Shabbat Shalom

Hey all, welcome to post number two! You guys all read the first post I hope, so I'll just cut right to the chase and start off right where I left you all hanging after most recent installment. So the next day after I left off, we had our second legitimate job.  Well, it was actually more like a hazing. After buying a few house necessities (including a new hookah) we headed over to Herzel Street to "do some gardening." We ended up in front of the residence of some senior (25-30) Oranim program members. We cleaned their yard, trimmed their trees, and pulled stumps out of the area in front of their house, while they sat around, smoked hookah, had a few beers and told jokes. (Ya know, with most of us being freshmen next year, a little practice couldn't have hurt any of us.) All of us young-uns hung out at our pad (Weizmann 18, the best) later that night. Well, the next day was quite an adventure. We woke up at 5:30 AM, IST and met at seven at the same yard we had cleaned, and headed off with the older kids to meet up in Jerusalem with some other Oranim peeps from all around Israel. We then began one of the most mind-blowing tours I have ever been on, with a charismatic, hilarious, and insane tour guide named Ron, who I am convinced could be the next Steve Irwin (for those living under a rock, that's the Crocodile Hunter, may he rest in peace). When I can get my hands on it, I will attach a video of his presentation to a later blog post. He gave this presentation from a beautiful place overlooking all of Jerusalem, including the Old City, which he gave us the entire (albeit fascinating) history of. We subsequently boarded a bus (complete with our personal armed bodyguard) to around the Old City itself, in its full, historically charged splendor. We visited a bunch of ridiculously relevant religious (the new Three R's) sites, the first of which was King David's tomb (yes, the same shepherd young, he who cheers both heart and tongue, for all you Waldorfians). The next was the room where Jesus consumed his last supper with his twelve homies/apostles. After a falafel/shwarma break (nom nom nom), we spelunked (is that even a word?) with the aforementioned Ron through the underground city water tunnels, which the old-school Hebrews (i.e. from 5000 years ago) constructed without a GPS, or even a map. It was reminiscent of the California Caverns. After drying off, we went to the Wailing/Western wall, where I donned a kippeh, said a couple of prayers, and got as close to a spiritual high as relaxed old Dre is ever going to get. It was the first non-jetlagged experienced I had at the Real Wall (my apologies to Pink Floyd). Boy was it something else. Anyway, after that, we took a bus back to home sweet home in Ramla for a quick nap and dinner. At 10:30, we headed to Tel Aviv for some clubbing. For all of you that have clubbed before or like clubbing now, you haven't lived. I mean, that place was POPPIN'! Absolute insanity, complete with techno, vodka, and beautiful females. Anyway, when we got back at 5:30 AM (a full 24-hour circuit), we slept like  rocks. The only event worth mentioning the next day was when a few apparently love-stricken young men buzzed our door and booked it after leaving a roses and a note for my roommate Shuly saying "Here or som flowers for beautiful gurl" [sic]. Cute, cute. Anyway, I went for a run later that day, and we ate dinner together. That is all. The next day was Shabbat, which means Friday. That afternoon, we all went to services, and then paired up and all had post-service dinners with some families from the shul that we were at. Me and my roommate Kerry went to the house (really close to ours) of a very nice couple with three children. My roommates Olga and Sam went to the house of the rabbi and his wife, who have ELEVEN KIDS. ELEVEN. Wow. Anyways, we crashed, woke up at around 10:30 AM and a little later went to the house of Kerry's grandparents and ate Sabbath lunch. We then took a van taxi back home. Which leads me to now.

Anyway, ta ta for now, and remember the next one is coming soon! Bye. Love to all.

First Week

Hey Everyone! I'm hanging out here at our place in Ramla with my roommates Olga, Shuly, Kerry and Sam, our newest addition (more on that later). For those of you (non-family) that didn't get an earlier email, I'm going to go over everything again. I'll be brief. So, it started off at JFK airport, at the El Al check-in station. Soon after getting grilled about my luggage and chided about not knowing any Hebrew (that will change!), we were off and in the air on a 747. I was lucky enough to score an aisle seat in a row at the front of the middle section of a plane (the thorax?), but that was slightly offset by the existence of the 6'5", 270+ pound behemoth occupying the seat next to me. We were later treated to both dinner and breakfast by a crew of quite attractive but slightly bitchy stewardesses. (Any of you old-timers remember when they used to be both cute AND nice? Seems like it's usually one or the other these days...) But that neither being here nor there, after eleven hours I and an assortment of families, rabbis, tourists, and 15 other Oranim members just like me began our final descent into Tel Aviv; tray tables up, seats in the full upright position, and minds open to travel, hard work, good times, and experiences in a culture completely foreign to that which we were were part of less then half a day before. (Shout out to mom, hoped you liked the alliteration!)

The day we landed in Tel Aviv, we hopped directly onto a bus to Jerusalem, the holy city, for THREE of the worlds most important religions (the most important Mosque for the Muslims, Al-Aqsa, is also there, along with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher). I visited the Western Wall, a surreal experience. It blew my mind that it has been around for 5000 years, and millions of people have worshipped at it. I will go back, so as to get the full experience when I'm not so jetlagged. After a few days living in a hotel in Jerusalem, we were on a bus to Ramla, where I moved into the apartment with the aforementioned roommates (minus Sam). We took the first day to clean the entire house, and now it is a gem. We kept only a few of the things from before, such as a sign over the sink that read "Do your $@%^ing dishes your mom doesn't live here!", as well as full clip of AK-47 rounds. It's good luck. Me and my roommates have an excellent rapport. We are all so close already, it's uncanny. We are completely different, yet from the day we went to the supermarket for groceries, and had pretty much exactly the same preferences we realized how how well we would get along. 

Our next day was our first day volunteering. We completely cleaned up and repainted a preschool/day care place (ages 0-4). The proprietors were slightly strange, but they were extremely grateful for our help. Soon afterwards, I went to the shuk (an open-air shopping center crossed between a farmers market and a flea market for household necessities), before settling down to eat dinner, then subsequently heading to one of the other apartments to hang out with the rest of the group. Then trouble struck.

Apparently, earlier in the day, two of the young ladies in our group became acquainted with a few (slightly) older and hormonal young guys from a near apartment. I won't go into too many details, but it ended up with a few of the other boys in our group getting in an altercation with the building guys. Me and my roommates  were slightly out of the loop (we live farther apart than the rest of the group). It ended with the girls switching apartments and the boys pressing charges. It was pretty stressful, and the four of us roommates went on a cathartic run together around mid-day, ate lunch, and met with the rest of the group. Sam, another kid, is now living with us, because of the switcharoo, and he is already part of the family. We are headed to Tel Aviv this afternoon to go to the beach together and get some food. We'll go there again thursday to partake in the nightlife (thursday here is like friday there). Well, to all you family peeps and other peeps, until later, Shalom!