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