In Israel, we are in the midst of Chaggim, High Holy Days. Recently we celebrated Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. For about the past month, and for another few weeks, greetings of a sweet New Year can be heard on the streets, and smells of cooking come from every apartment. Pomegranates are in season, and even the buses are spirited. Next up is Sukkot, and sukkahs (huts) are springing up all over Jerusalem: on roofs, in parking places, on balconies, on sidewalks, at restaurants, and in parks. The days are still really hot, but the afternoons are perfect weather for eating out in the sukkah.
A lot of my friends go home for chaggim or visit family in Israel. I stayed in Jerusalem and although I was apprehensive at first, I had a really really nice and meaningful holiday. I made a meal and a few other friends made meals too. There was lots of eating and celebrating (on Rosh Hashana, not Yom Kippur), and that holiday time made me realize how successful and complete my transition to Israel has been. Celebrating with my friends and making new traditions (this is already my second Chaggim season) makes me feel really connected to my country and my community.
The shul (bottom)
taken from my balcony
Some old traditions don't need to be changed though. This year, I went to a synagogue literally across the street from my apartment. It was a minyan of mostly young people, many of whom were English speakers. I went with friends and saw tons of people I knew. It was such a nice feeling, but the proximity was also a huge huge perk. Walking home after my fast on Yom Kippur took all of three minutes (across a street and up 142 stairs). It was so Feldman Family American when I broke my fast with bagels and cream cheese. My roommate thought it was kind of funny but partook as well. The breakfast-for-break-fast tradition lives on. The only thing missing was my family and Aunt Cindy's cinnamon rolls. Maybe next year I will do a bit of pre-fast baking so I can continue to merge my American and Israeli customs into a meaningful blend of traditions and customs for the years to come. Until then, though, I will enjoy the continued eating during Sukkot as well as a bit of time to relax now that ulpan is finished and before classes start.
Bus drivers in Israel play a central role in the country's culture. Everyone (or almost everyone) uses the bus/public transportation system, and everyone (yes, everyone everyone) complains about it. But sometimes those goofy bus drivers can make your day. This morning, I went to work instead of ulpan (yay, I'm done!!), a first from my new apartment. I haven't figured out exactly when my bus comes each morning (obviously not on schedule--so Israeli), so I planned on leaving my apartment a bit before 9a and hoped I would get lucky. As I was coming down the stairs, I saw my bus. My stop is just down the hill about a block from my apartment and across the street. I took a run for it (dead sprint!). The bus passed me up as I was waiting to cross the street, but then it slowed. The traffic light up ahead must have turned read. I kept up my sprint but the bus started going again. It pulled into the station, and I wasn't yet there. Luckily, there were a few people getting on at the stop, and the last person had just paid (with that silly RavKav) as I came up panting. When I jumped on though and put my RavKav in the machine, the green light didn't go on. The driver mumbled something that I didn't hear, so I asked him if my card had worked. It was so Israeli when my bus driver sort of chuckled and said, after that long of a run...it worked. Of course it worked. I'm glad that he appreciated my early morning sprint! And I'd like to think that he might have waited for me if my sprint hadn't quite been sprint-y enough.
Unrelated, the weather is finally starting to cool off here. It is still pretty hot in the noon-time sun, but the nights are getting chilly. It makes for great walking-around-at-night weather. Last night after dinner (to celebrate the end of ulpan), I was walking around the neighborhood with a friend, and we were caught off guard by beautiful piano music. We looked around and tried to identify the source, and right above our heads we found it: an open window with an elderly man sitting tall and play piano with verve and passion. It was a pleasure to stand below his window and watch him, listening to the music as we enjoyed the first breaths of fall!
After the police showed up, we reexplained ourselves, waited while they entered who knows what into the computer system in association with our ids, and tried to scope out our surroundings. We knew that the stork was not in the location of the last received SMS, and we knew approximately where it was based on the signal from the pinger. We just had to figure out how to get to it. The trails off the restricted road were rocky, and although the army and the police gave us permission to continue our mission in that direction (away from Jordan), they didn't seem promising. We decided to drive back down Rt. 90 a little ways (perpendicular to where we were on the restricted road). We pulled over to listen for the stork with the pinger, and as we were listening with our antenna raised, another police vehicle came to a short stop next to us to find out what we were doing. My lab-mate explained again what we were up to, and once again we were in the clear.
The pinger told us that we needed to head into the bush, the area between the two roads that was full of trees, sand, rocks, and ponds. We pulled off the main road and drove a little bit on the rocky trail before stopping again to listen with the pinger. We were about 30 feet from the car, on a hill, and the car was about 15 feet from the road. As we were listening for the stork signal (which we heard) and trying to download data with the other antenna (which wasn't successful), we heard a car zoom by with music blaring. We then heard a screech of breaks; the car proceeded to reverse and stop parallel to our seemingly abandoned vehicle. We could tell that the drivers were assessing the situation and deciding what to do about this abandoned car. We quickly realized what was going on and began shining our flashlights towards our car to make our presence known. Seeing this, the other vehicle zoomed back on its way. We, however, decided to get back in the car and drive it farther off the road before we went for a hike, thus preventing others from seeing it and thinking about breaking in.
My lab-mate did a bit of good driving and a bit of scary driving, and after a few bumps, a ton of rocks, some bushes, and dust, we came to a stop. Out we went with our gear to try and find the stork. We listened to the pinger and made an estimate of the stork's location. We needed to get close to the stork but at the same time we needed to avoid interference like tree. A hill near the stork's roosting spot would have been ideal. There were several such hills, but in order to get to them, we would have had to cross through thick brush. We decided that it might be wiser to try from the other dirt roads we saw off of the restricted access road. There was no way we could drive down them in the car, but at least the walking might be a bit easier, so we climbed back into our dented car and retraced our bumpy tracks.
When we got back to the first dirt road, it was already 2:15a. We only had 45 minutes left to find the stork. The car was not in a secluded area this time, and although my lab-mate and I didn't discuss it until much later in the night, we were both nervous. I took my wallet and binoculars along with me although I didn't need them and would thus be carrying extra weight because I was too nervous about leaving them in the car. We were also each equipped with an antenna and attachment (the pinger and the data download-er) and our flashlights. We drank some water and then were off at a brisk pace.
We quickly came to two large salt water ponds (we were very near to the Dead Sea), and joining them was a little channel. It was too wide to cross so my lab-mate decided we should go around. Looking to the left and the right, we picked a direction and started to walk. About a minute and a half into our walk, we saw a pile of wooden pallets stacked on the ground. I suggested to my lab-mate that we build a raft-bridge type thing to use to cross the channel. He was quite skeptical, especially when the bridge was a bit short and we had to take a big jump, but we pulled it off and saved a good twenty minutes which was important because time was running out.
Once we made it across, we listened for the pings and continued on our way. The pings led us through the thick brush we were trying to avoid, through reeds and mud and sand, over hills, and through more dense shrubbery. At one point we lost the stork and had to retrace our steps. We weren't making much progress, and at 2:45a my lab partner said that we should probably just head back to the car. I wasn't taking that though because we had already almost been arrested twice, crossed a pond, collected ridiculous amounts of twigs in our hair as we passed through the reeds and trees, and climbed small mountains. He agreed, and we continued on until we saw a few tall hills. We climbed to the first one (they were sandy and it was hard to get footing because there was no solid ground), listened, tried to download, and failed. At the second one we listened and saw that the signal was pointing strongly in the direction of the third one. We were minutes away from 3a and decided not to waste time trying to download there. We practically ran to the third hill and got there just in time to hear the last pings. We had a direction in which to aim the antenna for downloading. The question was were we close enough and high enough?
At first it didn't seem like we were. After about five minutes, the device recognized that the stork was nearby but it wasn't downloading anything. My lab-mate told me to sit down and relax and that he would keep holding the antenna in a last ditch effort (usually recognition and downloading happens pretty quickly). As I was sitting and watching the screen of the downloading device, I suddenly screamed with joy. The data from the stork had started to download. Without moving a muscle or wiggling the antenna, my lab-mate also celebrated as we waited for the data to finish downloading. Then we had a big hug and a rest before heading back to the car. Or attempting to head back to the car.
It was so Israeli when we had to plan a full-on navigation mission to find our car. We saw the lights by which we parked and we saw all of the trees between us and those lights. We looked at two alternative routes to the left and the right, picked the left one, and mapped it in the stars. We began walking and got off to a good start. The ground was sandy but not too soft or wet. We came to some bushes, but they weren't too dense. We did get turned around a bit, but with a look up at the sky, we straightened ourselves out. Then the going got a bit harder. The ground got softer and slipperier. At one point we had to cross a small valley. My lab-mate went first and warned me that it was wet. I went a different way hoping for more solid ground only to feel myself sinking. And then, as I struggled to pick up my foot, my shoe was sucked off. My lab-mate is the best though. He found a place to recross, trace my steps and find my shoe. I was covered in mud, and so was my shoe, but I had it back and couldn't be happier.
As we continued along, we came to more slippery, wet sand. My lab-mate told me not to follow too closely. Later he told me it was because he was nervous he might fall in, and he didn't want me to get sucked in with him. We came to the point in our journey to the left where we needed to cut right to get to the car. We tried to do this but the cut-through was similar to the channel we crossed earlier, only this time, it was wider and we didn't have any pallets. I was getting exhausted and praying we didn't need to turn around and take the right path; my lab-mate was getting dispirited too, but we pushed on, and finally came to the restricted road. We were definitely back at the part where we should not have been, but we were on solid ground and could see our car. The last ten minutes or so of the walk we discussed our fear that the car would be gone, and seeing it in the distance was such a relief. When we got there, we loaded up, drove to the nearby gas station to wash up and celebrate with ice cream, and then headed home. We got back in the car a bit after 4a, and I got back to Jerusalem around 5:15a exhausted and filthy, but it couldn't have been a better night.
Fall migration has begun for the white stork (the ones not living in Israel, that is), and while they have a strong presence in Israel during the spring migrations, during the fall migrations, the fly-over time is quite short. In spring, thousands of storks fly over Israel. They do not have a distinct path; they can be spotted throughout the country; and some stay for a week or more. On the return trip from Europe to Africa, they fly south over Jordan, cross into Israel near the dead sea, sleep one night in Israel and continue south to Africa.
We know this because for the past several years, we have been GPS-tracking white storks from several populations in Germany. This year, we are using newer, even more advanced technology--GPS trackers that not only track the location of the stork (and send 2 text messages a day with the stork's location and tag number) but also the movement of the stork. From the data on these transmitters, we can understand where the storks chose to eat, sleep, nest, etc. We can track their lives and also identify the causes of their deaths. The machine is solar -powered. It transmits signal location 12 hour a day, from 3p-3a, and the rest of the power is used to collect data. Survival rates of new-born storks are rather low (two have already died this year, in the first weeks of migration), so instead of waiting until next year's breeding season in Germany to download data via antennae (a relatively easy process due to the nest location and road networks in Germany), we are hoping to download data via antenna as they pass over Israel.
The idea is quite simple in theory. In practice, it is another story. At 3p and 9p every night, a text is supposed to be sent with the storks' locations. They fly in flocks, and rest in the dark hours, usually without much movement. Thus, the 9p location is a very important one. By following the texts we can roughly predict when a given stork will be in Israel, and then on any given evening, at 9p, we can definitively know if it has arrived. On Thursday, a little bit after 9p I received a call from my lab-mate that there was a stork in Israel for the night. The flock was sleeping very close to the Israel-Jordan border near the northern tip of the Dead Sea. He said he would be able to go alone, but if I wanted to come along, I was more than invited. I wanted to come along, so I changed into my hiking shoes and hiking pants, packed a bag, and met him at the entrance of the city.
Once we were on the way, he explained to me how he thought the night would go. With one device, the pinger (in Hebrew and in English), we would located the stork. The device pinged at various intensities depending on how close the stork was to the antenna that we pointed. Once we were close enough, we would use another antenna-ed device to download the data from the stork's transmitter. If, for whatever reason, we spooked the flock, and they flew across the border, we would sleep in the car and try to download data when they crossed back over in the morning. We would not be able to use the pinger in the morning, though because the GPS trackers stop transmitting signal at 3a. We would do it by sight.
I had already told my ulpan teacher that I might not be in class on Friday, and I was quite excited for the adventure. The We're Going on a Bear Hunt song/book was playing in my head (see the video below). My lab-mate and I get on well, and it didn't seem like it would be too hard. It was though. We were headed to the Northern tip of the Dead Sea, and when we got to the intersection (where Rt. 90 makes a turn to the right at a big gas station and there isn't a road straight and the road to the left is an army road), we drove straight. We got out, plugged in our pinger, and listened for the stork. There was a lot of feedback because we could see the Israel-Jordan border, there was a nearby army base with a number of antennas, but we did pick up a faint signal. It was NOT in the direction of the GPS coordinates sent via SMS a couple of hours before. Because of all the feedback on the pinger, we decided to try the original location before beginning a more extended search.
The initial location was down the left road a ways past the army base. My lab-mate told me that it was a restricted access road, but he reassured me that we would have no problems. Needless to say, we had all sorts of problems. We put the GPS coordinates into a GPS finder and got as close as we could to the expected location of the flock. The point was across the fence (which was maybe ten feet away) somewhere in the no-man's land between Israel and Jordan. We couldn't hear a signal with the pinger, though, so that meant we had no chance of downloading data. With another listen, we were able to pick up the same signal as before though, weak and with feedback, but present. It was behind us somewhere in the bush (Georgie, thanks for teaching me important vocab)! We repacked our gear into our little, compact rental car and drove back the way we came looking for a trail or path into the bush to find this stork. As we were driving, we were suddenly met by a jeep with blaring headlights. We stopped and got out of our car just as four soldiers, with guns raised climbed down from the jeep. It was a pretty scary sight, but I guess we weren't any less suspicious with our antennae near the border on a restricted road.
My lab-mate began to explain the situation, and the soldiers were in shock. At first they didn't understand...wait birdwatchers, at night, with weird high tech stuff...but then they started to catch on. They asked for our ids and told us we had to wait there until the police came and sorted us out. My lab-mate wasn't nervous, but he was upset by the stall. We only had about two and a half hours of GPS transmittance left. As we were waiting, my lab-mate got to talking with the soldiers, most of which were younger than him and on reserves duty. It was so Israeli when it came out that the soldiers who had stopped us, with guns raised, were disappointed that we were just bird watchers. Nothing more exciting or threatening. They joked about spicing up the story for the newspaper, and we all laughed a bit. Lucky for us, the police pulled up a few minutes later, our waiting game ended, temporarily...
(to be continued at a later date...it's a lot of reading for one night)
Substitute "bear" with "stork" and "day" with "night". This was playing in my head as the night started, and it is a pretty good forecast of what's to come in the next post.
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