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