineret. it was really nice. then sarah and i took the bus back to yagur and i am back in fantasy land with a test on 20 new words tomorrow that i have yet to study for (dont worry ill study later and get an A++ since i will try to learn all the words and be fantabulous!)
(this is at the cafe overlooking the kineret)
thats about it for now.

otir'e otir'e, kama tov yehiye....

sorry (hannah) i know it has been a while, i know. nothing much has happened tho. my teacher calmed down a bit and is not so bad anymore. she still loves me, and she really loves this boy jake. she calls him darling. it is really funny.

one boy, Noah, from quebec Canada is getting kicked out soon. as soon as he finds an apartment (he's an oleh hadash- new immigrant). it kinda sucks, cause he isnt one of the worst people here, but its really his own fault. i mean, he doesnt really come to class that much, and Ari (the director) made him sign a form saying he would get kicked out if he missed another class, and he missed the very next one. so kinda his fault.

a bunch of girls are changing rooms. my best friends here, sarah and alexis got in a huge fight that just kept getting worse and worse. one would do something and the other would try to get back, and it was just a spiral. they are roomates, so we figured they needed a break from eachother. at the same time, this annoying girl jenny kept begging ari for her own room (shes kinda selfish and single minded), so ari decided to move almost all the girls! by the end of this weekend, both sarah and alexis are moving into my building (but seperate rooms) and they are separating one set of roomates. then jenny and this girl Lena are switching rooms cause lena lives by herself. its kinda confusing, and a total drag, but im kinda excited to have all my friends in my building. and sarah and alexis made up and are good friends again, so everything is okay.

shanah tova! mahar rosh hashanah. hayom, anachnu halchanu ..... i dont know how to say the rest without my notes. and i dont know who can understand me anyways. so. tomorrow is rosh hashanah. today we went to the nursing home on the kibbutz and sang them songs. each person in my class had to read a little thing about one of the special foods that we eat on rosh hashanah. we eat olives because olive trees are a staple of life here in israel. we eat dates because...darn i forget. we eat beats because we beat back our enemies. we eat pomegranates because they have many seeds that represent mitzvot. we have carrots...i also forget that one. we have honey for a sweet new year. and stuff like that. i read the one about dates. then we said a prayer for peace, sang some more songs, and ate apples and honey. the old people loved it. they were so cute and sang along and corrected our hebrew. it was nice.

after that, sarah, alexis, and i went to our ulpan house mother's house so she could help us book our trip to turkey for over sukkot. we are trying to go to this place called kemer and stay at a 5 star+ resort with everything included: the air fare, room, food, discotheque, with a gorgeous pool and also right on the beach. we didnt book it yet because there were only 2 seats available on the plane, but we are on the waiting list and the travel agent said she would call if it opened up and book it for us right away. the resort is called sea life resort. it looks really nice.

this weekend i am going with sarah to stay with marsha elentuck. shes picking us up tomorrow. ill tell you all about it after it happens, but im very excited to a)get to know her better b)experience an israeli new year, and c) get off the kibbutz a little! i like it here, but there are limited activities.

im learning a lot of hebrew. it really is an intensive program. on day we learn past tense, the next future tense. every week we get a list of new words and the next class we have a test on them. we also usually have a test on subject material each week. so far i know past and future tenses for xxIx verbs. it probably doesnt make any sense to you, but there are 4 'buildings' of verbs. like action, posessive, ...non action...that sort of thing. i also know past for XXX verbs.

anyways, its time for dinner, so im gonna go. but i love you all and ill try to update more often.

shanah tova

btw, the title is the chorus of a popular israeli song. it means you will see you will see oh how nice it will be....

here's lookin at you, kid

not much has happened here worth writing about. i went out to dinner with marsha elentuck and her daughter yasmine, and it was lovely. they are really nice and i got to practice my hebrew (with the waitress, not with them).

i am doing well in class. the teacher is a bitch, but she loves me. i seem to attract the really obnoxioius teachers. it happened in high school too (mr. Hanson, my math teacher for example). anyways, she is really rude and talks down to the everyone, and sometimes she just refused to answer our questions. and she decided not to teach us command form of words because she doesnt like them. she is just really obnoxious. but when we were practicing talking in hebrew for the first hour of class today (in conversation as opposed to learning grammar and stuff like that) the boy i was talking to was not very talkative, so she told me to talk to her. she mannaged to tell me i was her favorite and she wanted to be my kibbutz emah while insulting the woman who is already my kibbutz emah as well as all americans, as well as everyone in kita alef, as well as everyone else on the kibbutz! i had no idea what to say to that. it was uncomfortable, to say the least. but she said my hebrew was perfect and i was the best in the class, i just think im not. so i guess thats good. we had a test today, which was awful. it was on 'et' and noun contractions, both of which dont really happen in the english language. she gets really impatient with us, so none of us really understand it. it is quite frustrating.

other than that, not much has happened. i met some kids my age on the kibbutz which is nice. im trying really hard to make friends with them. they are really nice.

i miss you all,
ella

its my life, and its now or never. i'm not gonna live forever

so another regular week where nothing happened. our teacher was on vacation, so we had 3 subs. two of them were our old teachers from kita bet whom we all love and miss, and the other was a great teacher from kita gimmel. so it was a nice vacation for all of us. yesterday i think it was (all the days sort of mesh together) sergio (grandma rose's cousin i think?) came to meet me on the kibbutz. it was a quick visit, but it was nice to meet him and he told me how to take the bus to his house, so thats good. and i have a plan to hang out with marsha on wednesday, and she said she was going to take me to the mall somewhere where i havent been. so thats cool. last night my friend sarah's friend michael fedder (from noho and went to umass) came to visit and we showed him around the kibbutz. we took him to the heder ochel for dinner, to the pub, and to the night club ultrasound. it was fun. today they all went to the beach while i went to haifa with tuvia. he took me up the mountain to get a nice view of haifa, and we saw the bahai gardens (from affar we didnt go inside) and we got a late lunch by the ocean, then he drove me back to the kibbutz and i showed him pictures of the family and all that.

thats all. i love you all!!!!

bye

ps, the title is from a song that is a favorite at ultrasound, the night club we went to last night

i love love tel aviv!

this weekend, my friends sarah, alexis, mia and i took the train down to tel aviv after i got out of class on friday. we got there around 230 and checked into our hostel. it was a last minute trip, so they didnt have any rooms. we had to sleep on the roof. we shoved our stuff in a locker and hit the town before everything closed for shabat. i bought a pretty dress for 40 nis ( about 10$) and some presents for y'all. then we went back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. after dinner we walked around a bit, sarah's friend picked us up and took us to a really cool bar.

the bar was called the english pub, and we stayed for about an hour, but then the power went off for some reason, and i was tired and they wanted to party some more, so mia and i went back to the hostel, and sarah, alexis, and sarah's friend went to some other bars. mia and i had a long interesting conversation on the roof, we met some other people sleeping up there. everyone was really cool. then sarah and alexis came back and we hung out with them, a boy from toronto named mike, a boy from cali named ian, a kiwi named john and a spanish guy who was living in germany named andre (i think?). i liked talking to him. he lives in berlin and loves it. i talked to him for a while and told him i was going there for a few months after this. it was nice talking to them cause i realized that i knew soooo much more about this country and so much hebrew and so much more than they did. i can tell ive been here a while. and it was cool saying 'oh i live near haifa' when they ask if i knew anything about haifa. at about 3 am, alexis draged me from the hostel with a few of our new found friends, and we went swimming in the sea. it was GREAT. it was sooooo warm, and there were these planes that looked like big yellow stars from far away that kept flying in. then we went back to the hostel, showered, and fell asleep. at 7am, the lovely sun woke us up cause we were soooo hot and there were all these flies (the flies in this country are the most obnoxious flies and the most plentiful thing here. i HATE them) that were landing and crawling all over my face and legs and it was awful. so we got up and went downstairs to get some breakfast, which was just a piece of bread and butter. i fell asleep on the couch watching planet earth. at around 10, we went to get real breakfast, i got a lovely salad with egg, tomatoes, cream cheese, and other salady stuff. it was really good. after that we went to the beach. we got there at 1130 and left around 715. it was the most beautiful beach i have ever been to. the water was warm, the sand was soft. there were these jetty things, a bunch of rocks in a line in the ocean to block the waves and make them less intense. we swam out to them, and walked on them for a bit, then just floated in the ocean, and slept on the beach. we saw the sun set over the ocean. there were some pretty kites flying all day, and there were so many people were playing beach tennis type game, where they have wooden paddles and a ball and they hit it to eachother. it sounded like drums playing music. it was really pretty.

we took the 1st train home, at 9pm and hung out and went to bed early. today i had to work, which i really didnt want to do so i took a nap in the middle of cleaning.

something tells me i'm into something good

so....now that gadna is over, we get our new class, Kita alef plus....or so we thought.

we walk into the new classroom, and our teacher smiles at us. her name is batiya, and she says welcolme to kita bet. she is used to teaching kita gimmel. she wants to teach gimmel. she speaks almost entirely in hebrew and covers topics very fast. she gets annoyed when we get confused. i have only had 2 classes with her, and am already scared shitless. the entire class is silent trying to figure out what the hell is going on. tension is high, but its not so bad. we all know we will learn a lot, we just wish she would be a little more patient, cause this is the first time we are learning hebrew, and we should really be in alef...not bet. its a little frustrating, and a lot of work. already we have a test tomorrow on words we learned yesterday. there are 25 words, she will say them and we have to use them in sentences. also we have about 6 sheets for homework (shur'ait ba'it) and some pages in our workbook on directions.

i also started learning some russian. there is a couple here who are engaged, art and luda. art is from the us, and joined the peace core. he got sent to Kazakhstan where luda was his russian teacher. they had to wait until he finished to get together (its really a very romantic story, but rather irrelevant). so basically, there is a professional russian teacher here, and she decided she would give lessons to us if we wanted. two people did, a boy james and a kibbutznik named leor. i found out about it later, so i just had my first class alone and not with them. she was very impressed with what i knew, although i was very saddened by how little i knew after a whole year. shes really nice, and her handwriting is soooo pretty! so now i can practice talking to the russians in russian and hebrew!!!

anyways, we went to this concert last night in haifa on the beach. it was kinda a bust. we went to one earlier in the program (im sure i wrote a blog about it with pictures) and that one was a lot of fun. but this one wasnt that great, so we left early.

im getting more comfortable here, and making more friends with the kibbutzniks, as well as some of the lone soldiers here, and some of the russians. its good. new people with interesting lives and interesting conversations.

how do we like it? how do we like it? shtiam!! shtaim!! shtaim!!

"akshevet mefakedet!!" "ken ha mefakedet!"

this past week, from sunday to thursday, i was in the israeli army. the IDF. not really, but at a gadna. gadna was created for 17 year old israelis to spend a week seeing how the idf works. but now they also do it for tourists and ulpans and stuff. there was another ulpan there, as well as a whole bunch of little french kids, and some israeli kids.

we had to stand in a chet when our mefakedet (commander) approached us. a chet is like the letter. there were three girls on the left side, three girls on the right side, and five girls at the base of the chet. it looked like this: l__l (sorta).


we had to carry around our squeegee, cause we spent a whole lot of time cleaning ( meaning with water and toilet paper- israel is not up to date on sanitation and cleaning supplies. our mefakedet didnt know what we meant when we asked for bleach) we had to stand at akshev, which meant straight, not moving, with our feet in 1st position (heels together and toes pointing out in a v) and our hands making diamonds behind our backs. we were in one uniform the entire week, and it smelled sooooo bad by the end. we had to yell the seconds counting down while we ran. were were given 20 seconds to get here, 10 seconds to get there, and so on. when we got to one, we either had to be in 2 lines or a chet, standing in akshev and shout 'tam azman akshevet mefakedet!' if we did something wrong we did pushups. we were in the sun almost the entire time.

we were split up into two groups, boys and girls. our segel (officers) were our mefakedet (commander), samelet (one step above our commander), mem mem (one step above samelet). the boys's commander was actually a mem alef. i dont know what that means, but she got promoted and this was her last week doing gadna. we had a ceremony today and she started to cry. when we said goodbye, she gave us all a handshake and a good hard punch (somehting weird and painful that they do in the army)

the first day, we got kitchen duty. (this is me, sarah, and alexis in the kitchen) the kitchen, in short, is unsanitary. they dont have bleach or real cleaning supplies. we took handsoap (soup as our mefakedet called it), put it in water, poured it on the floor, and squeegeed it out of the kitchen. we didnt touch the walls. the food is also nasty. the bread was moldy. they gave us chocolate milk for our cereal! the pasta was not real pasta. it was more like mush. they didnt use any salt. it was all gross food.

the second day, we did a lot of running and marching. we played a game where we layed down on the rocks and dust in the blazing sun in pairs of girls, and one person was the cat, one person was the mouse. the cat would chase the mouse and the mouse had to run and lye down next to one of the pairs of girls, and the girl on the other side had to get up and become the cat, while the original cat became the mouse. it was very confusing and very dirty. my hair was caked with dirt. i got so much dust in my lungs that now i have a shitty cough and my voice is going. they gave me cough drops which made my toung numb. it was weird.

we also had classes about the army, how to shoot an m-16, types of jobs in the army, ranks and badges, stuff like that.

on wednesday, we had a fitnes test. we had to run 4 laps (1.5 km...i dont know how far that is in miles) and do 86 sit ups and 40 pushups. lo tov. that was before the nasty breakfast. afterwards, we had an 'in the field day'. we were not allowed to say 'mefakedet' because the 'enemy' cant know who the commander is. we learned about shade and hiding, how to walk quietly, how to cover our faces in mud, where to hide, stuff like that. i learned the indian crawl (fast and low) and the 60/6 crawl. the 60/6 crawl is really slow. its the sneaking up crawl. you go 6o meters in 6 hours. it was invented in israel so the soldeiers could sneak up on the enemy. we got to drop and crawl through rocks, dirt, barbed wire, and broken glass. it was lovely. i have some beautiful cuts and bruises. my friend sarah broke her camera. it was really really hot. we had to play a hide and seek game, and i hid under a truck. i fell asleep, and it took them a while to find me. it was great.

that day was the only day we got our mefakedet to laugh. we tried so hard. she almost did when we met her in a chet the night before (in our pjs before we cleaned before we went to bed) with our shirts tucked into our shorts, and our shorts pulled up REALLY high. we all looke rediculous. she came, looked at each of us, tried sooo hard not to laugh, and forgot to speak in english. she started giving us orders in hebrew and we had no idea what she was saying. it was great.

but the day we were in the field, we had to sneak up to the fence where the enemy was before we could 'shoot' them, so we did the 60/6 crawl, and then this big adhd redheaded russian girl lena said "echad, shtaim, shalosh" jumped up and started pretending to shoot like a crazy woman. our mefakedet just cracked up.

that day we also learned about grenades.

we had other classes on other days. we learned how to shoot an m-16, we had a lecture on other guns, we learned about the rescue of the french plane filled with israelis and jews that was sent to uganda (i kept thinking about The Last King of Scotland) and how benjamine natanyahoo's older brother was the commander and got shot but they did a great rescue opperation, and about this one guy who jumped on a granade and sacraficed himself to save his team, we talked about war and purity (my mefakedet didnt really enjoy me sharing my opinions about this) and about missing soldiers and a whole lot of stuff.

every day we got up really early, a little before 6, and had to unmake our beds and make sure the blanket that stayed on the matress was wrinkleless and all our stuff was packed up and on the space before the blanket started. we had to clean with toilet paper and water, as i said before. it was insane.

today we got up around 4 and walked to the shooting range which was at the bottom of the mountain, about 10 minutes walk from the base. we got to see the sun rise over the kaneret sea, surrounded by this beautiful Arab town on a mountain. it was beautiful there. thats was great. the view was incredible. we were surrounded by mountains with the kaneret sea in the background, and all these fig trees in groves around. there were a bunch of Arab towns around us, and at about 430 am every morning, i woke up from the uncomfortable beds to the sound of their singing to call to prayer. it was obnoxious, but pretty none the less.

anyways, we went to the shooting range and i shot 10 bullets out of an m-16. i got to keep my shells and target. i actually hit it a few times. i wasnt very good, and i didnt really like shooting. it was cool to get ready to shoot, to lie down and hold this huge gun, but i didnt like the backfire thing, and all these burning hot bullet casings from the girl next to me kept hitting me and they hurt me.

then we had to do all this stupid stuff like clean a lot with unsanitary stuff and get really frustrated. and we had shitty food and i didnt like it at all. finally, at 11 we got to take off our uniforms and talk to our mefakedet like a human being and she was so cute! shes 20 and has 2 more months at gadna before she changes jobs. she lives 4 hours away from the base, near jerusalem, and has a boyfriend who shes gonna marry when she gets out of the army. hes in the army too, and was in the airforce, but failed and is now in the tank unit. she has 3 older brothers, and her name is tamar. it was great to talk to her, and she told us how hard it was for her not to laugh at us.

we played this really intense game of capture the flag on our 'in the field day'. we were supposed to practice using our new found skills, and capture a glowstick while a whole bunch of soldiers patrolled. it was really hard, but we ended up winning. it was a lot of fun actually.

gadna was not too bad. it was sooo hot, but i learned a lot and played a lot of games and had fun.

we had to carry around this green squeegee the entire week, and couldnt forget it. we had to name it, so we named it ari, after the ulpan director. the boys had one too, and coincidentally named theirs ari as well for the same reason! it was funny. we also had to take turns carrying a gurny and a stretcher. they were heavy and we had to do everything with them.
(this is me with ari, the squeegee-אני ים ארי)

now i am back at yagur, and sooo glad to be here. i love the food which is really just bad cafeteria food, but is 1000 times better than gadna food. and i love the beds which dont have holes in them, and i love waking up at 730 not 545 or 4 or anything like that. i love having my body belong to me, and my time be my own.

my camera died on the first day, so give me some time to put pictures from this week up. i will, dont worry.

oh i just can't wait to be king!

so, this friday after class my friends from the ulpan Sarah and Alexis and I packed into a car with our kibbutz friends Mike and Leslie and we drove to Cesarea.
(Sarah and Leslie at the entrence to the ruins)

look how pretty!

Cesarea is a rich people town, but also is home to these freaking awesome ancient ruins. you know how much i love history stuffs, so this was right up my ally. i loved it.

(this is mike in the pantheon- the roman amphitheter)

apparently, in something BCE, King Herod of persia built this really cool city about half way from the top of israel to the bottom. its on the sea, and its a beautiful beach. he built a deep water port with techniques very advanced for the time. then he died, and it got taken over moreso by the romans, and then there was a war and christians took it over, and there were a bunch of jews, and then muslims, and all this stuff happened. this is sarah on this wire horse drawn chariot. it was to show where they used to chariot race, and then they changed it to satisfy the 'blood thirsty spectators' and turned it into where slaves faught lions and aligators and other killer animals. crazy.

there was a gorgeous roman temple that was torn down to build a beautiful christian church that was torn down to build a beautiful mosq which was destroyed by earthquakes.

basically its a really old city that is now in ruins on a really beautiful beach.

we were there for a while but it got really hot so we went to this nice little town called tzikron yitzhak (remember isaac) named after a rothschild family member. mike knew all this stuff and told us all about everything. it was really cool. the rothschild family were like the first big bankers in europe so the were really rich and they used to buy a lot of land in israel for the zionist movement. so there are a lot of towns with people names, and they are all in memory of a rothschild family member.

the rothschild family apparently bought a large plot of land and paid to have people brought to live there. the people wanted to make wine, so the rothschilds paid their living expenses while they grew the grapes and tried to make wine, but it came out really gross and completely bombed, so the rothschild family paid to bring in people to teach them how to make good wine as well as paid their living expenses, for a few more years, until the carmel winery took off. now it makes good wine and does really well. isnt that a nice story? i think so.

today was shabbat, so i woke up at noon and went to the pool for several hours. now im here and then im gonna go to dinner, and there is a free movie on the kibbutz. its a really nice theatre actually, and the movie is State Of Play, which i wanted to see in the states but never got around to it, so im excited.

the weather is amazing, even the birds are bumpin'

so not much else has happened. ive been making friends with kibbutzniks, and the other night i went out with one of them and two other ulpanists. Hofit (the kibbutznik who took us out) is really nice. i make dinners with her some nights. she took us to this waffle desert place just a town away. the waffles were soooooo good. then we went to the beach and walked in the ocean for a bit. the water was so warm. we saw haifa all lit up as well as accra? maybe? im not sure but its somewhere like that. in about a week we go to do gad'na, which is a week of army training. its more like 4 days. im excited. and a little worried, but im not gonna be the worst one, so it will be fun i hope. there is a man here who refuses to go- i think its kinda stupid, it will be a great once in a lifetime experience. but to each their own.

i really miss home. even the boring normal things, like driving on 63 on a summer day to go to the gym. and my bed. the beds here are quite small. about half of what my bed is, and i have a twin.

everyone here is really nice. its nice getting to know the people who dont speak english better now that we can sort of talk hebrew/mime to them. some of them are a little weird, but for the most part really nice.

let it fly in the breeze and get caught in the trees

so, this week has been my attempt to get in contact with family week. i called Sergio, and he was supposed to call me today if he was free to meet me and introduce me to his kids. so far no word, so I'm thinking its a no go for this shabat, but maybe another time. I also got in contact with Tuvia through a long game of phone tag. i have no voicemail, which sucks. people leave me a message and all i get is a text message with the number and a whole bunch of little boxes. anyways, im gonna try to go visit him in tel aviv sometime soon. i still have to call him and make a plan, but we'll see. i really want to see the blind museum and hang out on the beach in tel aviv. it looked so beautiful when we went last week, but they didnt let us go :(

i did meet my kibbutz family on thursday. the mother is sagit. she is really nice. she picked me up on her scooter/moterbike thing and we went to the pool to meet her family. she has 3 sons who (i think) are 16, 13, and 8 ish. she also has a daughter who is about 3, netta. i think netta is my favorite. she is cute and too young to be weirded out by the fact that some random girl is gonna be hanging out with her family. i didnt meat the eldest boy, but i met the other 3 kids and the husband. i forget his name. the 8 year old i think is names reah, and the 13 year old is uri. it was nice. sagit spent a year in annapolis so she speaks english pretty well. the kids are learning in school (netta isnt old enough yet i dont think) but they pretty much speak hebrew. i can pick out a few words of what they are saying and get the gist of it tho, which is nice. sagit said that she hates making plans ahead of time, so i am supposed to just call her when i have free time and see if she is available. its a little weird for me, but it seems like thats the way they do it in israel. people dont make plans.

yesterday we had class but the regular teacher wasnt there. we had our old teacher, sarahle. sarahle is really nice. we have tests every friday, and she gave us the test, but it was nothing like what our other teacher dina had said it would be. she told us to study the infinitive forms of 10 verbs, but the test was on all forms of the verbs (not that the different forms are so hard except for the infinitives, femenine is with an h or t, plural masc is with ימ, and plural fem is with ות so its not that bad, but some of the verbs we hadnt learned and some of them we hadnt even heard of, so i was pretty pissed. i have been trying really hard cause we have been having trouble with the classes. we were supposed to have kita alef, bet, and gimmel, but we only have kita alef and gimmel. that means that the classes are big and there are a lot of different levels in each class. a few people moved down from gimmel cause it was too hard, and there are some people in alef that are really struggling, and some people that find it a little to easy. we are trying to get another teacher for a kita bet, but israel takes a while to do anything. anyways, i am hoping that we get a kita bet class and i can go into that one. they said it wouldnt be necesarrily the next level, but more like a kita alef honors, where it just moves faster than the class im in now. so thats my goal right now.
anyways, back to the class on friday (yom sheeshee). the test took me about 20 minutes to do, but she gave us an hour, so i had a 40 minute break. then when i came back, she told us that that wasnt the test and that she found the real test, so we took that and it was shorter so she gave us 30 min, but it only took me about 10. so i had a 20 min break. then we played memory games with our neighbors, had kabalat shabat, and left. i think i was on break more than in class. it was okay cause i wasnt feeling great.

i ended up passing out while watching the office (a tv show) and turned out i was really dehidrated, and felt really awful. i had been to the pool, had some beer and no water, and just hadnt been drinking at all in the heat, which is no good, lo tov, so i got sick and felt really bad. it was a shame cause friday nights is when we can go to ultrasound, the huge club on the kibbutz. its the biggest one in northern israel. there was a special dj playing. we had a whole plan to go see a free movie on the kibbutz, then go to the pub, then go do ultrasound. but i just couldnt get out of bed. my friend brian came and took care of me. he got me nice cold water from the waterfountain in the other building, and made sure i was okay, and made me promise to drink the entire waterbottle, and then left me to fall asleep. it was very nice of him.

today i feel a lot better. im a little upset with myself cause it would have been a fun night had i just drank something. and i slept through dinner yesterday, which is where you get food for shabat, cause the dining room isnt open on shabat. so now i have to wait for dinner until i can eat something, and im hungry!

love love,
ella

it seems like everywhere i go, the more i see, the less i know. but i know one thing, that i love you

so today we went to tel aviv for an educational trip. it was pretty fun. we went to some museums, independance hall, that square where Yitzhak Rabin was killed 14 years ago, old jaffa, and a small shook. it was really fun and REALLY HOT. oh and we went paddle boating, which was kinda random.

(this was on the paddle boat)





(this is the memorial wall for Yitzhak Rabin)





this is in old jaffa