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

:)