...we sang the national anthem...

The past month or so has flown by.  We had several big holidays here: Yom HaShoa, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut, and Lag Ba'Omer.  I have also took on a second babysitting job for a couple of weeks and have been studying a lot for my final exam (tomorrow!!) with the Ministry of Education.  And because summer vacation has started in the States, I have been seeing a lot of friends who are visiting.  I have really been keeping busy and having a blast, but I am counting down the days until ulpan ends and my mom comes because I will be finished with babysitting, and I will finally have a bit of time to relax.

photo courtesy of Becca Gore

Holidays here are quite special.  Yom HaShoa is Holocaust Memorial Day.  We had a ceremony in ulpan and a national moment of silence.  The same was true for Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for fallen soldiers, however I decided to spend the holiday away from ulpan.  The evening of Yom HaZikaron, I met some friends at the Kotel for a tekes, a ceremony, commemorating fallen soldiers.  It was a very last minute decision to go, so I ended up jogging most of the way.  When I got to the Old City, I was comforted to see extremely heightened security.  Every ten paces was another soldier or police man.  When I got to the security area before I could enter the Western Wall, the gate was just being closed to prevent people from entering.  It was so Israeli when the line (read mob) of people behind me kept growing and every person felt the need to yell at the security guards or explain why he should be allowed through even though nobody else could pass.  Apparently we had made it right before the torch lighting ceremony and thus had to wait "a couple of minutes." In truth we waited about 20 minutes until the Mayor of Jerusalem came squeezing through the mash of people trying to get in (he touched me!).  People began yelling at him, and it must have gotten through because when he passed through security, he spoke with the main guard, and the gate was opened, and we were able to enter.  Lucky for me, a couple of friends had staked out a spot in the front row and I was able to join them.  The ceremony, though in Hebrew, was quite moving, and at the end, we sang the nation anthem.  That was just one of the many times over the next couple days that I would feel such a close and strong bond to my country.

The next day, I went with a friend to Har Herzl, the military cemetery in Jerusalem.  There was another siren, and just like on Yom HaShoa, the whole country froze.  Everyone in the cemetery stopped talking and stood silently for 2 minutes, buses stopped; people got out of cars.  It was like pressing pause on life.  After the siren, there was another tekes.  The rest of the day was a relatively somber one, but that night began Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel's Independence Day.  There were street parties throughout the country.  I stayed in Jerusalem and just sort of walked around taking it all in.  It is amazing to see such sadness followed by such pride and celebration.  The day of Yom HaAtzmaut is a happy one filled with BBQ and frolicking in Israel's parks.  I went to a couple of BBQs in two different parks.  Everywhere you looked, there were people  of all sorts (Israeli, American, religious, secular, young, old, etc).  It was a great day with lots of eating and hanging out.

After that, things went back to normal.  Ulpan picked up--we are currently cramming two thirds of our text book into the last two weeks of class.  My friends and I are also starting to make post-ulpan plans.  This summer I will be volunteering in Kiryat Gat.  I will be helping out in a community garden and in an absorption center.  I hope to really brush up on my Hebrew while I'm there.  I'm also excited to spend another summer making connections and visiting with my host family.  I stayed with them this past weekend and also celebrated Lag Ba'Omer in Kiryat Gat.  Basically the holiday is celebrated by building ridiculously HUGE bonfires.  The whole city smelled of fire.  Before we left the house, we made sure to close all of the windows, but somehow the smell still permeated everything.

The next holiday here is Shavuot,  I will be done with ulpan by then, finishing up with babysitting, and starting to pack up my apartment.  These first five months have flown by, but I have loved every minute of them!  I can't wait to see what the summer brings.

...we had to leave the house by 5:30am just to...

So people are still asking me about how my Passover (Pesach) was, and even though I feel like it was ages ago, I guess it is a valid question.  I had two weeks break from ulpan, and while the beginning was spent running annoying errands (see previous post), the second part was quite nice.

I spent the first days of my travels in Herzliya with close family friends.  I enjoyed some beach weather, some slightly chilly weather, and a very nice seder.  It was one of the longer ones I have been to, but I had a really nice night filled with LOADS and LOADS of delicious food.  The highlight would have to be the afikomen (dessert) hunt.  It is a custom to hide the afikomen.  The custom varies by family, but either the leader hides the desert matzah and the child/children who find/s it wins a prize or the child/children hide/s it, the leader has to find it, often fails, and falls to bargaining with the child.  The family I spent the seder with followed the first practice.  As dinner finished up, the kids were told that the afikomen would be in one of two rooms.  We slowly made our way upstairs and began the hunt.  (Yes, I'm a kid too!)  In the first of two rooms, I began my search in the dirty clothes bin.  It was the bedroom of a teenage boy, and for both of our sakes, I didn't really want to go through his clothes.  Instead, I took the lid off, poked around inside using the lid, and smashed about trying to see if I could hear the crumble of matzah.  No such luck.  After a bit more searching, we began to give up one by one.  The minutes turned into hours, and the search dragged on.  Finally, just around the two hour mark, the prize had been found--in the first place I looked.  In the dirty clothes bin.  Next time, I guess I'll have to look (and crunch) a bit harder.

After my stay in Herzliya, I traveled south for what I thought would be a couple of days.  The plan was to spend two days with my host family in Kiryat Gat and two days with my friend on a nearby moshav.  The first night in Kiryat Gat, I went with a friend to watch my host father's soccer game at the high school.  The men were pretty good, despite the fact that my host father (he was playing goalie) always ended up on the ground.  Half way into the game, I get a call from the friend I was supposed to visit the next evening.  It turns out her family was going up to the North the next day, and I was coming with.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  I was thrilled, until she told me we were waking up early and leaving around 5:30am.

Well, I was going, so I decided to spend the night with her and her family.  A bit after 5:00 her mom came in to wake us up.  By the time we ate a tad of breakfast, had coffee, packed the car, and got stuff from the cousins (who live next door and were coming with but didn't have room in their car), it was already 6:30.  We set off, and I promptly fell asleep.  Around 8:00 I stirred and realized we'd stopped.  At 8:30 when I actually woke up, I realized that we were still stopped.  I got out of the car to join the rest of the family outside.  It was so Israeli when we had to leave the house by 5:30am just to stop by the side of the road and brew some coffee.  We had made a mini breakfast stop.  A burner was going and we were waiting for the water to boil.  It was nice to have a hot cup of coffee on the chilly morning, but it also made me laugh.  After our mini breakfast (following the other mini breakfast we had at home), we continued the drive north to Gush Halav, an area near Tzfat.  It was so Israeli when, upon arriving, we immediately pulled into a gas station, found a few free tables, laid out a table cloth, began peeling eggs, making salads, and laying a beautiful meal.  We then proceeded to eat our third breakfast (maybe it was lunch, but it was only 10:30).  When we finished the meal, we went on a two and one half hour hike on a trail that wound through some hills and valleys in the north.  We saw goats and cows and old synagogue ruins; we treaded through rivers and slipped through mud, we got a bit lost, and we consulted an iPhone for help.  All in all, it was a pretty low key but beautiful walk.  Upon finishing, we had some snacks and then drove to a forest a little ways away.  Apparently it was time to eat again.  This time, we made an amazing bar-b-que.  We made salads, mixed meats with spices and began to bar-b-que.  It was so Israeli when we made the decision to have an impromptu campfire to keep us warm.  It was an unseasonably cold day, so my friend and I began gathering sticks.  When we had enough for a small fire, we built it near our picnic table (also donned with a tablecloth) and huddled around to stay warm.  After an exceptionally large meal, we of course had to have tea and coffee before hitting the road.  We also were able to gather a group for afternoon prayer services, mincha.  It is cool to see that the Jews from all walks of life (more and less religious, younger and much older, Ashkenazic and Sephardic) were able to come together for 15 minutes in the middle of a forest.  It was a nice end to a great day.  A great day filled mostly with eating!  Afterwards we headed home and tried to catch up on sleep.

The next day, I went back to my host family whom I had so abruptly left to go up North.  It was a great way to end my week of travels, as I got to speak a lot of Hebrew, relax a bit, and eat a lot more yummy food.  Saturday was my host father's birthday, so we snacked and visited with family all day long!  After shabbat, I went back to Herzlyia for a friend's birthday party, and from there I returned home.  I spent the last couple of days of Passover in Jerusalem with friends. And before I knew it, break was over.

I have been back at ulpan now for almost a week.  Since then, we have gotten a new teacher (apparently only temporarily, but she is GREAT), I have started thinking about making summer plans, and I have been beginning to reconsider my plans for next year.  Summer is still undecided but my options include spending another summer in Kiryat Gat volunteering and living with a host family, staying in Jerusalem and babysitting, or doing some sort of summer research, also most likely in Jerusalem.  Volunteering will be the best for my Hebrew, and that is what I am leaning towards, but I still haven't made any decisions.  In terms of grad schools, I have begun to consider a completely different program at the Arava Institute.  It is a two year master's program in desert studies with a concentration in environmental studies.  It also stresses the importance of dialogue in the Middle East and brings together students from several different countries and walks of life.  It seems very interesting and relevant, so I have begun the application process.  Lucky for me, Israeli university programs don't begin until the end of October and there aren't so many firm application deadlines.  Hopefully in the next month or some I will know what I'm doing, but until then, I will try to keep you up to date with the other happenings of my life.