Golan Heights and more...

Yeeeeeaaahhhh, it's that time again. I'm back, and sorry about the hiatus, my friends, I've just been a little lazy. Slothful. Laggard. Somnolent. And, for all you Spanish speakers, perezoso. But anyway, here I am, back at the keyboard, ready to pour out to y'all my blend of heart, soul, and cold hard facts (with scant tablespoon of intellect, of course :-). So, again, anyway. The past few weeks I have been engaged in an intensive ulpan, i.e., a class for noobs (i.e., rookies) trying to learn Hebrew. For those who don't know, some sadistic Hebrews back in the day decided that vowels weren't necessary. We have them in our textbooks, but all they are are a few dots or a line below or next to the letter. In the real world, they're nonexistent. Like training wheels. The language is oddly similar to Spanish (noun before verb, same word for "on" and "about"). It's SLIGHTLY helpful. However, that's neither here nor there. I can sort of read now, and I can write. Which is good. At some point, I may try to write a blog post in Hebrew, which will suck for all of you who can't read Hebrew. Let me rephrase that. It will suck for ALL of you. But thats beside the point.  

Ok, so I'm making some egg rolls. Wait one second. They're in the microwave, so I have some time to regain my composure. I shall continue. On thursday, we went to the Golan Heights. A little history here. This is the spot of conflict, where Israel and Syria had the six days war. (Anybody remember this? If you do, you're old, mom and dad and grandparents.). Anyway, Israel took this area over in 1967, and even though it's not considered a disputed territory anymore, it's still got the same reputation. Reportedly, a city near us took some rocket fire about an hour after we left, so lucky for us. Standard protocol. Good times. Ok, back to the beginning. We got on the bus at 6:45 AM with our bus driver Boris, and headed toward Tel Aviv to pick up the peeps living there (lucky bastards got an extra hour of sleep). After picking them up, we apparently had half an hour before reaching the destination (that was Israeli time, in American time that's about 2.5 hours). We got there, and hiked around the heights for awhile, a lot of us, like 90. Although it was warm, it was good times. We got to see some bomb shelters and whatnot, as well as the Jordan River. Our tour guide was Ron again (Crocodile hunter 2, from the last blog). He is the man. (The link to his video will be on the next post, sorry.) At some point during the hike, we ended at this resplendent waterfall, which happened to be the second highest in Israel. We got to swim in its corresponding lake, which was very rewarding. We ended, and took the bus back to the hotel. We ate dinner with everybody, and that night we had a straight-up Oranim RAGER (party). I went around and had conversations with tons of peeps. I got to know about sixty people. Tons of good vibes, liquor, and Jews having a good time while giving back to our motherland. Ron was hilarious. The cornerstore peeps gave him a beer, which he didn't drink but carried around with him the whole night. Oh, the imagery. Unfortunately, one kid from the one of the other groups got kicked off for smoking the ganja. That was sad, he seemed like a good guy. But anyway, we all (90) loaded ourselves onto the bus; tired, hungover, and sweating out alcohol. In a little while, we got to our site. We started off on a hike through the Jordan river, waist-deep for me, chest-deep for some of the shorter (i.e. unfortunate) ones. Pretty surreal. Good times. We got out and were on our way back to Ramleh, stopping to get some Shabbat groceries. We cooked our meal, which leads me to now. Anyway, until later, Shalom!!!!!!!