Hiking in the desert

shalom to ya'll.
so it has been what i would call a pretty normal college week for me here. I had class all week and did my homework and mostly stayed in at night. On Monday, I ventured to a salsa class near by campus, it was fun but I'm really bad at salsa dancing and I'm not sure I'm going to go again. On Tuesday afternoon I have a 6 hour break between classes, so Zack, Lindsey and I (all Brandeis people, by the way) headed out to a camping store to buy the necessities for our hiking trip this weekend and then we went to the shuk, i got so many yummy vegetables and fruits. Then Thursday, I went on a paint balling trip through the student activities here, it was pretty fun, i didn't actually get hit by a paint ball and I'm pretty sure I only hit one person, I am a very bad shooter. Thursday night was very scary, on the way back from our paint ball trip, they let us know that there had been a terrorist attack in J'lem, as you know by now, 8 students at a yeshiva in the city were killed. It is so sad and horrible to think that terrorist would use a holy place of study, which i have read is mostly for high school students, to make a statement to Israel at large.
so, luckily i got to get out of the city for the weekend. i went on an amazing hiking trip in the Judean Desert. 2 full days of hiking. so we started out Friday morning by descending down from the highest point into the wadi (like a river bed), the desert here is not really made up of sand, but instead is composed on many different sized rocks, from sand to boulders, so going down the mountain was scary because the rocks kept moving beneath our feet. but once at the bottom we reached a very nice spring that was full, like above you head, with freezing cold water, so a few of us went swimming. then we continued out hike along the bottom of the wadi floor all the way along until the end of the day. we camped out near a parking lot. we were 10km north of Masada and you could see it from where we were and 15km south of Ein Gedi. once at our campsite and set up, we made Shabbat dinner. as an appetizer we had yummy popcorn. then a few hours later, after cutting vegetables and frozen chicken (which was my job and sooooo gross) we had delicious soup, salad, and poukeh (which is a Hebrew word for a camping stew). everything was delicious. after dinner was cleaned up we had tea and went to bed. me and Zack set up our sleeping bags next to each other and we watched the stars for a little, they were absolutely beautiful and clear in the desert (Zack and i were trying to participate in tefillah b'teva, we missed you guys!) also, across the dead from where we were we could see the light of Jordan, which was pretty cool. So this morning, i woke up so sore because of sleeping on the ground and the strenuous hike but of course we continued on. today's hike was crazy ridiculously hard, and intense and yet fucking amazing. we started out by scaling up a mountain, which took like two hours and was tough! then we walked across the plateau between two mountains, and then we descending into a second and even more gorgeous wadi. this wadi also had a small spring which we took an afternoon siesta at. then we continued to walk the wadi floor but this time it was as if we had entered a natural playground. the floor of the wadi turned into a narrow canyon made out of this white smooth stone, which was almost flowing across the floor, as if smoothed from floods, and we had to walk, and slide across and down it as we went, then sometime we would hit a spot where the wall just dropped off like 10 feet and we would have to climb down on these metal steps that had been put in. other times we would run into little pools of water which were waist deep that we had to wade through, other time you would hit a spot were you would actually have to slide down the rock to get by. and towards the end we found a spot were we had to climb down like 40 feet on those little metal steps, it was scary as hell but i made it. the hike was great, my entire body is aching from it but i still had fun. but the thing that put the cherry on the sundae was once we got back from the hike i went go back to my apartment and the elevator was not working, so i had to talk up 8 flights of stairs with all my crap and being incredibly sore and stiff, it was funny to watch I'm sure. also, my pants i wore hiking had holes in the butt from sliding on rocks so that was probably really ridiculous. and once i got to my room, i went to shower and while i was lathering up the water suddenly shut off for like 2 minutes, i was so pissed and confused, but then everything turned out alright.

I'm going to bed now but i will surely post pictures from this weekend very soon.

xoxo,
Adra