Adra's Israeli Adventure

Doron...Max...Sarah...8 people for diner..........a trail of guests and friends (My LAST Post)

2008-08-04T09:09:00.007+03:00

Camping Trip up North with Doron:
Jason, Doron, and I went up north past the top of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee for all those goys out there). We went to a place called Yehudiya. In Yehudiya there are a few great sites to see. Yehudiya itself is a river bed with many waterfalls and a 90 foot drop which a person use to have to jump but now there is a ladder. Then there are these pools on another trail called Zavitan that are formed by these rocks that are in the shape of a perfect hexagon. So, we spent three days, hiking around in the heat and playing in the pools and waterfalls. Then at night we would camp out and cook our own food which of course tasted great. We had a really fun time and the boys really bonded.

Once we got back to Jerusalem, it went back to just another normal week, work and Ulpan, having coffee with some of Jason's friends. But... that weekend was Jason's little brother Max's free weekend from his USY summer program in Israel, so we had him and his friend over for the weekend. Mostly we just let them play on the computer and hang out, we ate a lot of food, and thats about it. I think that they had a nice time.

The morning they left, I also had to leave for the final seminar for Career Israel. We went up north on the coast to a place called Nachsolim, which was gorgeous and amazing and beachy and I definitely want to go there again. However, being with Career Israel is fun and I love the people that I worked with and we had a good time, there was just a lot of stuff to do and deal with at this last seminar. On the way home we stopped in Zichron Yaakov which was great and we had a wine tour and tasting. So it was busy, but in the end I had a nice time. I had to do a lot of stuff for them and I know they really appreciated it, especially in my last week of work, which it was.

The rest of the week was all working, I spent long days at the office figuring out everything i needed to finish up and meeting with people about talking over my responsibilities, they really liked me there and they actually really need someone like me to stay so maybe just maybe I will have a job when I get back! But in reality it was the best summer internship, I really got to see the business and got to like it very much.

Thursday morning, our good friends Sarah, from Brandeis, got to Israel to begin her year stay at Pardes and was staying with us for the weekend. Thursday night we had dinner with Jacob another Brandeis friend and then went out to my roommate Rachel's birthday party where things were soo awkward because the Brandeis people didn't talk to any of our Israeli friends, but ti was still fun. Friday, I was supposed to help my co-worker check the participants out of their apartments but I woke up that morning with horrible food poisoning!! I was puking and blah and gross all day and the next day too. I hardly ate food for 2 whole days and only drank water through a straw, I felt awful and I couldn't even get out of bed for two days except to puke or go to the bathroom. But now I am all better. The sad thing was, I was sick for all of Shabbat, so Friday night we were going to have 8 people at dinner, we had planned a really great dinner and I was excited to have so many people over, but instead I slept all day in bed and Jason and Sarah took over the cooking and I actually couldn't even get out of bed to meet out guests and slept through dinner and missed all the fun. The next day Jason and Sarah went to lunch at another friend of ours and again I couldn't go because I was still too sick. But at least I got to spend some time with Sarah on Sunday, we went out in the morning and we to the old city. Sarah wanted to go to the Kotel while she was here and so we did, we meet a really nice girl working for Aish and she and Sarah made plans for a future shabbas, it was fuuny, then I said goodbye to Sarah and she left for Ulpan in Haifa and me and Jason are just now beginning the process of packing up and all that. Because, I sadly leave Israel on this coming Thursday night, in only 3 days.

I do feel sad about leaving, I have had an amazing time in Israel this year, however, I am exited to eat really food and go shopping in stores that have clothes I want to buy and to see my friends and family and I am way excited for senior year at Brandeis, but I know I will be coming back to Israel so soon that it doesn't bother me that much to be leaving.

So Shalom L'Israel and Shalom to you all,
Thanks for reading!!

Too Many Festivals= a whole ton of fun!

2008-07-21T21:17:00.004+03:00

Now this past week, whoa, was it jam-packed with good ole' fun! The week began with a group movie outing with some of the fellows from the PresenTense Institute ( the creative Zionist institute Jason was involved with last summer). We met up with a few of the people from the house and went to go to Wall-E and it was the most amazing movie I have ever seen!! Now, this may have been because the entire first half hour of the movie centered around music from Hello Dolly being sung and danced to by a little garbage eating robot or becuase this movie so openly faces so many hot bed issues in the funniest way. Anyone reading this needs to get up from the computer and go the nearest movie theater this second to go see this movie, it was Fab-u-lous!
Then the week continued with Jason and I deciding that we needed as citizens of Jerusalem to attend at least one film of the Jerusalem film festival. The one that sounded most interesting to us was a film about transexuality and gender-change operation in Iran. This movie was actually really eye opening and very interesting. In Iran, homosexuality "doesn't exist" and is punishable by death, however, the Islamic law says that transexuality is a medical condtion that can be treated by gender change operation, so this entire movie ceneterd on a few boys who wanted to become women; but you have to remeber that these boys wanted to become women in a country where you become the scum of the earth and you have no rights. The movie was called Be Like Others, check out the website, very interesting.
Thhhhheeeen, the next day we went to the Israeli wine festival at the Israel museum. At this festival you pay 50 shek to get in and then they give you a wine glass and you get to run free and wild around the entire stature garden trying wines from over 50 Israeli winaries. We had some really really really great wine! They also had great chocolate and cheese. We ran into to a ton of people we knew, of course all the American would coem out for some really cheap wine tasting. We also had way too much wine to drink and were totally drunk by the time we got home. Which was funny becuase we had to be really really early the next morning becuase we were heading up north to go on a hiking trip with Doron.

More about the hiking trip next post! Keep reading

Just a quick catch-up

2008-07-21T21:06:00.002+03:00

So after we got home from Petra, we went back to a normal week of fun. Mostly working. Twice that week I went with people from the office where I work to Kiryat Moriah, the main offices of the Jewish agency, to do some programs talking about Masa, it was pretty fun. That shabbat we had over our friend Jacob from Brandeis and my roomate Rotem and her cousin from America, Ashley. We had so much fun eating and talking and playing that they left at almost 1:30 am!! On saturday, Jason and I took a nice Shabbat stroll over to the Montefiore windmill and into Yemin Moshe (an gorgeous artist neighborhood directly outside the Old City). There is a very nice park there and Jason and I spent the afternoon having a small picnic and reading inthe park. It was a really relaxing Shabbat afternoon. That evening, we went out to dinner with Jason's Mom's college roomate Lisa who was visiting Israel with her two daughters. We took them to Beit ana Ticho and had an amazing delicious and over-filling meal (they just kept ordering food, it was crazy).

And that was the week after Petra, not so surprising, more to come soon...................

Itzhak Jonesbergstein and the Last Crusade

2008-07-10T18:52:00.007+03:00

So we Jews traveled to Petra. We left for Eilat on Thursday afternoon, it is a 4 hour drive down from Jerusalem to Eilat, but it has beautiful scenery. You start out driving out of Jeru' into the West Bank and towards the Dead Sea then you follow the Dead Sea south until you hit the Arava desert, which is separate from the Negev, and then eventually after many hours you make it Eilat. Eilat was so humid at 10 p when we got off the bus it felt like it was a million degrees outside. We walked a little bit and found our hostel, Beit HaArava. It wasn't the nicest place and the room was tiny but we didn't have to pay much and it was good enough for us. We walked over to the Tayellet (boardwalk) and got some ice cream before heading to bed early before our very early morning pick up at 6:45. Our tour company, Desert Eco Tours, picked us up in an awesome jeep: --------------------------------------------->>>
Then we drove around and picked up some other really nice young people (oddly, some Jewish, some not) and headed towards the Jordanian border. We got there about 20 minutes before it opened so we would be the first through and not have to wait around forever. We got through very quickly and the Israeli side , walked across the no-man's-land section to the Jordanian side, where we had to wait in the gift shop while our Jordanian guide checked our passports through for us. I changed over 5 Euro and got 5 Dinar. Then we got into our very nice air-conditioned van and then a Jordanian tourist police office joined us, we believe he was there no only for protection, we believe he was there for purposes of censorship. We drove trough Aqaba just to see this really tall flag they have there, I guess it's in the Guinness book or something, not so impressive, and then we headed north for 2 hours to Petra, of course stopping on the way at the little shop to pee and buy shit. We got really lucky because even though it was a hot day and the sun was shining it wasn't very humid so I didn't feel as hot. Once we arrived in Petra we began our descent down the canyon, seeing carved sandstone statutes and beautiful colored rock canyon walls. It was very shady and there was an old cobblestone path so we didn't have to walk through sand. Then just as we were about t reach a corner, our guide had us line up and face backwards looking at something, but it was a trick, then he had us all spin around and behind us you could see the Treasury, the most famous site in Petra:
It was so cool to see, and especially because our guide told us that back in the ancient day that they had to hang from the top and carve from the top down. And the entire thing is carved out of the canyon made of sandstone.
They filmed the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here, but they only filmed the front of it, because there isn't anything inside except for some empty rooms. But the outside is beautiful and has so much detail. Right next to the Treasury was a huge set of sandstone stairs that were fading away because of the erosion of dust but Jason and I climbed them anyways and got up to this big cave, which had nothing in it and smelled like pee, but it was a fun little experiment. Then we moved on down the main stretch of Petra, it was filled with gorgeous facade all the way up the side of the canyon hundreds of feet in the air. There were also many little open air caves in the walls of the canyons. The facades were said to be the graves of the society that had lived there and the plain caves were there homes. The society that lived there believed that after death was the most important part so they made beautiful graves site. We walked all the way down the to the end where there were tons of restaurants, so we had an all you can eat meal, which I thought was very delicious (but the next day Jason and I were both not feeling too well). Then we were on our own to walk back up to the bus, so we had time to take pictures and climb things, which is what we did. Right at the end of the path, we ran into a very good friend of ours from Brandeis, Zack, who is doing a dig in Israel this summer. It was such an amazing coincidence to see him. After parting ways, we got back on the bus and slept our way back to the Israeli border. We got back to our hotel right before sunset, but we weren't about to starting Shabbat.
That night we decided to really go out to dinner, so we went to this restaurant on a boat recommended by my parents, it had amazing fish and I of course got the most un-kosher plate of seafood. Then we walked over to the beach right off of the Tayellet and went for a nighttime swim, it was so warm there that it almost felt better to swim at night. Later, we walked back to the hotel and collapsed because we were so exhausted.
The next morning we woke up late and headed to the beach, we first settled at the public beach that was pretty empty and only occupied by Israeli families who were camped out in tents. We spent some nice time there swimming and reading. Then we headed over to a second beach, which was actually right next to a bar/restaurant and has tons of chairs out on the sand, ti was pretty full but not crowded and we spent the rest of the afternoon there. They had a floating raft out in the ocean were people could climb up and lay so we did that, although the raft was pretty tall and my knees got pretty cut up trying to climb on. Later in the afternoon we deiced to go para-sailing, because Jason had never been and I really loved it the first time I did it. Jason was so scared that we wouldn't let go of the ropes the whole time he was in the air, but he said afterward that it was very fun. I, of course, loved it especially when I was dropped all the way underwater!! Then we had a light dinner and got back on the bus and slept our 4 hour drive back to Jerusalem. We got home and went right to bed.

All in all it was a wonderful sun filled vacation down south.
will write more soon,
Adra

Rayna, Rosh Hanikra, and Ulpan

2008-07-03T12:08:00.004+03:00

Sorry for being bad about updating, living life has gotten in the way of my free time. So it's been a while, let's re-cap. I work weekdays, Sunday -Thursday, in the afternoons, and this isn't that exciting so this will just be an assumed section of my life unless otherwise told.

Tuesday June 24 - In a crazy turn of events, my best friend from high school, Rayna, was in Israel for a program and then had extended her stay. She happened to be staying only 10 minutes away from my apartment. So we got together and had dinner and chatted. We haven't really spent time together since last year so I was a great way to reconnect and become friends again.

Wednesday June 25 - Friday June 27 - Career Israel had a 3-day trip up north and I fortunately got to go along for FREE! the trip began by driving up to Haifa and meeting at a mosque of a very peaceful sect of Islam, it was very interesting to hear them speak about the entire situation from their point of view. Then we headed up to Acco and took a tour of Acco in the deathly heat, it was so hot. After that we headed up to our Hostel which was in a little town right near the Lebanese boarder. For dinner was traditional kibbutz style food, schnitzel and veggies. Then we watched a really good Israeli film, called Someone to Run With. The next morning, we headed even further north to the actually boarder crossing at Rosh Hanikra. We saw the beautiful grottos and then got to enter the army base there and go up on a huge tower where you could see into Lebanon and see where Hezbollah used to be. In the afternoon, we headed to Tzfat and took a short tour, where we ran into some crazy Na Nach Nachman's who were American and told us all about the happiness of na nach nachman-ish, it was hilarious. After Tzfat we shortly stopped over at Har Meron, which is where the grave of Shimion Bar Yochai is located and where people go on Lag B'Omer. Then it was back to the hostel to watch the big soccer game. The last day of the trip, we went back to Haifa and had a tour of the Bahai Gardens; it was beautiful but soooooo hot! Then we went to a local Druze village for Duze hospitality, which was so yummy and delicious. Lastly, we stopped at the shuk at Dalyet El Carmel, another Druze village. Then we headed home to J'lem.

Shabbat - Friday night Jason and I got invited to eat dinner the at PresenTense Institute (PTI) house, run by Jason's two business partners Aharon and Ariel, so we went. The house was huge but in the middle of nowhere in arnona, there were maybe 35 people for dinner, it was HUGE! I felt very overwhelmed, but things were fine. The food was great and afterwards Jason was part of a panel that spoke about their experience at PTI last summer. Then we went home. Saturday afternoon, we had Shabbat lunch at our place, Rachel and Rotem, and Rachel's boyfriend Yoni and his friends. Jason and I cooked spinach lasagna which was amazing. And the girls brought over a good salad and chocolate fondue as desert, there was so much chocolate that we still have half a container left. But before lunch was a balagaan, we woke up to find a bizillion ants had found on of our challahs and eaten it. Then in the process of cleaning the ants, Jason broke a glass mug on the floor. But in the end everything turned out just fine.

Sunday June 29 - normal day, in the evening we had coffee with Noam, a participant of career Israel who is going to Brandeis next year, because he and Jason are working together on finding housing.

Monday June 30 - In the AM, I woke up early to go to the temple Mount to see the mosques with Rachel and Rotem; we got there at 7:45 am. After spending a ton of time taking photos we went to breakfast at a cafe and then shopped at Mamilla mall for a little. Otherwise it was a normal day, Jason had a meeting in Tel Aviv in the evening so I got to stay home and have an evening alone, I watched the Tony's, they were pretty good, this year's crop of nominees for musicals wasn't the best but I love In the Heights and it won for best musical which made me happy.

Tuesday July 1 - no work today, it was my first day of Ulpan at Pardes so in the morning, I went downtown to go shopping and then in the afternoon Jason and I spent some time together over lunch and then I went to Ulpan. I ran into someone I knew from Brandeis and met some very nice people. My Hebrew class only has 4 people in it but it should be a good help for a month or so. That evening we baked cookies, we made chocolate chocolate chip, they are amazingly delicious!

Wednesday July 2 - normal day at work, then Jason and I went out on a date, which was really nice. His mom told him he had to take me out on a nice date and that he could pay for it with their credit card. So we went to this really good restaurant on Emek called Caffit, they have such good food! Then we went home and watched Sixteen Candles because Jason had never seen it.

Today I am at work right now and later we are leaving for Eilat/Petra and I will write more about that later.

XOXO
Adra

Ants and Bracha

2008-06-22T10:06:00.004+03:00

Shalom to all.
Been quite a busy week.
Last Sunday was a normal day and in the evening Jason and I went out to dinner with our friend Shira, who made aliyah a few years ago and goes to Hebrew U. (She also happens to be Jason's ex girlfriend, but I like her a lot so it doesn't bother me). Then on Monday, I can't remember what we did so it must not have been that important. I think we rented There Will Be Blood, it wasn't very good. Tuesday was fun because Jason came into the office in the morning because he had a meeting near by and wanted to meet everyone I work with and see my office. While in my office Jason met one of the people doing Career Israel right now who coincidently is going to Brandeis to be a NEJS (Judaic Studies) grad student next year, the boys got to talking and now they are going to try and find an apartment together for school next year. That night we went on a double date with my roommate Rachel and her boyfriend Yoni. It was fun, and kind of awkward but that made it even more funny. After dinner, our friend Eli came over and we baked challah, we baked challah until 2 in the morning because we started really late and didn't know how to use our oven properly, it was funny. Wednesday we went to go to a short film screening held by Nefesh B'Nefesh. On our way there, we stopped in a place to grab a bite to eat. As we were waiting for our food a man came up to us and said, "Are you a couple?" and awkwardly and confusedly we answered yes. Then the man continued on to say how nice it was to see us together and that we "should have a bracha" (we think he means sheva brachot, like a wedding) and told me what a nice guy Jason was, which is weird because he doesn't know Jason and then the man left. Just another example of the crazy Jews who live here. The film screening we went to was very interesting, it is the only religious film school in Israel, so the films were all very candid looking at religious life. Thursday, Career Israel had a field trip to the West Bank, so of course I went along too. We went to a bunch of different Jewish settlement cities, one was Haredi and one was Religious Zionist and we even went to go to look at an Arab town, but we only look ed at from a far and didn't go in. Thursday night we went to go see a production of the Sound of Music, in English of course, that was being done to give money to Sderot ( a southern city that constantly gets bombed by Gaza). The musical was not as good quality as something Stevenson would have put on but it was nice to just see a play and it was very cute. It was interesting though because sitting in that theater I didn't even feel like I was in Israel, everyone was speaking English and I just had this weird moment were I was like whoa, I am in Israel right now, it was weird. After the show, we met up with a friend of Jason and mine from Brandeis who was here on a program. Friday was a relaxing day, we did some chores, like cleaning and going grocery shopping and mostly just lazed around the house. In the afternoon we caught the bus to Bet Shemesh, on the way there however, our bus started to fill up with smoke and everyone started screaming at trhe driver to stop, and he took like 5 minutes to stop and then we all ran off of the bus. The engine had overheated, it was a very hot weekend this weekend, so then we had to wait for another bus to come pick us up. Eventually we made it to Bet Shemesh to our friend's house. They have 6 kids and still had room for us to stay. Jason and I had fun palyign with the kids and spending time having an Haredi Shabbat. While in Bet Shemesh, we also visited a co-worker of mine and Jason's 3rd cousins who all live there. There was a ton of playing with little kids and people saying things about how we should get married. Then on the way home from Bet Shemesh, I wasn't feeling very good and I got sick when we got off the bus and kind of ruined the rest of the night because I felt gross.

Now to the ants...............................
All of last week we kept finding ants in our kitchen, not some many but enough that it was getting annoying and unclean. While Jason and Eli were baking challah, we found ants in the sugar and that was the last straw. So we decided this week to fix our problem. We cleared and cleaned out the entire kitchen and then sprayed with ant sprayed all over. Then we let it sit for a day(so this is 2 days without a kitchen) and then we cleaned the kitchen again to get rid of all the ant poison and then we put everything back. We were ant free for about a day when we noticed, not ants on the counter but some ants in the sink. And now we have ants in the office. So, we have just given up. As long as it is only a few ants and they aren't on the kitchen counters and all of our food is properly put away in the fridge or in Tupperware then we should be good to go.

That was our crazy week and now we are going to start another.
Hugs and Kisses

J and A

PS - I put up all the pictures up until today on my Picture site, go check them out!

Oh the places you'll go!

2008-06-14T21:52:00.002+03:00

Hey all.
So here's another update from the life of an almost Israeli. Sunday to Monday was the holiday of Shavuot, this is a the day when G-d supposedly delivered the Torah to us at Sinai. Jason and I went to dinner and one shiur (lesson) at the Fuschberg Conservative Center and then headed over to Pardes to hear another shiur. Usually, people stay up all night studying Torah and then go to the Kotel to pray at sunrise but I was just too tired to do all that. Monday we just spent a lazy day at home hanging out. Tuesday I went back to work and started to have responsibilities on my own. My job for the summer is at a place called Career Israel, which is a 5 month MASA program in which the participants do internships while here. I am working mostly answering tons of emails and interviewing participants for the upcoming fall session. I really really enjoy working there, the people are nice, the work is exactly what I want to be doing, and it is a great connection to have for the future. Wednesday I headed up to Hebrew U to turn in my books at the library and my final paper. I also, amazingly, got my $2000 MASA grant check, which I will be using to live on this summer. So now I am officially done with Hebrew U and have no more school work to do for the whole summer! It is so weird, new, and nice to have my summer free to do what I want, this is my first summer not up at camp in 13 years. I never knew how nice it is to come home after work and not having any school work to do at night. Jason and I have been cooking dinner a lot and going out and seeing friends. On Wednesday, Jason's friend Eli stayed with us. We went out to sushi, at the best place ever, Sushi Rechavia, and then took a fun walk downtown. Thursday, my friend Emily stayed with us. That night we went to dinner with some family friends of Jason's from Buffalo. After, Emily and I came home and had a girls night and watched a movie while Jason was out having a meeting over coffee with someone. Friday, Jason and I went to the Israel Museum to see the art exhibit of art from the past decade 1998-2008. Then we went over to Mamilla mall by the Jaffa Gate and I actually found a pair of jeans in my size in Israel, it was a miracle. However, these jeans are about a foot longer than I am tall so I have to find a tailor to shorten them. Friday night we went to Shira Chadasha and we were hoping that we would be able to get an invite to Shabbat dinner, but really annoyingly there was no one there who was inviting people for dinner. So we came home and made our own dinner. It actually turned out very delicious however, I got burned by the steam from the water heater half way through making dinner and it really hurt. This morning, Jason dragged my to synagogue at Yakar, a very nice minyan in Katamon where his friend Inbal was having a kiddush because she is getting married this week. After that we had been invited by Yaeli, who is a Brandeis grad who is visiting for a little at her brother's, to come for Shabbat lunch. It was a very yummy lunch and it was nice to hang out with some old friends. Then we came home and took a very long Shabbat nap. Now, we are about to go out to a bar with my roommates. It should be fun.

Thats all for now, keep tuning in for more updates.

Video Tour of Our Apartment!

2008-06-08T00:36:00.001+03:00

Non-Stop Apartment Adventures

2008-06-07T19:05:00.002+03:00

Hello to all my lovely readers out there.
So at 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday, Jason arrived at our new apartment, where I was already asleep waiting for him. I had to get out of bed and help carry his bags all the way up our 3 story flight of stairs. But, it was soooooooo great to finally have him here. Then after some good nights rest, we got up Wednesday morning to run some errands. We went to Home Center - essentially the Bed Bath and Beyond of Israel - and we bought a bunch of things for our apartment, even though it is fully furnished, the people who live here keep kosher and are vegetarians so we needed to go out and buy all the supplies to give ourselves some meat dishes to use. Then we came home and we both unpacked everything. Jason had brought me Mac and Cheese from the states so we made some as our first dinner. Then Jason took me on a walk to the Tayellet, which is only 15 minutes from our apartment. The Tayellet is a look-out spot where you can see all of Jerusalem, it was beautiful. One our walk home, we saw a porcupine running across the street with his spikes all out, he was a funny little bugger. By that point we were already exhausted so we just watched a movie and went to bed. Thursday morning we got up kind of early to go meet both my and Jason's boss from our jobs at school at his hotel in Israel, Jason and him talked for a while about what Jason is going to do next year, I think he actually might be able to figure it out soon, its a miracle!! After that we headed back up to the Kfar HaStudentim, there I had to pack up the last of my things from my room, mostly dishes, food, and books. I had to check out of my room and get a wireless router from a friend. We got back to our apartment kind of later in the afternoon on Thursday and had to get ready to leave for Tel Aviv, Thursday was Doron's birthday and he was having a big party which we obviously needed to attend. On our walk from the central bus station in Tel Aviv to the apartment where the party was at we walked past a Mitzvah Van filled with crazy chasidim blasting the Na Nach Nachman song and dancing in the middle of the street and on top of the van. When we finally arrived at Doron's friends apartment it looked as if we were in a sketchy run down area, but the apartment itself was absolutely gorgeous! It was a huge loft, with high ceilings,the floors were all original tile from 1920's and the walls were covered in vintage signs and objects, all the furniture was vintage too, it was amazing. The party itself was fun, Doron's family was there and we got to meet a lot of his friends, plus Jason and Doron finally met and I got to see Gillian. After the party Doron gave, me Jason and Gillian, the keys to his friends place in the center of downtown (very close to where we were) and we went to sleep at his friends place, which was also a pretty nice looking loft. Friday morning, Jason and I got up early to go to Nachlat Binyamin, the artisan's shuk and then out to Brunch with the Shenker's (my grandparents friends who are Israelis). We went to Max Brenner and had lots of chocolate, it was delicious, plus they liked Jason, which is good. In the afternoon we rushed back to Jerusalem to get ready for Shabbat. We had been invited to Jason's charedi cousins in Ramot so we had to be all showered and dressed to catch the last bus out there. His cousin were a very nice BT (ba'al tshuvah- meaning adopting the orthodox lifestyle) family that speak almost only English. They were pretty crazy but the food was good and they were very very nice to us and wanted to see us again. So because they are very orthodox and we Jews always like to keep up appearances, we told them that we were going to walk home, but instead once we got to a main road, we hopped in cab! Today being Shabbat we didn't do much expect play scrabble, Jason beat me.

Another crazy thing this week was trying to set up the wireless internet, it took us about two days of research and talking on the phone - which Jason mostly did in Hebrew, it was impressive- and we finally figured out how to get ourselves the internet, so yay!

So thats whats been going on, I will write soon, I start work tomorrow and we are still in the process of settling in.
A

Hmmmmmmmmm lets see: Mono, Finals, and Moving

2008-06-02T20:46:00.004+03:00

Ok, so I found out a few days after Jason left that I have some sort of Mono-like virus, meaning I get all the same symptoms: sore throat, enlarged spleen, ridiculous fatigue, and the list continues........ So because of this I have been too busy aka tired and lazy to anything for like 2 weeks, plus I am in finals this week with 2 tests and a paper due
so I will give a very brief update of my life:
May 18 - went to go see some theater in Old Jaffa organized by the Brandeis liaison Cheryl or Cher Bear as we like to call her. It was a blind deaf theater called Na Lagaat or Please Touch. The show was mostly people were both blind and deaf in some capacity and they helped each other to move around and they had people translating the sign language and a lot of it was done in silence, pretty much the coolest theater experience I have had in a while. Plus the show was themed around baking bread and they actually baked bread on stage which you could go and eat after the show was over.
May 20 - class field trip to Hazor, it was a very hot day but we learned a lot and it was pretty fun and interesting, but this was the day I realized I was actually sick, I got really out of breath from going up 4 flight of stairs.
Week of May 18 - 24 - mostly a normal week, class and the such
May 23 - was Lag B'Omer I was feeling to tired to go but people took buses up to Meron, the grave of Rabbi somethingorother where all the orthdoox and dance all night long. They said ti was pretty crazy, lots of bonfires.
Week May 25 -31 - last week of school, lots of studying for the Hebrew final.
May 30 - went do do Kabbalat Shabbat at the Kotel, me and Rach Horn did our own frummy reform service and it was fabulous and fun. Then we went to a huge dinner cooked by friends. Afterwards, a few people came to my place to play dutch blitz, and my friend Carly actually beat me, yay for inflicted my friends with the obsession with dutch blitz.
May 31 - evening, I tried to move all my huge luggage into my new apartment but, in the dramatic twist of all dramatic twists, the key did not work in the door. And then the downstairs neighbor (who's wife had just had a baby that day) came up to try to help and it still didn't help so I then I was stuck with 3 huge bags and nothing to do so they neighbor offered for me to keep my stuff at his place and come get in the morning when i got a locksmith. That evening i emailed the owners of my apartment and of course, they had forgotten to tell me about the trick to the door that u sometimes had to flip the lock or some hit, but anyways, then i had to call off the locksmith and get my luggage and move it. but in the end, I moved! Yay for the new apartment, and Elysa was there today and she approves, so I feel even better about it!
June 1 - JESNA (Jewish education class) final, long and ridiculous, but also easy because it was open book and open note. That night was Lilah Levan - Student's Day Celebration in Independence Park, went with the roommates, I saw a ton of good bands, including Hadag Nachash which was awesome!
TODAY June 2 - went to train with interns at Career Israel, looks like it should be very fulfilling and interesting and a good summer job. Went to dinner with a bunch of people who were leaving tonight. Now I will study for my exam tomorrow in my Archeology class.

Ok, gotta go study, buhbye

Kissinger, Bush, and Khazikstan , OH MY!

2008-05-17T00:02:00.003+03:00

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

2008-05-11T20:33:00.003+03:00

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?

2008-05-06T09:18:00.003+03:00

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!

Sad Panda for the end of break

2008-04-28T23:10:00.002+03:00

So lets see here, what have I done since Tuesday? Oh, Tuesday night me and Rachel horn (no relation) decided to be adventurous and head down to the bowling alley in Talpiyot. We had trouble figuring out which bus to take but eventually we got it. While on our way to a bus stop we ran into my parents walking down the street, it was a funny horn meeting horn moment. Then when we got to Talpiyot, we had to watch down a sketchy street to get t the bowling alley and there were all these arsim (Israeli for guido) guys everywhere and we decided that we had entered Israel's own personal New Jersey. The bowling alley was ironically enough filled with very cute yeshiva boys. Rachel and I tried really hard to get there attention but it didn't happen. Then we got ice cream and headed back towards center city, where we met up with two more friends and had some kosher for pesach wine at a bar. We sat around Ben Yehuda for a while just chilling and then headed home. The next day, I went to the mall with Lindsay, we were mostly unsuccessful in buying anything but I did get a cute dress. We had yummy lunch at like 4 in the afternoon and then came home. After catching up with my parents, I met with two of my friends and we bought two bottles of wine and sat on a bench and drank in the nice spring air, it was very funny! Thursday I sat around most of the day doing nothing and then went to look at apartments, they were awful, but after that I went out to great dinner at Caffit with the parents and then met up with some friends to go to this cool light and video show on the sides of the wall of the Jaffa Gate, it was all about the 40 years of the reunification of Jerusalem. It was so cool and it was all in Hebrew and I think I understood most of it. Friday, I took my parents up to Tel Aviv to Nachlat Benyamin where they proceeded to buy lots of jewelery and art not only for themselves but for me too, everything we got was so pretty! Then we came back to Jerusalem and I went to a salon right by my parents apartment and got my haircut.(It was a great haircut even though its shorter than I wanted) After that I took my parents to Kol Haneshama the reform congregation here, where they ran into some people they knew and I saw tons of people I knew. Then we went out for some AMAZING seafood! I got it all over my dress!
Saturday was another sit at home all day and relax day because that night I got together with some friends and we celebrated the end of passover with pizza and beer (although I didn't drink the beer because I don't drink beer) But it was fun nonetheless. The next day was Sunday, back to class, but before class I went for waffles and coffee, a good way to once again celebrate the ability to eat bread again. So thats all for now, just getting back into the swing of things for one more month of school.

XOXO,
Adra

Greece ---> Dead Sea ---> Tel Aviv ---> J'lem

2008-04-22T18:29:00.003+03:00

Finally, the last leg of my ridiculously busy break.
After my beautiful vacation, I knew I needed some time to relax and fortunately for me, my parents had decided to surprise me with a two day vacation at a Dead Sea spa. So at after having 4 hours of sleep from arriving home from the airport my parents picked me up in their rental car and we headed down south. The drive was pretty and my parents told me all about their week trip in the north of Israel and I told them about Greece, we stopped at a Ahava outlet and I bought some stuff, and then we arrived at our hotel. Because they are so wonderful, my parents had booked reservation at a really really nice hotel. But when we got there they could not find our reservation and we eventually found out that the reservation line had made us wrong reservation at a different hotel. Then I had to go around from hotel to hotel with my mom trying to find us a hotel room, eventually the first really nice place gave us a room for the price my parents had originally reserved and all was well. The funniest thing about this hotel was the nice bell boy, named Roni, who outwardly flirted and hit on me in front of my parents, it was ridiculous. My parents mocked me about it the rest of the vacation. Also, because the airport had lost my bags, I needed to buy some clothes (mostly a bathing suit and underwear) in order to enjoy this vacation, so we went to the little strip mall and i bought a bathing suit with then proceed to completely fall apart within the two days we were there. Finally, we made it out to the pool but the sun was already setting so we got dressed and went out for dinner. After dinner, I got the most delicious ice cream and we walked along the beach, there were tons of people in tents all along the beach, setting up to camp out for the pesach holiday. The next morning, the number of tents had tripled and the beach was stuffed full of people. We spent the entire next day sitting by the pool, we also ventured into the actual dead sea, which surprisingly enough did not burn at all, also my parents got a massage while i was treated to both a manicure and pedicure, my parents are so nice to me sometimes. Then we had shabbat dinner at the hotel, which had already switched over to kosher for passover but the food wasn't half bad. That night I taught my parents how to play Dutch Blitz and they weren't even too bad at it. The next day, Saturday, we laid by the pool so more before pile into the car again to head up north to Tel Aviv for the Passover Seder that night at the Shenkers. The seder was very secular and we skipped around sang a few songs and then started dinner. After we had desert I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in my clothes. The next day the Shenkers took us on a driving tour of the area where they grew up. They are both sabras, born in Israel, and I learned a lot about life in Israel before its independence. and finally, we drove back home to Jerusalem. I put my 3 loads of laundry in and settled down for a quiet and uneventful night at home. However, I had no food and furthermore, any of the food I did have was not kosher for passover. So around dinner time I headed over to my parents apartment to have dinner with them and their 4 next door neighbors. The neighbors are 4 widowed women from Florida who were also renting for a month. They were very funny. After dinner, my parents and I got a kosher for passover cheesecake and it was yummy. I slept over at their apartment and the next day we went to return their rental car and to see the old city. The Jewish quarter was hopping, with music and performances going on everywhere. That afternoon I headed to the shuk with my friend emily, the shuk was great, half the shops were closed and there was almost no one there shopping so we got what we needed quickly. Today, I went to Yad Vshem with my parents, it was actually a nice experience to do that with them.

Now you have it all caught up to date,

Love love,
A

Hey - where is my bag??

2008-04-20T23:09:00.004+03:00

Athens - after 5 hours of ferry riding, we made it back to our same hostel from our first night in Athens and decided to head off to see the National Garden and the changing of the guard at the Parliament. The changing of the guard was funny for a few reasons, first, we were there on the day when they were training the new guys, so they had an army commander there watching and then even correcting the new guards. Also, standing next to us was two boys dressed in full on yeshiva dress (white button up with black pants, black yarmilke and tzitzit) they were speaking in english too. And the guard themselves and this whole crazy traditional movement was so funny. They had one funny outfits, with tights and skirts and also they had shoes with huge puff balls on them. Then they would move by lifting one leg, kicking it out in front of them and then shuffling behind them and then stomping their foot, they looked like tap dancers. Then, after watching this most ridiculous dance, we headed to go out to dinner with Deanna and Brett in Plaka, the cosmopolitan area of Athens. After our dinner we got great gelato. The next day we woke up and headed straight for the Acropolis, we bought a student pass which gives you entrance tickets to 8 different sites around Athens.**GROSS STORY alert - so that morning I had woken up and my nose stud was missing and I could not find it, now nose piercings are much different than ear piercings and at any time will close up within 24 if there is no stud in. So I was in big trouble here if I did not find a new nose stud, luckily the Athens flea market sold a ton of them, which I had seen the day before, however, unfortunately, we had a busy day at the Acropolis and could not make it to the market in the late afternoon, when I went to put in a new stud, I would not go all the way in, so the guy in the store gave me a regular earing and I bent it and essentially had to partially re-pierce my nose. My nose hurt all the rest of the day and for a few day afterwards as well but thankfully, as is well now. GROSS Story over** So, we walked up the Acropolis, which is the name of the area not the buildings, and saw the Parthenon and other temple ruins. On our way up to the Acropolis, we were followed by a stray dog (they have tons of these in Greece) and this dog literally followed and lead us around the entire Acropolis, so we figured he was our guide dog and we named him Hercules, obliviously.Then we went down and saw the Theater of Dionysis, which I learned about in a theater class of mine. Then we walked by this huge rock which had stairs to climb up it, and of course I wanted to go climb up to see the view and for the fun of climbing, but no one else did and tired of not doing fun and adventuresome things I climbed up all by my self and took some pictures. We continued on to see the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, Temple of Zeus, and the Olympic Stadium. I took tons of gorgeous photos. After our long day of sightseeing, we went back to our hostel to pack up all of our stuff, then we hung around all afternoon in Victoria Square, a nice area full of cafes, waiting until it was a good time to have dinner. Aaron and Alyssa met up with us again and we ended up having dinner at the same restaurant where we had dinner our first night in Athens and we thankfully grabbed our bags and went to the airport to head home. Our flight was at 2 am so we had a while to wait. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, once we made it back to Israel safely, my bags never came out of the baggage claim, so I had to put in a missing bag report and go home empty handed. My parents had let me know that day that we were taking a trip to the Dead Sea before Pesach (passover) so once I got home from the airport, I had 4 hours to sleep.

To hear about my relaxing Dead Sea vacation, please keep reading!!

Whats in a sperm? - Ask him!

2008-04-20T22:27:00.004+03:00

Naxos - after getting up in a hurry, we made it on time to our 7am ferry from Santorini to Naxos. We got to Naxos and were settled in our completely empty hostel by 10 am. Our hostel was run by a very cute and awkward Greek woman, the hostel was very nice, we had a 2 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and common room and another room for the 6 of us, and we were the only guests in the entire hostel. Our hostel was located in the main port town of Naxos, it was supposedly near the beach, however, the next day when we went to the beach it wasn't cleaned for the tourist season yet and had garbage and stuff on it. So anyways, we got there on a sunday and took a walk around the main town, mostly things were closed, but we found a nice bakery where we got a traditrional cream filled powdered sugar covered pastry called a "bogasta". Then we walked around the town some more, down the main row of restuarants right along the water at the port and then we walked up to see the ruins of Apollo's temple which lay on a hill next to the port. Then we headed over to the beach, which as i said before we found in a state of disarray so we headed back to the hostel to take a nap, we had had a long morning. We ended up napping for something like 3-4 hours and then we got ready and headed out to go for dinner. We had great great Italian food, pizza and salad, at a place called Susana's. Then on our way home from dinner, we ran into Becky's friends from camp again, the same people we had seen on the road in Santorini, together we all went back to our hostel and sat around drinking our wine and vodka and playing UNO. The next morning we went out for pastries with those same friends and then took a million years deciding what to do but eventually decided to try going to a different beach, suggest by a local. This second beach was much further away, but was a bit nicer, we laid out for awhile before retuning to the port to meet our friend's Aaron and Alyssa as their ferry came to port. That night, we went to dinner with them and then had amazing desert at one of the cute desert bars along the port. We had a hilarious half hour photo shoot and then walked over to a bar because Aaron wanted a drink, on the menu were all these crazy drinks with name's like "impatient virgin" and "sperm". So we asked on of the waiters who spoke english "What's in a sperm" and he replied "Ask him" (referring to Aaron being the only man among 7 woman, which he was constantly being complimented on everywhere we went to dinner. Speaking of dinners, did I mention that almost every dinner we had we were offered free wine by the restaurant owners standing out front, it was ridiculous.) Then the next morning we again boarded a ferry to head back to Athens!

To hear about the last leg of my trip, see my next post!
PS- pictures soon to come, however, there are almost 300 of them so it might take a while!

Why I love ATVs

2008-04-20T17:00:00.002+03:00

So, it has been a whirlwind this past week, wow! Last Wednesday night, before leaving for Greece, I went out to dinner with my parents, my cousin Anna, and her mom. It was so nice to see my cousin, she is abroad in Spain and came to Israel to visit her twin brother who lives in an orthodox yeshiva somewhere. Then after dinner, I went home to get to bed early because I was leaving for Greece at 3 am. So then we took a sherut to the airport and got on out flight to Athens, Greece. We spent our first day in Athens at the Archaeological Museum and then did dinner with some other Hebrew U friends of that were also in Athens. We stayed at Hostel Aphrodite, which had a room of 4 bunk bed so we had two cute Australian girls as our roommates. The next morning we got up early to catch a 7 hour ferry to the island of Santorini (where Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed) there was a totally obnoxious group of Greek teenagers on our boat. They had whistles and bullhorns - they were so loud and made so much noise at 7 am, but after a while it became hilarious to watch their crazy antics, like when they played truth or dare with the old people sitting on our deck. The only reason we got stuck sitting on the deck with these high schoolers was because both Ilana and I had trouble getting all 3 of our ferry tickets, for both of us they could only find two. (we both actually didn't even end up getting our third tickets until we got to the other islands we were traveling to.) So the boat ride was very long and tiring, but had amazing views of all the Greek islands and we eventually made it to our first island adventure, Santorini!
Santorini - so we got picked up at the port by our hostel people, and got driven to the cutest hostel, it had a nice little pool and the owner, her name was Poppy, was so cute and funny. They gave us a yummy glass of wine and lots of advice about what to do in Santorini. That evening (we arrived in late afternoon) we met up with one of the girl's I was traveling with friend from home who was studying abroad in Spain and we headed up to the town of Oia/Ia. Ia is where they actually filmed the movie, when you think of Santorini in general, this is what they pictures are of. It is all the white houses with blue roofs and many different colored little houses all down the side of the cliffs. You can ride through it on a donkey if you want, we didnt have the time/want/money to do that tho. We took so many gorgeous photos and we tried to watch the sunset but it was very overcast out, then we sat down to another traditional Greek dinner. The next morning we got up and rented ATV's, which is a huge thing in the tourist industry of Greece. And because Santorini is such a small island, you can ride around the whole thing in back and froth a few times in one day. We rode out to the black beach, Santorini is located next to a volcano so it has all these different colored lava beaches. We had another traditional Greek lunch and then laid out for a while on the beach. Interesting fact - similarly to Israel, Greece has a huge popular of loose animals roaming around but instead of cats, in Greece its dogs! So as we were sleeping on the beach this huge dog came up to me and starting licking my feet, I freaked out and jumped up and my bathing suit almost fell down it was so gross and unexpected! Then we rode around the island some more and ran into some of Becky's friends from camp who were also spring breaking it in Greece, they are studying in Tel Aviv this semester. Then we headed back to the hostel to change for dinner. We went into town to turn our ATVs back in and then we met 4 more of our friends from Hebrew U for dinner overlooking the volcano with a great view! We also had amazing desert at this cute little cafe. Then we went back the hostel because we had to be at 6 am to catch our next ferry to Naxos. However, in the morning we woke up at 6:09 and had to be ready to go at 6:15, it was a huge crazy mess but we made it on time and everything was O.K.

To continue hearing about my Greek adventures see the next post!
Adra

but at least i was actually able to fix it!

2008-04-20T16:58:00.000+03:00

Monday March 31, 2008

did somebody say midterms? - (does that mean working?)

Hi all, its been another week here in Jerusalem. Last monday I went to to dinner with Jacob Merlin (Brandeis grad in Israel studying) and we went to Tal bagels [I can't wait to go there and sit with computers in the back doing work, just like someone I know], it was so nice to see someone from home that I was actually friends with before I came to Israel, we had a good time catching up and now we are going to see each other more often. And on my way home I ran into to Eli/George/Getzel Davis also another Brandeis graduate. The rest of the week has been a bit of a blurr. I had two test/quiz things in Hebrew last week, both were OK. Rotem's computer died, like really died, she has to get a whole new one, so that was kind of a bummer seeing as we all sit around and watch TV on her computer every day but it's getting fixed soon so we are all right. Thursday night was Rachel Horn's birthday outing, and a bunch of Brandeis people from Israel and people studying in Europe came in to celebrate with her. We started out with a big party at her suite and then a group of us, mostly Brandeis kids and Rachel's roommates went out drinking and dancing, it was so much fun, we were out until 3 am - which was actually 4 am because it was day light savings time day. Gillian stayed on my floor and then in the AM we got up at 6 am to go catch buses, Gillian was going back to Haifa and I was supposed to head to Eilat with some girlfriends. We had no idea that you had to buy bus tickets beforehand, on most buses in Israel you just get on and buy a ticket then, so we got screwed and couldn't get on the bus, the next bus to Eilat was much later and it would have been a waste of a 4 hour bus ride just to go to Eilat for less than 24 hours, so we decided to stay home. I spent most of the weekend sleeping off my crazy party night Thursday but also I watched tons of episode of Sex and the City and began to study for my two midterms which are both on Wednesday of this week. The Saturday night I went out with Rotem and Rachel because we had to cheer Rotem up after her sad computer situation. We took some ridiculous pictures, I will put them up soon. And now I am working on studying for my tests, I have lots of stuff to memorize. So that is all for now, nothing much else to discuss, just working on studying, finding an apartment for the summer or a job, and trying to remember to have fun!

xoxo,
Adra

Had to fix my blog!

2008-04-20T16:57:00.000+03:00

Wednesday April 9, 2008

Busy Busy Busy

Crazy crazy past week and half.
Last week, I had two midterms on one day, both Halacha and Archeology. For halacha I had to write two essays in one class period and for Archeology I had to define 4 artifacts. (I have now gotten both of these tests and of course, as assumed, I did well, which is great because I haven't really been working that hard) Thursday afternoon, I went to lunch/dinner with a few friends at Bet Ticho, the food was great and hilariously a bee flew into my lemonade and so we covered the cup and the bee eventually drowned and we watched it, it was both cruel and hilarious. Then Thursday night I hung out with some friends, and it was just nice to sit around and chat. Friday morning, I left to go on a shabbaton with the conservative movement that my friend was in charge of. We drove up north towards the Galil and stopped at a Druze village on the way there. It was very cool, there was great food and GREAT shopping! Then we continued to Kibbutz Hannaton which is next to Nazareth. Its a tiny kibbutz but they have a guest house where we stayed, they had a dairy on the kibbutz and on shabbat afternoon we got to see the cows!! Also, during the weekend I taught a bunch of people how to play Dutch Blitz and now my friends are obsessed with it too! Also, the Kibbutz had a pool that we got to swim in, it was a really nice weekend. Right before I left for the shabbaton, I found the my parents were arriving two days early for their visit because they could not use their credit card in Spain and were running out of money. So that means that now my parents are here. On Saturday night, I headed to the David's Citadel ( a really nice hotel where they stayed) to stay over the night and hang out with my parents. Then Sunday morning, after free breakfast buffet at the hotel, I brought my parents to my apartment and to school with me. We were learning about how to teach Israel in JESNA so it was very interesting for my parents. Then Monday my parents moved into their rental apartment on Shamai street. It is really a nice apartment. We went out for dinner that night at a non-kosher really delicious sushi place. Tuesday and Today (Wednesday) I have had my hebrew midterm which I studies a little bit for and I it actually wasn't as hard as i though and I could do OK on it.
Ok, so more craziness in my life is that I am running for Hillel board from abroad, which I think is tough. I am running for Communications Coordinator because I am really good at sending emails and organizing calendars and I think that it will be really good for the board and for the community, I cannot wait to work hard to make the community an even greater place. So if you are a Brandeis student, and any Brandeis student can vote, please vote for me from 12pm Sunday April 13th to 12pm Monday April 14th.

I am leaving for my spring break vacation in Greece at 3 am tomorrow morning. So I won't have internet or my Israel cell phone, so don't try to contact me, I won't be there.
It's going to be so much fun!

Much love,
Adra

the miracle of Purim that lasted 8 days........ wait whoops wrong holiday

2008-03-24T11:40:00.001+02:00

well well well..... man has it been a jammed packed week. So here in Jerusalem, not only was Purim 3 days long but it seemed to last a full week. The parties started Tuesday, our study abroad program had a party for us, it was nice, that day I had not yet bought a costume so I to spend the weekend on the beach. We went to wore my overalls and a beater and said I was a farmer. Then the real fun started on Thursday, I went with some other reform-os to HUC for megillah reading which was reform-tastic and actually kind of boring. Then we were rudely told to leave by some woman at HUC when we tired to go to the meal afterwards eventhough we had been invited. So we took a walk and went to dinner at a pasta place that was not kosher and me and zack both got pasta with shrimp and calamari and mussels, it was deliciously satisfying. Then we just walked around center city for a while and watched the craziness that was going on, there were haredei men playing music and dancing in kikar zion and then there was this purim bus with lights all over it going down the street, it was very funny.But I was dressed as a devil with red fishnets, horns, a tail, and a bowtie, I looked very funny! Afterwards, me and zack went to get some waffles at Bebette's, yummy!!! Friday morning, a bunch of my friends and I got a bus and headed down to Tel-Avivnachlat binyamin, the artisan's shuk and we got really yummy israeli breakfast, then we headed down to the beach where we sat all afternoon, it was so beautiful and the water was nice and cold, and there were so many cute little babies to watch playing. Friday night, the Shenker's (my grandparents good friends who live in Tsahalah) came to pick me up and I had shabbat dinner with them and stayed over at their house. Saturday morning they took me for brunch at a place on the tayelet (boardwalk) and we had bacon!! It was a traiftastic meal! (traif means non-kosher). Then I meet up with my friends again on the beach and we sat all day again, just us 3 girls, we had so much fun. Saturday night we came to Jerusalem and I went out to dinner with my roommates and they introduced me to some of their friends, and they mostly spoke Hebrew the whole time so it was fun to try to follow what they were saying and participate in the conversation. Sunday was another fun day, we had no school because of the 3rd day of Purim, I went in the later morning to the Old city, it was easter and Purim, so we wanted to experience all the fanatics doing their thing, it was cool to see what was going on. Also, Aharon, one of Jason's friends invited me to come to his place for a Purim seudah (a festival meal, a big tradition on Purim), so I went. It was all of Aharon and his wife's friends who were 5-10 years older than me and had all made aliyah and been living in Israel for a few years now, I felt very out of place there, also on top of all they, everyone was orthodox, so that added to my discomfort level a little bit, but everyone was very nice and it was nice to be around some Americans that weren't the kids on my program. And now its back to school for a full week.

Check out all the ridiculous costume, Purim, and beach pictures on my web albums!

PS - the crazy colors and fonts are in honor of Purim funness
xoxoxo, Adra

a band that sings in english and chinese food?

2008-03-16T23:38:00.003+02:00

its been a packed full of fun past 24 hours so i figured out would just put out some words about it. last night, my roommate Rotem took me to the local dorm bar to see one of her favorite bands, missFlag. so i had never heard this band before so i was prepared for israeli rock music. well i was in for a surprise, not only did i really love the band, the music is like a mix between keane and maroon5, but the band sang all in English (as the title of the post lets on). Then, this morning two friends of mine from back in the day atOSRUI came down for Herzliya to do some errands in Jerusalem and they picked me up for a lunch date. it was really nice to see some more friends of mine here. then, even more fun, it was one of my friend's birthday yesterday so tonight we went out for dinner, and we went to a non-kosher Chinese restaurant right in the middle of downtown Jerusalem and the most surprising part of the evening was that the food was actually pretty good, i mean nothing compared to Golden Chef but it was tasty and it hit the stop. now i need to get back to studying for my hebrew quiz tomorrow, so many words to memorize, ahhh!

love love,
Adra

Camp Brandeis

2008-03-15T14:28:00.003+02:00

its been another great week in the holy land. Its starting to become spring in J'lem and new flowers and trees are just starting to bloom. The walk to school has now become full of vibrant colors and smells. This week had a ton of new and interesting experiences. I started my internship at the NFTY office in Jerusalem on Monday and Tuesday. I am working on birthright Israel itineraries. It is exactly up the alley of what I want to do in life. Also, this week, Wednesday night to Thursday, I took a day long trip up north with my friend Emily. Our mutual friend who has made aliyah was having a tekas masa cumta (the ceremony when a soldiers gets his first beret). We went up to Haifa the night before and 4 people stayed on the floor of my friend Harrison's dorm in Haifa, then the next morning a group of 6 of us headed up to ZichronYaakov to see the ceremony. There was a group of about 20 people there just to see our friend Josh, we were all Americans who had either made aliyah or where here studying. There ceremony was great and Josh was honored when his commander gave him his own beret (its a big big honor!) and then afterwards, Josh's Israeli host family made a picnic [hey boo boo, bring me a picnic basket!] lunch with food for all of us. It was also Josh's 21st birthday so we had cake and sang to him, it was nice. Then me and Emily got back on the bus to J'lem, where we got stuck in a ton of traffic. Thursday night a bunch of Brandeis students that are studying in Israel this semester arrived at Hebrew U. This weekend was the Brandeis Shabbaton. So Friday morning we went out on a day long hike in the Judean hills right outside Jerusalem, it was a nice day and beautiful hike. Then we spent Friday night having services and Shabbat dinner at a local synagogue. Today we had Shabbat lunch at Cheryl (the Brandeis liaison in Israel)'s house, the food was really good.

Thats all for now, more soon, and check for pictures soon.
xoxo,
A

Hiking in the desert

2008-03-08T22:27:00.002+02:00

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

having a cold in j-town

2008-03-01T20:09:00.002+02:00

so, its been a very long week this week. We started our real classes for the semester on Sunday, all of my classes haven been really great. I am taking 3 academic classes plus a Hebrew class 4 days a week. I have my Jewish education internship class, a class on halacha and its contemporary applications (which has a fantastic professor and seems as though it will be an amazing class) and a class on ancient archeology and how it relates to the bible, where we have this very strignent Israeli professor but the subject matter is very interesting. Other than class this week, there hasn't been too much going on. On Tuesday, I went to the cinemateque, not a movie theater, but a place that shows movies and has other events in J-lem, and I saw the movie "P.S - I love you" with my roommate Rachel, it was a really great movie, a big tear jerker. On Thursday I went into the Old City to pick up my Hadya necklace, this is a jewelery store where they inscribe verses onto a silver charm, mine has two very nice verses on it. One is from the liturgy of the morning service and in English means "G-d, the soul you have given to me is pure" and on the other side has a verse which correlates to my Hebrew name and it means "Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart." Also, after we picked up our necklaces, i got them with some friends, we walked down to the city center and did some window shopping. Thursday night was the Idan Raichel concert, which we came to find out was a Masa event, so everyone there was American's or other non-Israeli's who were spending a long period of time in Israel. The concert was absolutely fantastic and I had so much fun! However, this week kind of sucked because I started to get sick on Wednesday and have been feeling pretty yucky since then. I haven't been going out at night and I have been spending alot of time sleeping. And because of this cold, I was not able to go and visit the Shenker's this weekend. So instead Friday night we went to Kol Haneshama, the reform synagogue in Jerusalem, the service was alright, but the funny part was that I ran into the Klein-Katz's, a couple who used to work at OSRUI. After services me and my friends went out to dinner at a non-kosher place, hahaha, it was fun. Today me and two girlfriends went to the Israel Museum to seethe stolen art exhibit, it was really interesting, it was about all the art that the Nazi's stole from people. We also saw the shrine of the book, which houses the dead sea scrolls, it was a really fun way to spend shabbat.

a weekend in herzliya or should i say heaven

2008-02-24T20:08:00.003+02:00

What a great weekend! I went to go visit Doron. It was so nice to be able to spend some time with him and hang out. So Thursday night, I got on the number 28 bus to the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem, which despite being packed full of pushy and rude Israeli's it was a very nice bus station. I waited in a very long and eventually boarded a bus to Tel-Aviv. We got dropped off at the Tel-Aviv Central Bus Station, which is the complete 100% opposite from the Jerusalem one, it was dirty, disgusting, creepy, and full of very very weird people. But I found the right bus and go on the bus for Herzliya, once I got there, Doron and his sister picked me up and drove me back to their house. Now, this is not just some ordinary house, this a gorgeous two story house with like 6 bedrooms and a huge kitchen and a huge living and the wall were covered in original artwork. It was absolutely breathtaking on the inside, and the funny thing is, from the outside it just look like a normal house, because like most neighborhoods in Israel people care more about their privacy than showing off their homes so most houses are surrounded by really tall fences that are actually very ugly, but once on the inside you get to see how nice the houses really are. Now one important piece of information is that Doron's mom is Yemenite and thus makes the most delicious food in the world and when I got there Thursday night, Doron, his parents, and his two sisters and I sat down for a delicious dinner of falafel and humus, it wasn't just any falafel and humus it was homemade and it was the best I had ever had. Then Doron took me out on the town in Tel-Aviv, well actually he brought me to his favorite gay club, and it was sooooo ridiculous. So we all know I am a very open and accepting person but I was definitely uncomfortable in this club, there was just too much drunken kissing and grabbing going on, so after a few drinks, we went home to get some rest.
Friday we spent the whole day in the downtown shopping area of Tel-Aviv, Shuk HaCarmel and Nachlat Benjamin, we actually ended up not buying anything except food, which I must say was a huge surprise for the two of us, but it was just a really fun day. Then we went home for Shabbat dinner, once again cooked up Yemenite style by Doron's mom, it was really yummy and spicy and we didn't have challah, we had this really yummy pita instead. That night we spent the entire evening watching episodes and Sex and City together, it was such an us thing to do.
Saturday, we went down to the ruins of a old crusader fortress on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea called Apollania and then we walked along the beach for like three hours, the ruins were interesting and the views from the cliffslooking down on the water were amazing and then I got a great tan just from walking along the beach all day. Doron found like 6 jellyfish (check out the picture there on the right) and he kept picking them up to freak me out, I thought they were going to sting him. After the beach we got ice cream and headed to a cafe were we sat and played on my computer for a while, I felt so Israeli!
Then I sadly had to say goodbye and head back to Jerusalem and this time I wasn't freaked out the whole way which made it much better. Once back in the dorm, I got a call that some friends were heading out to pre-game and then head to the bars, so I got dressed and went out for the night, it actually ended up being really fun and chilling just dancing and drinking in one bar and then we came home. Today I didn't have class until 2:30 pm and I was my first class of the whole semester (whoo hoo) and it was my Jewish education internship class. The teacher is very nice and most of the material we are using in the class I have either used before in a class at B'deis or used on my Jewish camping research paper that I wrote last semester so the material is going to be pretty easy, plus later this week I am going to find out about my internship, which should be really fun!
For anyone who does not know, this is Doron, he was part of the Israeli delegation that worked at OSRUI this summer, he was assigned to Mosh and so we became very close friends over the summer, he is a great guy!
Secondly, this is just a really ridiculous picture of me, just wanted to bring home the fact that I am just crazy!

Much love to everyone, i'll be writing again soon!

Adra

ps- i miss you, rubber duckie

Ulpan is O-V-E-R

2008-02-21T14:50:00.002+02:00

just a short update:
This week was nice, we had a snow day off from school on Tuesday and that night I went out to dinner on Emek Refaim with some friends and it was really nice and relaxing.
Today was our "big final" in ulpan. It was a five page test, that we all finished within an hour. So easy. Also today we went to the travel agent and booked our tickets to fly to Greece the first week of our spring break, right before passover, we got out tickets for pretty cheap and we are going for 8 days! Now, I am doing laundry and getting ready to head to Herzliya to stay with Doron for the weekend, so excited!

Thats all,
adra

Well, they say that it's going to snow AGAIN!

2008-02-18T10:57:00.003+02:00

SOOOooo...... it has been quite a busy and interesting week. so after last Monday nights absurdity it decided not to have such a crazy week. Tuesday was just a day, and Wednesday I joined the gym, which is such a nice gym, and some of the Rothberg girls who do this crazy work out invited me to work out with them, it was real intense but it was awesome! Then Thursday was Valentine's day, nothing exciting there during the day, but in the evening me and three friends went out to dinner. So we had chosen this restaurant out of a guide book we had but when we got there is was booked up, so our cab driven suggest we go to this really go place he knows so being as adventurous as we were we said sure. So this crazy cabbie drove us all the way to the Mount of Olives into this neighborhood where all the signs were only in Arabic and to this restaurant in the middle of a cave. We were the only people in the restaurant and it took the 4 guys working there like 20 minutes before they even gave up menus. However, the whole night didn't turn out bad, the food was pretty good and we had ourselves a crazy adventure with a crazy Israeli cab driver. Friday morning, i had to wake up at 5 am to get going for our weekend trip to Mitzpeh Ramon [ a very small city in the desert that sits on the edge of what they call a crater, which is really just an ancient collapsed mountain range, see the picture to understand better]. So we drove for many hours in a bus and stopped a couple of times on the way to do some small walks and to see some of the sights in the desert like Ben Gurion's grave at Sde Boker or the ruins at Ein Ovedat. We were supposed to have done a big hike but because of the rain a few days earlier there was a flash flood warning and we couldn't hike. So we spent Shabbat at the same hostel in Mitzpeh Ramon that I spent my first Shabbat on my birthright trip. All of the Rothberg kids bought cheap wine and alcohol from the store down the street and everyone was really tipsy, it was hilarious. The next morning a few of us woke up early to go watch the sunrise over the crater, it was beautiful!, Take a look at this panoramic photo of it!
Saturday we took a walk around the crater's edge and then got to go play archery golf in the desert [i was awful at it]. Then we drove home from our crazy desert weekend vacation. Yesterday was Ulpan like normal and afterwards, me and some friends went into the Old City to go buy scarves, tapestries, and skirts. We were mightily successful and then we walked from the Old City to Machne Yehuda [the shuk] and did some food shopping. It was really a fun afternoon! So now we have made it all the way to this moment, things are going great, I just recently got in contact with someone from NFTY to try to set up my internship for this semester and Ulpan is ending on Thursday! I'm really excited for classes to start up on Sunday and I am going to visit Doron this weekend, which should be amazing fun. Oh, btw, lots of pretty desert pictures, so just check out my photos website.

I hope everything is going well at home, please people, email me if you want to talk, i would love to stay in contact with the human race outside of this country!

kisses and hugs,
Adra

ps- i'm duck, bo bo bo bo, =)

American Bluegrass in Israel

2008-02-12T12:44:00.001+02:00

Alrighty, here goes the past few days:
Friday as in 2/8, we had Ulpan! which sucked but we had to have a make-up day because of the snow, we had a test, which I got back already and didn't do too poorly on so that is really good. Friday night was the fun part of the day, my roommate Rachel invited me to her house for dinner, she lives in Gilo, which is the southern most part of the "suburbs" of Jerusalem, it was a very pretty little city on a hill overlooking all of Jerusalem. So before dinner, Rachel informed her parents not to speak to me in English, so the entire night was spoken in Hebrew, and they carried as if I were Israeli and knew exactly what they were saying, I think I missed about 50% of all the conversation but it was an interesting experience anyways. The food was really good too, Rachel's dad was a great cook.
Saturday was also an amazingly fun day, as are most days here in J'lem. I woke up really late and then Zack (yes Barr of brandeis fame) and I took a 2 hour walk all around french hill and then we ended up at this gorgeous park right on the hill of our campus that has all these beautiful winding paths all along the side of the hill and it over looks the Old City and most of J-town. [this is a photo of the view, it was a foggy day and still amazing] Then me and Zack stopped for coffee at Aroma on the way home, just because we love coffee so much, and it was like a children zoo there, and all these really adorable little girls were running around and speaking in Hebrew and it was just one the cutest moments. Later, Saturday evening, I went out with girlfriends to that same Israeli dance class that I went to last week, except this week there were tons more people and the guy taught alot less dances so we were sooooo confused but it was still fun. And this time the class was at the YMCA on King David so we were only a few blocks walk away from Yaffo so we started to walk that way, well we passed this one really sketchy store selling all those touristy goodies and one of my friends wanted to go in, so then we waited for a whole half hour while she bargained with these crazy Israeli guys and ended paying way too much anyways. Once we got on Yaffo, I met up with some other friends and we went to a bar called Yankee's bar (haha) which surprisingly had no Americans in it and didn't play American music. From there we headed to the Underground which was a dance club and had a great time, all the single girls found these disgusting arsim (Hebrew word for Guido, kind of) to go dance with and then us attached girls just danced around with each other and were crazy, it was for sure a top night. [This is a picture of me and two of my friends at that crazy dance club.]

Sunday began with Ulpan as usual, nothing new to report there, then after Ulpan we took a trip to this place called Eretz Bereshit or Genesis Land, where this cute Israeli guy wore a funny looking costume and told us that if we rode his camels we would get taken back in time to meet our forefather Abraham; and so we did ride the magical gamalim (camels) of time travel and we did meet Abraham who happened to be Australian, did you know that Abraham was Australian? and we ate food in his tent. It was a cute trip and we all had alot of fun riding the gamalim. But there was one particular hilarious moment amongst the camel riding, so there was this one baby gamal that was walking alongside its mama gamal and we went down this one hill and the baby gamal was too scared to go down it so it got stuck at the top so one of the camel guides picked up the baby gamal and carried him down the hill, all the while the little gamal was screaming and it sounded just like E.T but it was so funny and yet also really sad.
So now we have reached Monday, oh man, was it a fun Monday, so as all other Mondays begin I had Ulpan, blah, but then when I got home from Ulpan, Doron (from the mishlachat [Israeli group] at my camp this summer) called to say that he was coming to visit me, so then Doron came over and we spent a few hours just hanging out in my room talking like two little girls becuase that how we do. Then Doron went to meet some friends in the city and I went out to dinner with my friend Leah, we went to this really good Italian place called Luigi's (right off of Shamai, fyi Mom and Dad) and then proceeded to try and find this club called Constantine where this Bluegrass band made up of American who had made aliyah were playing. After much walking, we meet up with my roommates Rotem and Rachel and when to the club, it was a great club and the band was pretty awesome, bluegrass is actually really great music, and at the club I ran into two people who used to go to Brandeis so that was really nice too. After the bluegrass we went over to this bar called Layla Bar were they have something called Glory Mondays, where u only ave to play 25NIS to get in and for one drink, plus this bar has recruited like 4 Rothberg students to promote the bar, so EVERYONE was there, it was crazy crowded. Even, my friend Mark from camp and Brandeis who is Tel Aviv this semester was there, so I stayed for a while but it was too crowded to actually be fun so we came home. And here we are at today, I woke up today really tired and in no mood to go to Ulpan becuase one of my Ulpan teachers is a huge bitch, so I stayed home, I ended sleeping until noon so I guess it was a much needed break from Ulpan. I just made pancakes, which was fun, but they don;t taste as good as home here. Ok, i guess that is all for now, but check back soon, i'm sure there will be some more unexpected adventures and crazy times.

xoxo, harbah ahavah [much love]
Adra

PS - jbl, i miss you <3

Getting settled.

2008-02-08T00:26:00.001+02:00

So it has been a very fun and exciting past week here in J-town. Lots and lots of hours of Ulpan, which is tough, like really tough, but I am learning a lot so it's good too. But outside of school I've been lots of fun stuff too. So on Monday night, Rotem, Rachel (my roommates) and I went out to dinner and to a bar. We had burgers at this place called Evo which is soooooooo much better than burgers bar! and then we went to this bar called the Blue Hole on Hillel and I got this drink called "deep intoxication" it was essentially alcoholic hot chocolate, it was great! Tuesday after Ulpan I went with my friend Sarah to the shuk at Machane yehuda and we bought lots of chocolate and gummy candies as well as some much needed produce, then we headed down to Emek Refa'im where we went to an Israeli dance class. But we had the wrong address for the building for this dance class so we sketchily walked around for an hour before we found this school gym where the lesson was held and since we spent an hour finding the place we had missed the beginner lesson and the dance teacher just laughed at us the whole time as we tried to learn all the really difficult dance that he taught. BUT it was soooooooooooooooo much fun! me and sarah want to go back every week, I love Israeli dancing! After dancing we went out to dinner with some other people who came to meet us on Emek Refa'im and I got this amazing pasta with mushrooms and dates, we got back ot school at like 11:30 at night, that was a really long day!
So then Wednesday after Ulpan, a few of us spur of the moment decided that it would be awesome to go into the OLD City to the Christian Quarter on Ash Wednesday. So we walked down the entire Via Dolarosa which was a very cool experience, but we had a really interesting encounter at station number 1.

There was this Armenian guy who told us that he would show us a great view of the Dome of the Rock for free (see gorgeous picture), so he walked to what i think they call the Turkish porch or something like that and then we was being all creepy and talking to us and then we noticed that he pinky finger nail was like an inch tall and none of his other fingernails were long and one of my friends told me that was a way the people snort coke, so we nicely said by to the creepy guy and came back to school, but it was really really cool to see the Christian Quarter and learn about all the Jesus stuff.

Also, we passed by this really cool looking graffiti.

And now we are at today, Thursday. Today was a normal boring day except for the fact that I forgot to set my alarm and was woken up by Jason calling me and letting me know it was 8am (by the way - thanks so much J!), so I rushed out of the dorm and was still a little late for Ulpan. Other than that I have a big grammar test tomorrow so I spent the afternoon and evening studying and working on stuff. So cool news: I think I am going to start planning a trip to Turkey with some friends, also maybe a trip to Greece and me and Aynsley want to take a day trip to Caesarea sometime soon too, because there was a student activities sponsored trip today but we stupidly didn't go.

Additionally, here is a picture of me and some friends at the Kotel last week!

I hope everyone is having as much fun as I am having no matter where they are, can;t wait to get in touch, because spectacularly I got a working internet connection yesterday and will be online as much as possible from now on.

xoxo,
A

Picture Post

2008-02-07T17:19:00.001+02:00

This is the view out of my window, that is downtown Jerusalem
These are my roommates, Rachel and Rotem
This is my room, its pretty big.
This is a picture of the snow in Jerusalem that causes us to have two snow days last week, it was so beautiful!

A short update

2008-02-03T14:16:00.000+02:00

Hi, so I'm sitting in the cafe in the Rothberg building because I still don't have internet. Here's a quick recap of the last few days:
Thursday- Some girls held a Cocktail party where everyone dressed up and we drank, of course, and for some crazy reason I was totally smashed and beyond the room spinning drunk at midnight so I just went to bed, but it was a fun party while I was there.
Friday - Old City Tour and then we stayed in the Old City and went down to the Cardo to shop. Kab Shab we went to the Masorti shul down the road, it was alright. There was a dinner at the Regency hotel for Rothberg students, it was a buffet, pretty good too. I also stole a mug from the hotel because Zack was too much of pussy to steal one even though it was his idea.After dinner I watched "Wet Hot American Summer" with some people and it was very nice.
Saturday - laid around all day in my suite, Rachel (my roommate) sister Michal was visiting, she was very nice. The boys were out of the town so the three of us girls hung out and they made great lunch for us. That night I went out for dinner and then drinks and hooka downtown, I met some really great people and it was an all around fun night.
Sunday (today) - had to wake up for Ulpan, but we only had one hour of in class time today, for the rest of it they took us down to this archaeological dig place and we just hung out there playing in the mud for the rest of the day, not so bad.

I will certainly try to get internet today so that I don't have to drag my computer to school and so that I will be available and can post pictures.

They are closing the cafe so I have to go.

XOXO,
Adra

Twice a Snow Day!

2008-01-31T11:47:00.000+02:00

We had a snow day, that’s right, they cancelled school today due to around one inch of snow. So I got up really late and then was invited to talk a walk to the Old City with a group of very nice people. What a stupid idea! The snow here is a big mix of rain and snow, thus making the ground incredibly wet and cold. None of us have had any good snow gear. Every piece of clothing I had got completely soaked through and we only walked for like a half hour and didn’t get anywhere near close to the Old City before we hoped in a taxi and came back to school. It took me about a full hour to warm up after my freezing journey. My clothes is still sitting soaking in the common room. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing set and watching Sex and the City with a group of like 20 -30 people in these girl’s suite. This evening I went over to another friends suite and just hung out and drank a little. I was invited to go to Tel Aviv this weekend but I turned down the offer because I wanted to spend the weekend here because there is a trip to the Old City.

And now this morning I woke up to another text message letting me know school was cancelled again today due to the snow, looks like its going to be a really fun weekend!

Hugs and kisses, xoxo
Adra

PS- jbl I love you!

SNOW in Jerusalem

2008-01-29T21:45:00.000+02:00

Can you believe it, but, it is now snowing is Jerusalem?! So I just got back from going outside to play in the “snow” (and by snow I mean a very chilly mix of rain and a few snowflakes that makes the ground wet and will not accumulate and yet we may not have school tomorrow) Anyways, my crazy Israeli roommates were so excited about it, they kept running and talking pictures and saying things like “zeh magniv”. We took a bunch of cute pictures so I will post as soon as I can. In other news, the Rothberg (Hebrew University’s International school) informed us that we should go shopping before the snow so Rotem (my roommate) and I took a trip to the Mister Zol (Mister Cheap, supermarket). It was actually really good to go with her, she helped me to get a lot of yummy food that I would not have known to get without her and when we got home from the supermarket I cooked my own dinner. I made pasta with sauce and I made sauce the way Jason (I love you so much, baby!) always makes with some of my own ingredients :) ! Right now I am just finishing up my homework for the day in Ulpan. All my homework consists of grammar, which it turns out it easy for me (who knew?, but I’d like to publicly thank Marc Brettler for kicking my butt in Bib Heb and teaching me all this crazy grammar stuff). So Ulpan level gimmel is pretty easy for me when it comes to grammar but is a pretty difficult challenge when it comes to vocab, I miss about every 10^th word said by somebody in class and I am constantly asking the girl next to me what words mean, but I think I am going to start to make a sheet of new words that I learn everyday, I’m hoping that will help me, however this is a daunting task because I believe that between 5 hours of Ulpan class and 4 pages of homework I have probably learned over 100 new words today.
Anyways I should get back to the homework because when I am done Rotem and I are going to watch the movie of “Singing in the Rain” in Hebrew without subtitles, which should be a really interesting experience. (Thankfully Rotem also loves movies and musicals, I may have found my Israeli soul mate, heheJ) Speaking of musicals, as I went to choose music to play while doing homework I was drawn to Thoroughly Modern Millie and as I listened it reminded of what a great time we all had together last spring, so everyone in Mattress have so much fun, you don’t know how much I miss being in rehearsal and just being around theater people in general!

Please Please Please PLEASE feel free to email, facebook, or comment here, I want to talk to everyone but I just don’t have working internet yet.

B’ahavah,
Adra

First Day of Ulpan

2008-01-28T18:08:00.000+02:00

Shalom!
So today was the first day of ulpan, and I'm happy to say that it was actually a great day. I started of the day by buying myself a steady internet connection which may have been a little expensive but will totally be worth because the internet connection that i am stealing off of now kinda sucks. Then we walked to school, stopping, of course, for coffee on the way. I began the day in ulpan bet 3, which I figured would be a good fit if not maybe a little easy, well it turned out to be way too easy, so I got moved up to level gimmel (Jason, look how smart I am at hebrew!), which is a little difficult for me but i'm glad because i want a challenge so that I will learn alot more. I think i have some homework fo that but I missed most of the class due to the slowness of changing levels in the middle of the day. I also got to see alot of people today that I hadn't seen since the group flight and it was nice to reconnect and begin to make real friendships, everyone here so far seems to be such sweethearts and i really like everyone. Soon, I am going out to dinner with some kids who go to the Columbia/JTS program, they are really nice plus all of us can shabbat together which is great.

Oh, so if you didn't get the memo (J/K) I switched rooms yesterday because I could not stand my disgusting french roommates. So now I am living in a suite with 4 Israelis. Last night, I met all four of them. 2 boys and 2 girls. The girls are Rotem and Rachel and they are best friends, they are both really really over the top nice to me. they are very eccentric, in a good way and want to include me with everything tat they do. The boys are Eshai and Eli, Eshai speaks great english and is just a nice guy all around and Eli is just kind of crazy but in a very funny and nice way. The suite here is so clean and they share everything which is great for me because then I can learn to cook Israeli food and all that good stuff.

Ok I have get ready to go out to dinner. Please email me or call, I would love to talk,
Miss you all!!

Adra

First Shabbat in ISRAEL

2008-01-28T00:05:00.000+02:00

From Saturday January 26:

Well, Hi! Right now I am sitting in my room in my suite at the Student Village at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem. It really has been a whirlwind couple of days. I left Boston at 4 am on Wednesday Jan. 23 flew to New York to get on the flight to Israel, and I arrived in Israel at 6 am on Thursday Jan. 24. From the airport we had a full day. And what a day it was, we arrived at Hebrew University at around 8 am where we were told to make groups of 5 people to become our suite for the semester. So even though many months ago we all had sent in form to request housing, in the fashion of most things in Israeli, those forms did not matter and we had to create our own housing. So we sat, and we sat, and we sat (all of this by the way was outside in the courtyard, and it was not warm that day) and for 6 hours we sat around until we allowed to head down to the office where they gave us our housing. There we sat for another few hours because, we came to find out, there were not any open suites left and they had to split people up and move them into any open rooms that were left. So eventually at about 3 pm (now remember I had been up for over 24 hours at this point and hadn’t eaten anything since getting off the plane) my friend Rosie who I went to high school with and I were given two rooms in a suite that two French guys and one full year international girl from Connecticut already lived in. Now, don’t get me wrong, all three of them seem very nice, Allison is great and will be able to show us the ropes since she has been here so a while already but so far I have only seen her for a few minutes at a time. Now, Stephen and Hillel, well they seem nice and Stephen speaks pretty good English but the kitchen in this suite is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING and if you know how I am OCD about cleanliness you can understand how MUCH this bothers me. Also, Hillel hardly speaks English or Hebrew and I don’t speak French so that will be interesting. OK, so back to the kitchen, there are bags upon bags of garbage left out and not garbage can, dirty dishes everywhere, things just strewn about on the counters, the kitchen table is really dirty as it the stove. And I won’t even get into the fridge, it smells SO BAD like I want to puke when I open it and the freezer is worse. So since they took us to the mall on Thursday night and the market and Friday morning, I now have a bunch of food and cookware that are all staying in my room because I refuse to leave it out there with their stuff. But I did have to put my perishables in the fridge (OYE VEY) so I will need to find a way to get them to help me and Rosie clean up this place.

Ok, you ready for a new subject? The People here and it has been so far so good. I have been meeting a lot of people and trying to talk to everyone I can, and of course as it is in the Jewish world, everyone is playing the Jewish geography game and everyone knows someone that someone else knows, it’s hilarious. I have been spending a lot of time with Zach (if you’re a Brandeis person, I’m the one and only Zach Barr) and we are having a lot of fun together. I also have been spending a lot of time with this very cool girl named Anysley, who is a non-Jew here to study the conflict but she is so into everything Jewish I didn’t know she way a goy until she told me. After going to the shok in the morning, which was so much fun and really made me feel like I was here for real. Anysley and I and a few other girls who wanted to celebrate Shabbat headed down to Emek Rafaim last night to go to Friday services at Shira Chadasha (an egalitarian minyan with a mechitza that sings Carlebach melodies and the congregation is made up of almost entirely Americans) it was an awesome service and it was just like we do it at B’deis! And so Shabbat dinner last night, all the Brandeis kids were invited to this woman Cheryl’s house because 1) she lives really close and 2) she is the Israel study abroad liaison so she wanted to make sure everything was going good and give a us a free meal.

Oh yeah, by the way, did I mention that I have to cook for myself this semester! So I am assuming I will get used to knowing when I need to eat and I will soon be able to buy exactly what I want but because of the disgusting state of the kitchen and my own problems with reading the labels on food in the super market, I only have fruit and vegetables and some pasta to eat right now.

Alright, last couple of things to note:

I) It is raining right now in Jerusalem, which is cool because there has been a drought

b) I will not have internet in my room for about another two weeks but I will be bale to check my email and stuff on the computers in the International building. But if you want to call me, here is my Israeli number 0526136687

3) I have not yet finished unpacking because it has been so crazy but when I do I will post pictures of my room and suite and my really nice view.

Ok, much love to everyone and I miss you all so much, and I can’t wait till I have internet and can talk to you all.

Adra

PS- jbl <3>

2008-01-18T06:23:00.000+02:00

Well, I am sitting in my room in my house, exhausted from wrestling with my luggage for the past two hours, including much screaming at my mother and unpacking and repacking the bags many times over. One of my bags is almost more than 70 pounds and I cannot believe how much shit I packed into that bag. But i was able to get everything for the next 8 months in one duffel bag and my hiking backpack. I still have to figure out how to get my carry on bag to be smaller for the flight to Israel but right now I am just thinking about how excited i am to go back to Brandeis for the next 5 days, can't wait to see everybody.