Adios first semester

Well, today it is December 28th and I am officially done with my first semester of college!  Which is essentially my only college time until September 2011... weird.  But finally finally finally I am done with Ulpan, depressing Holocaust classes, boring Evolutionary Psych lectures (which I learned nothing in), and History of Art - which I hated because art makes no sense to me.  Granted I may have slack a bit too much in Hebrew U, I really enjoyed learning in another country and interacting with people from all over the world - I'm fa sho studying abroad in college (sorry Mom!).  Goodbye Hebrew University, goodbye Frank Sinatra cafeteria's incredible schnitzel, goodbye random art work that I learned about in Art History, goodbye #19 bus that I sit on for hours, and goodbye college.
Before I finished, however, I got to see Israel during Christmas, and no, it was not white.  A group of us had a great plan to leave at 11pm to walk to the Church of the Holy Seplecure (where Jesus was crucified and where the Last Supper occurred) for Midnight Mass.  Well, we got there and the doors were bolted shut... rumor has it they believe Jesus was born on January 6th?  So we roamed the Christian Quarter of the Old City, accidentally saw a Jews for Jesus church, then ended up out of the Old City at an English Church where we caught the end of mass.  Oddly enough, I ran into a few kids from home who are here on a trip!  Oh.. and I got to go to the Israel Museum for free and take pictures at the Ahava statue (Ahava means love).. you can see pictures at the bottom
Oh and I forgot my big weekend in Haifa (this is going to be a long paragraph):
So... Lauren, Amy, Ash, and I decided we wanted to take a trip up to the spiritual holy city of Tzfat and stay at a very Kabbalistic hostel that everyone goes to... the price per night goes down with how many classes you go to!) Well, it was completely booked for the weekend so we decided to go to Haifa [but Ash didn't end up coming :( ] and a winery!  Haifa is about 3 hours away and the winery was a little off the route so we woke up at 5:15am to catch a 6:30 bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to take a train to a town called Binyamina to take a taxi to a winery in the town of Zichron Yaakov.  We got there at 10am to find that the Tishbi winery doesn't do tours or wine tastings on Fridays but since we came all the way, they said they'd do a tasting for us over breakfast.  For 55 shekels (about 15 dollars) we got a HUGE breakfast and a wine tasting... it was awesome.  Then we cabbed it to the center of town where we walked around cute little shops and then we headed back, on another train to Haifa.  Seems like an amazing weekend, right?  Well we get to our hostel and the first thing we see is the "Port Inn" sign next to the Polish flag... next to all the Jesus figures in the hallway, clearly we're not in Jerusalem anymore.  After a little rooming issue, we finally got our own room and settled down for our relaxing weekend.  We knew a storm was coming so we knew we needed to get food for the weekend, and we wanted to see the famous Bahai Gardens of Haifa!  We used our maps and walked through the streets of Haifa, not seeing one synagogue... only Christmas trees and churches (we definitely were not in Jerusalem).  The gardens were beautiful and we got a lot of food, headed back to our hostel, ate, read our books, then went to bed... really really early (before 8).  Our 15 hours of sleep definitely paid off, don't worry.  After breakfast we all went back into bed, planning on staying there the whole day since it was storming like crazy, but at 11:00am, we get a knock on our door saying check out is in 5 minutes... they opted not to tell us that.  Great, buses on Saturday's don't start working until at least 5:30 and it was 11, we had no place to go and no means of getting anywhere.  Luckily the storm died down for a while so we were able to walk around, sit at a cafe, and figure out what we needed to do.  Basically the rest of the day we took a taxi to the top of Haifa (it's on a hill.. the bottom was where we were - not in the area we technically wanted to be - and the top is where everything else is.. including the top of the Bahai Gardens.  We finally got the see the view and then we walked around the city, well more like traversed the ENTIRE city on foot.. got stuck in the hail a bit, then got a taxi to the bus station.  I mean although it didn't go as planned, it was still pretty fun, but Friday was far better than Saturday :)
Now I have 1 1/2 days to pack up my ENTIRE room so I can move half of it into storage (waiting to go to Karmiel), a third of it into temporary storage for the things I'll need after winter break, and the other third on my back traveling to Europe with me.  I took all my pictures down Monday and my wall went from colorful and a montage of home, to bare white walls with little marks on them from where my puddy ripped off the paint.  As soon as I can be fully packed up, I'm leaving my 50-60 degree days and heading to below freezing in... PARIS AND ITALY!  Don't worry.. I'll be taking millions of pictures
Enjoy winter break; as soon as I get back.. ANDY'S IN ISRAEL and a ton of other friends :)

XO-Dana

Me, Lauren, & Amy

Lauren & the Port Inn

Bahai Gardens

Top of the Bahai Gardens 

Ahava statue

I guess I update this monthly..

So clearly I am not as good with this whole blog thing as I had anticipated.  So since November 3rd (my last post) much has happened here in Israel.  Right after Erev Nativ (last November), us NERUSYers on Nativ (and at college.. Adam) got a visit from our USY Youth Director, Joyce Juda!  On Friday, the 6 of us spend Shabbas dinner with Joyce and Ari (he also used to work for NERUSY but then made Aliyah!) and then took a midnight stroll to the Kotel!  I think it was then when it hit me that I am really in Israel for a whole 9 months.  It was awesome having Joyce here for so long, a home away from home.  That next weekend my KARMIEL Group (not Be'er Sheva anymore.. I'll get to that a little later), went 3 hours North of Jerusalem to Ma'alot for a home hospitality weekend in the neighborhood that our assistant director, Elkana, is from.  Ma'alot is about 125 miles outside of Jerusalem and 12 miles from Lebanon, that's how north we were.  It is absolutely beautiful up there!  I really felt like I was at home, there was foliage, real streets with real houses (not apartments like in Jerusalem), and English-speakers everywhere!  I spent my weekend with a girl in my group with a family who recently made Aliyah from Toronto, how fortunate... they spoke English.  They have 3 kids under the age of 7, and were so much fun to play with!  We were fed great food and had such a good and restful weekend (much needed since this weekend was in the middle of midterm exams).
The following week I spent countless nights awake until 3 am studying and working on papers.  I guess it all paid off with the fairly good grades I received!  Although this week did make me realize that "real" college midterm exam week will be hell.
Finally, November 25th came around and it was time for Thanksgiving.  Nativ puts on a whole production for Thanksgiving that I got the opportunity to be on the committee for!  All Nativ alumni who are in Israel are invited to attend- the a capella group sang, videos were shown (I made one with 2 friends! The link is posted below), a HUGE feast was served, and letters from home were given to all of us before dinner.  Being in Israel was weird on Thanksgiving, very weird, seeing as I had classes all day (although I skipped my 12:30-4 class, oops :) ) and nothing was closing early, but Nativ tried to make us feel the most at home with the "Friends" Thanksgiving episodes playing all night long and a huge football game in the afternoon.  Yes, American football!  I proudly wore my Patriots jersey all day throughout Jerusalem and I know that's what made them crush Detriot!

 Me, Ash, Lauren, & Amy

This past Monday, I went to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum and Memorial, with my Issues in the Study of the Holocaust class.  We spent 5 hours on a very educational guided tour and spoke with a survivor in the end.  I'd been to Yad Vashem before, but this seminar was much much better.  My tour guide was one of the most knowledgable people on the subject (aside from my Professor) and our speaker who survived the war was one of the funniest women I've ever met.  She took such a brutal situation and found the sunshine in it, I truly admire her.
And as we all know, Chanukkah began last week!  All of Nativ made our own Chanukkiot and placed them in the windows facing the main intersection the Fuschsberg Center is on.   Looking into the windows from the street, at night, is so beautiful!  Chanukkah here is so much different from at home.  For starters, latkes are not common here at all, I haven't been able to eat any, but I have been able to eat sufganiot (doughnuts for those who don't know what they are).  Roladin, the greatest bakery ever, has a million different flavors of sufganiot, and yes, I've tried almost all of them.  Chanukkah here is basically Christmas but for our religion.  There are so many activities going on city wide for Chanukkah but my favorite thing to do thus far is walk around the Mamilla Mall (comparable to Boston's Newbury Street) and listen to the live performers and take pictures of all the decorations.  This week I'll be going to the Old City to pick up some dreidels to bring home since in Israel they gave the letters Gimmel, Hay, Nun, and Pay (not Shin like at home) because A Great Miracle Happened Here (Pay), not There (Shin)!
Karmiel... Yes, I said it right, I am no longer a part of the Be'er Sheva group, I am a part of the Karmiel group.  The absorption center my group of 32 kids was supposed to stay at in Be'er Sheva was shut down, as well as many absorption center throughout Israel.  After a hefty search, my program director decided to relocate us to Karmiel in the North.  Karmiel is about 120 miles from Jerusalem and 15 miles from Lebanon... it's that far North.  Luckily, Karmiel was not effected by the fire in Northern Israel which I am sure you all have heard of.  It's been a true Chanukkah miracle that the fire has been under control for nearly a day now.  Now we must restore and rebuild
I'm still working on getting all my pictures onto a website but you know there will always be some spread throughout my blog!

Happy Chanukkah!
My Chanukkah present? EUROPE, in 3 weeks :)

XO- Dana
P.S. The greatest miracle of all is happening right now... IT'S POURING! Thanks goodness, Israel needs it

 

This is Hefty..

So since my birthday much has gone on in the good ol' State of Israel...

A few weekends ago we had our Conservative Judaism Seminar, which to my dismay, was actually fairly interesting.  The Director of USY came in for four days to discuss the Conservative Movement, our purpose it in, the flaws, etc.  This seminar preceded the most interesting part of Nativ so far- my trip to the Knesset.  Six Nativers were chosen to attend a forum on the Youth Zionist Movement at the Knesset with the Speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, the Minister of Education, and some other guy who's name was unpronounceable.  The speeches obviously had to be spoken in Hebrew, so naturally I had no idea what was going on during it.  I recognized a few works, but overall the speech was giberish to me (although my Hebrew has skyrocketed since I've been here.  Nativ was the only American group to attend the forum, so you can only imagine the people I met there.  As everyone said their name and where they were from, I counted how many languages were spoken and how many countries were represented.  Out of 80 people,  I counted 11 languages and 15 countries- not including the people who I cannot understand in the slightest bit.  Probably the coolest thing I've seen- politically that is.  On top of this all, they had INCREDIBLE pastries at the end
This past weekend, six friends and I decided to take our Shabbas camping and hiking in Ein Gedi- right on the Dead Sea, in the middle of the desert, with springs!  The entire weekend was simply amazing.  We started off with a light hike to an ancient synagogue and ended swimming in the main spring at Ein Gedi.  Later that night, we camped out on the Dead Sea beach, and of course took an evening swim.  During this evening dip in the Dead Sea, I saw Mars and my first shooting star!  Yes, they do exist...
Sadly, joining us on our trip where 2000 other kids ages 8-18 who stayed at the same campsite we did.  Oddly, they weren't as loud as we thought, however, we'd preferred if they weren't there.  The next morning, we began our hike bright and early with the sun, and, we got to use a bathroom that resembled one from Slumdog Millionaire!

Our trail brought us about 200 meters above sea level, then about 200 meters below sea level to dry river beds.  We hiked hills, rock climbed, slid down river beds, and swam all day.  This Shabbas was for sure the most incredible, and obviously I took SO many pictures

Elana, Zoe, Amy, & Me

Here are some, but I'll make a Flickr account so all my pictures can be uploaded :)

Sunday night was Halloween in America, but here in Israel it's an average day.  However, in the spirit of our childhood a few friends and I dressed up like the characters from the hit Nick show "Rocket Power" and sported our outfits through the park and Beit Nativ.  It wasn't the same as at home but it was still a ton of fun :)

 Elana, Me, Lauren, & Ashleigh

Me, Amy, Lauren, & Ashleigh

Monday night, in Pariz Sqaure (where I live- one block up from the Prime Minister's House) a HUGE protest went on about the allocation of education funds in Israel.  The secular Jews are protesting because Bibi Netanyahu is giving most tax money to the Haradi Jews (ULTRA-orthodox) who apparently do not work and only study all day.  Now my explanation on the situation comes from my friends from Noam (USY in Israel) who were at the protest.  It was the largest protest I've ever been to and easily the most powerful.  Hundreds of people walked the streets for a cause worth fighting for

Maya & Me

Last night for Erev Nativ (Night of Nativ), the Be'er Sheva track had Trivia Night!  Each room dressed in unison and competed for room decorations!  As my room is the only room with 4 people, we thought it would be fitting (and hilarious) to dress as KISS :)

Ariel, Allie, Nava, & Me (Ace, Peter, Paul & Gene)

Have a restful Shabbat this weekend!  I'll be with Joyce, NERUSY's Youth Director!!!

XO-Dana

Birthday Fun

What better way to spend my 18th birthday than in Israel!  The birthday fun began with the end of "shopping week" at Hebrew U where I finally finalized my classes after much stress over what to take.  I decided to stick with the original classes as opposed to the others I sat in on.. go with your first instinct, eh?  To start the birthday weekend, three of my friends told me to put on a cute outfit and meet them in the lobby at 8, obviously a birthday surprise.  Surprisingly enough, I was led to Waffle Bar (you guessed it... a restaurant of Belgian Waffles, it's amazing by the way) to meet up with our family friends who basically are my family here.  One of my closest friends Amy coordinated the whole surprise with our friends!  Thanks baybay.

Thursday night a group of us went out to celebrate my birth, it was a great beginning birthday party.  We sat at an outside pub and when it hit 11:59:50 the countdown began.. all my friends, the entire restaurant, and randos on the street counted down to my birthday (which was on Friday).  On my real birthday, a group of us went to a friends apartment in Herzliya for the weekend.  We had an awesome homemade Shabbas dinner made by the boys of the house, then had a small combined get-together for my birthday and his, which was today (Happy Birthday Adam!).  Saturday, due to Shabbas, we walked an hour and a half to the beach and spent the entire afternoon there.  One of my darling best friends here, Ash, and I walked for about a half hour down the beach to a small cliff where we sat for two hours playing with rocks and watching the sunset.  Probably the most beautiful place on Earth, that I've seen so far.

Aside from an awesome birthday, I'm having a truly amazing time in Israel.  Yes it is awfully hectic sometimes and schools is getting to be so stressful, but the experiences I'm having here are once in a lifetime.  Luckily, to let off some stress, I've started taking Krav Maga (Israeli self-defensive) classes with one of our staff members, Aviv!  Oddly enough, it is very relaxing although I'm nearly getting attacked the entire time.

                                                 Nava, Allie, Me, and Ariel: Room 622

Until next time :)

Raindrops are falling on my head

This past Friday, Jerusalem finally got what we prayed for... rain!  It rained pretty hard for about two minutes then drizzled for nearly an hour.  After we ran around outside and played in the rain we got the picture perfect image of a huge rainbow going across the sky.  Yesterday as I was at shul in Yemin Moshe (which have the most immaculate gardens), it began raining again, this time fairly hard for ten minutes then abruptly stopped and the sun came shining.

 The rainbow over Beit Nativ

Keep praying for rain!  We need it :)

Don't let the bed bugs bite...

"Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite" is now a sore subject and the phrase will forever have a literal meaning for those on Nativ 30.  This past week we've noticed a bit of a bug problem... I thought I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes but alas, it is not mosquito season.  Wednesday night, as I'm studying for my last final in my Summer Semester, I had to take everything off of my bed so the hostel staff could remove it from my room and replace it with suspicions of bed bugs.  And of course, on Thursday they remove my bed again but not only the suspected infested beds... every single bed in the Fuschsberg Center.  Luckily, they were disinfected in our courtyard so we got to choose our own bed when it was time to take them back to our rooms.  I am far more satisfied with the bed I have now.

On a lighter note, I am done with my Summer Semester so I have nothing constructive to do until Sunday when my first class begins at 2:30 pm!  I'll be taking Art History, Evolutionary Psychology, Issues on the Holocaust, and of course Hebrew

Shabbat Shalom!

Festivals

Our shortened Desert Survival allowed for us Nativers to experience the Sukkot Festivities in Jerusalem.
A friend and I found an amazing Art Fair that's up and running all through Sukkot and every Friday in the warm weather!  We spent far more than we intended but got a ton of beautiful things, especially bubble kit that blows the biggest bubbles I've ever seen, well worth $10.  We also got to watch the big Sukkot Jerusalem fair with more people than I've ever seen in one hurrah

 

The Christian Zionist Movements flags at the        

         Jerusalem Parade

 

Amazing booth at the craft fair that we spent much to much money and time at... well worth it for beautiful jewelry

Bubbles

Interesting fact..

In Israel, a nickname for David is DuDu (or pronounced Doo Doo).. classic

Here we go..

Although three weeks later than expected, I finally made a blog to update everyone on my life in Israel without actually repeating myself a million times.  These past three weeks have been a little slow but still a lot of fun and oddly restful.  With Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah quickly in a row, we have had a LOT of time off from school, which I am not complaining about.  Yom Kippur was definitely a personal fave since I was able to walk in the middle of a main road without any car collisions.

This afternoon I got back from a short trip to the Negev for desert survival.  The plan was to hike through the desert from Sunday til Tuesday sunrise to sunset and sleep at campsites on the way.  Luckily... a massive heat wave struck Israel this week and almost every trail in the desert was blocked off, I know, such a shame.  Our new desert survival included jeep rides to the largest spring in the desert (yes we went swimming), a bus ride to our campsite, a short midnight hike to stargaze and see Venus, then the hardest part... begin hiking at 6 am to finish by 9 am before the ban on trails.  I definitely will say I enjoyed our abbreviated hike!

More to come at some point- let's see if I can make this a weekly ordeal

:)