Kissinger, Bush, and Khazikstan , OH MY!

What a good week! So as you ALL know, Jason came to Israel this week!!! YAY! He arrived Monday afternoon, sadly, I had to sit through Hebrew class that morning and I could not sit still because I was so excited to see him. So I took a sherut to the airport and waited and waited and waited and waited and finished my book (that's right, I finished a whole book) and then he finally arrived. I couldn't help myself but to run up to him as he came out of the baggage claim. And then we were whisked away, he was getting the VIP treatment because he was a speaker for the President's Conference, that why he was here, not actually to see me, the conference paid for his flight and hotel just so he could speak about aliyah, it was pretty cool. Anyways, so we had to go right away to get into a cab because they had all these people from the conference trying to help us. So we came back to my apartment so that Jason could see it. We exchanged birthday gifts, I got a really pretty silver salvador dali-esque heart necklace. I got Jason Scrabble and in conjunction with his whole family we collectively are getting him a computer as a joint birthday and graduation gift. He wrote me such a sweet card too. Then we headed off to see our apartment, Jason really liked it which made me happy. Afterwards we met a friend of ours from Brandeis, Jacob Merlin, for dinner. Then we came back to the kfar and I had a few of my Israel friends come over to meet Jason, it was kinda awkward and yet very fun. Then it was time for bed because we had to get up really early the next day to go to a breakfast meeting with an old Rabbi friend of Jason's that was helping him and Avi (the other co-founder of ImpactAliyah) to find funding and partnership. Then for me it was off to school and my internship and for Jason it was off to a day of meetings. So I didn't meet up with him again until late Tuesday afternoon. Then we grabbed our luggage from my place and checked into the Inbal, a very nice hotel in Jerusalem where a bunch of dignitaries for the conference were also staying. We then took a shuttle over to the conference. As we were getting our name tag, they also gave me a special VIP speaker sticker so I got to be a VIP too. Both nights of the conference they had "dinner" and by "dinner" a mean a selection of 6-8 different raw appetizers. Then we heard Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert, and Elie Wiesel speak. Aftwards it was back to the hotel and we watched Casablanca our collective couple favorite movie. Next morning we woke up bright and early to go hear Henry Kissinger and some other cool people like Amos Oz (famous Israeli writer) speak. Kissinger was great, he spoke very well. Then we spent all day schmoozing with people and going to different panels about such things as Jewish identity, Jewish civilization, and Jewish education. That evening was the session about Israel - American relations. Of course, the W spoke, (W = George W Bush, our current president) and of course, he didn't really have anything new to say. Just Israel and American are best friends and that America will always protect Israel blah blah blah, and the speeches of Peres, Olmert and Bush, were separated by these awful song and dance performances of Americans and Israelis working together. The whole thing was quite overdone. That night, Jason and Avi worked for hours on getting Jason's speech for the next day at his panel entitled "Israel and the Diaspora: Aliyah and the Special Relationship" perfect. They also worked on getting Jason to speak slowly and not mumble which was the toughest part (haha, you know i love it when you mumble baby!) They worked until 2 am - at one point I went out and brought back pizza for them but after a while I went to bed. The next morning we had to wake up early again because Jason wanted to go hear the panel about the internet, because being Jason the fact that the Jewish guy who started Google was there was too exciting for him to miss. So sadly, I never got to eat really yummy breakfast the Inbal. But after the internet, we had a lunch presentation where they had a few world leaders, one was Vaclav Havel (a famous former president of the Czech Republic) a woman politician from Mongolia and the president of , you guessed it, Kazakhstan, someone I know actually heard an Israeli diplomat ask if he was Borat, can you believe it? Anyways, this guy from Kazakhstan did have some interesting things to say. After that thing was over we practiced more with Jason to make sure he wasn't nervous. Then it was his time to shine and he did great, he delivered his speech very well and he even answered some questions off the cuff with confidence and plugged for ImpactAliayh, Avi and I were so proud. Then we took the afternoon off from the conference and went shopping at the shuk, of course all the boys wanted was marzipan so of course we ate some! Then it was time to go back to hotel to pack up and say goodbye. It was really sad and hard to say bye after such a short time, especially because we hardly had any time to spend together because of the conference, but he will be back in 2 weeks, so I'm exited for that. Then Friday and Saturday I spent all day in bed wasting time playing and the computer and watching TV and movies. Now its back to school, I am starting to buckle down and start my research for my one paper, i am writing about Mikveh, it should be interesting. Tomorrow I have a field trip all day to Tel Hazor up north with my archeology class, it should be real cool. I will write more soon.

Here is the link to the presidential conference website http://www.presidentconf.org.il/en/vision.asp

Here is a link to the video of Jason's great speech! (I took the video, maybe I should go into a career in film making)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YWR2gwFu6fI

With love from the Holy Land,
Adra

Party Party Party rocking everywhere

What a whirlwind! So Tuesday we had school like normal except classes were canceled in the evening because Tuesday began Yom HaZicharon (Remembrance day). That evening I went down to the Kotel (Western Wall) for the opening ceremony of Yom HaZicharon. The ceremony completely shut down the wall, you couldn't get into the sections in front of the wall. The ceremony was held completely in Hebrew, it began with the sounding of the siren, then the soldiers did there thing, and then Shimon Peres spoke. He made a very beautiful and sentimental speech and I understood almost all of it. Then there was the sad part of the ceremony with the saying of prayers and lastly, the Kaddish, so many people in the crowd were crying, you could really feel that everyone in this country knew how much it meant and how much costs to be living in Israel. The next morning, Wednesday, a few friends and I headed down to Kikar Zion (a main square downtown) to stand and watch all the people and cars stop when the siren was sounded. It was amazing to watch, like a scene out of a movie where someone pressed the pause button. All of the people were just frozen on Ben Yehuda street and the buses were frozen on Yafo, you couldn't believe this sight. There were camera men and photographers everywhere taking shots of the people's stoic faces and them standing at attention like there were in the army. After the siren, life went back to normal. I spent Wednesday just chilling in my room doing homework, we didn't have school due to the national holiday. Then it became night, Wednesday night marked the beginning of Yom Ha'Atzmaut (Independence day). We went down to Kikar Zion and it was PACKED full of people, the streets around it had been shit down and a stage was placed in the street and bands were playing and there were fireworks and a lazer light show. The crowd was so large and crazy that it was like a mosh pit, no one could move. So instead of that we went and got some waffles from our favorite waffle place Babette's. Of course, I ran into my parents outside Babette's after they had been trampled by the crazy crowd as well.Then we went over to Safra Square, where there was Israeli folk songs and Israeli dancing. That was so much fun, I spent almost 3 hours there dancing with friends and running into almost everyone I knew in Jerusalem. Then I came home to go to bed. The next morning,g Thursday, a bunch of us got together to go to the beach in Tel Aviv to have a picnic and see the Air and Water show. We felt like such Israelis going to the beach on Yom Ha'Atzmaut, it is what most people do on this holiday weekend. The air show was pretty cool with all the crazy planes doing crazy tricks and at the end of the show a bunch of paratroopers came down for a landing on the beach, unfortunately one paratrooper fell on and hurt some people in the crowd. After the show, we stayed on the beach and hung out, eventually right before we left, these crazy black guys from the US came over to and starting hitting on all the girls and speaking very very inappropriately, they would not leave us alone and then were disgusting so then we just left the beach. When I got back to Jerusalem, I went out for a final dinner with my parents in Israel. We had great food and I was so tired after dinner that I fell asleep in their apartment. The next morning, I did all the chores I needed to get done, I went to the grocery store, I did my laundry, I cleaned my room, and I even did more homework. I was preparing for Jason to come visit (he arrives Monday at 1:20 in the afternoon). Then Friday night , my friend Noam (an Israeli who worked at OSRUI a few summers with me) picked me up and we went to Herzeliya for another friends of our's 21st birthday. We started out by trying to have a party on the beach but that didn't work out so well so then we headed back to another one of our friend's houses (Ofir, was both a camper and counselor at OSRUI) in Hezeliya. He had a gorgeous house with a huge backyard, a pool, and a movie theater in the basement. The party was really fun and I crashed at Ofir's place. Saturday morning we slept in late, made a really nice lunch and just hung out at his house. Then a came back to J'lem in the afternoon to see my parents off before they retuned to Illinois. Last night, I had some girlfriends over to play Dutch Blitz, we had a good time. Now today was just a normal day at school, but tomorrow Jason is going to be here! I can't wait I am so exited to see him after 4 months of being apart.

So that my updates, I'll write back after Jason leaves.

XOXO

21 Birthday???? Did it happen already?

Well Well Well, it was an interesting sort of week. First week back at classes, man was it hard to sit through those hour and half classes again. But I got a reprieve, on Tuesday my Archeology class took a field trip into the Old City. We learned about the history of Jerusalem during the First Temple period. We went into Ir David (City of David) which is where the first temple city of Jerusalem was located, it is not in the same place as the modern day old city location. Then at the end of the field trip we got to walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, which was and still a water tunnel and of course me being so short the water was up to my butt instead of my knees like everyone else. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon resting, I have been feeling very overtired this week. Wednesday was another class day but instead of having normal class for our archeology class we got to go to the archeology school building and play with artifacts and pieces of pottery for all of class, it was fun to learn how to tell where and when a piece of pottery came from and how you can put the pieces together. Thursday morning I went with a group of people to Yad V'shem for the Yom Hashoah ceremony there. The entire ceremony consisted of different people, representatives of organizations, bringing wreaths to the front. But it was cool to watch because most of the people carrying the wreaths were the survivors themselves and they had come to Israel from all over the world just for that purpose. Then we had to go back to school to go to Hebrew class, yuck! Thursday night I went out to birthday dinner with my parents at a great restaurant called Papagaio, all they have there is meat and it is an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ so all they do i just keep bringing you meat, there were like 12 different kinds of meat. At the restaurant was a group of Paratroopers and my dad obnoxiously asked them to take a picture with me, it was so embarrassing. Then my parents gave me my birthday present, it was 21 different birthday cards each with an increasing amount of money starting at $1 - $21. As you probably can figure out that some pretty good cash right there. Friday, was my actual birthday, we spent the morning looking at some apartments, and then in the evening my parents and I made great dinner at my apartment. That night we had the obligatory going out to a bar and drinking with the friends, which was nice, we were just being goofy and ridiculous. Saturday I spent the day in my room doing nothing, which was quite relaxing and that evening my parents and I ventured up to Herzeliya to visit with Doron. My parents know Doron because this summer Doron would come over to my house on our days off together. We had a great sushi dinner with him and then went back to his house where my parents met his parents, there was some minor communication problems but for the most part they understood each other and they actually got along really well. They had a lot in common. Sunday we left Doron's house and had breakfast at Max Brener's , boy was that delicious, and then Doron was our tour guide around Tel Aviv for the day. We had a ton of fun actually, my parents really like Doron and they get along really well with him so it was major fun. Sunday night we came back to Jerusalem and got to tour the Western Wall Tunnel Excavations, but when we got to the Kotel is was mad packed full of crazy Orthodox men, but not like normal, there were excessive amounts. We asked around and found out that some rabbi was visiting from Haifa and that he had brought a new Torah. But then this new rabbi had to go to the bathroom, so a car drove all the way down the plaza to the wall to pick him up and then masses of people gathered around the car trying to get a look or trying to touch this rabbi. These men event massed around the rabbi as he was entering the bathroom. The crazy orthodox men were also trying to get to the synagogue that is in the tunnel and there were pushing the security guards just to try to get it, it was a major balagan (chaos), it was like a mosh pit or a mob. Eventually things calmed down and we were able to start out tour. I had seen the tunnels before so it was not new to me but once again it was cool to see how much work went into the wall's of Herod's city of Jerusalem. The funniest part of our tour was that there was a huge group of literal Amish people from the US joining with us. Now if you know anything about Amish people you know that they don't use modern day technology including electricity. So the entire tour we kept wondering, firstly how they got to Israel by horse and buggy and secondly, why they were in Israel. At the end of the tour my father asked what looked like the leader/preacher of the Amish group and he said that for special occasions they can use technology so they had flown to Israel on airplane and that they had come here because Jesus dies here or something like that. Then Monday, I went to all my classes but between classes I spent the day looking at apartments and finally I found one, and not even one I found two great ones. We decided we are going to live in this really cut apartment in Baka (southern Jerusalem, many Anglo olim [immigrants] live there). Now with that weight off my back I can focus more on finding a summer job or internship. Thats it for now. Like the title reads, the 21 birthday really wasn't that big of a deal, pretty much a total kill-joy in Israel because I am legal here. Oh well. Thats all for now, stay tuned!