"in my cloud of hot dry desert bliss, i can inaccurately say that i hate everything but Sinai."

- me, day after returning from Sinai, after sleeping under a damp blanket

with cold feet and waking to ringing cellphones

and screaming neighbours

so here was the general thing, during the week around and during Passover. i wrote this whole thing out in lovely prose, but it disappeared into cyberland before i could click the good ol' "publish" button so now the prose is gone forever, and here in its stead is its less verbose cousin: the point-form.

- to Haifa (top left yellow district, city on the south-west side of the bay) friday night!!

- slept out sunday night in the trees on this cliff thing, beautiful view of the city, became enveloped in fog the next morning - super nice.

- had Pesach at Eyal's G-ma's place: a really nice night, made yummy foods to bring, and Eyal's G-ma made little sweaters for Bloomie and Yismo - AAAAAAAADorable

- that very night, we set out around 1030 and picked up friends Yoav and Sasha in tel aviv, then drove practically straight through the night, besides an hour nap in a parking lot somewhere along the way. the car was stuffed to the gills, under my feet and in my arm pits. you'd think we were running from the government.

- got to Eilat around 7 am (j'slem is right above the dead sea there, and then Eilat is riiiiight at the bottom), we walked across the border into Egypt, took a taxi to our beach, called Al Mahash. the place is run by Chamdan and his brother, really nice Bedouin guys whom Eyal and his family have known for years because they've always come to this beach for vacation time.
- when we got there, we put down our bags, ate a crapton of food, and then passed out right there where we ate. it was pretty much like this for the next five days. although some extra activities included: morning swim (felt very brave since the water is very chilly at 630am), snorkel, water frisbee, guitar jam one night, and getting a delightful surprise visit from Marion Janet, the sister of a very old friend from Canada who happened to be staying on the same beach as me. go figure!!!
- the place (and i'll post pictures) consists of:

• a couple of half-walled structures (or some with just a roof) made of bamboo or straw or something, and huts made of the same stuff
• the main area (which was also where they made food - although they served it anywhere) has rugs covering the sand, pillows to sit on (which looked like lions had been told there were antelope inside but we slept on them anyway), and short tables
• the huts were rugs covering the sand, and two foam matresses. we brought a net for the nighttime mossies. note: mosquitos were the only thing not entirely pleasant about this trip
• oh, and we were situated right at the gorgeous waters along the Gulf of Aqaba (which made me think of Aladdin the whole time). you could saudi arabia across the water because we were at a narrow point in the gulf. neat.

so ok, we did that for five days and then had to go back....
- oops, didn't know my visa was only for one entry into the country. hehe. no worries, got it sorted out quickly.
- got a flat tire on the way home, and i timed how long it took between stopping and getting on the road again, cause i thought that's what David Sedaris would do. only 23 minutes and 19 seconds. go team.
- i was very shocked when i got back to jerusalem and there wasn't any water and everything was made of stone and everywhere there were (are) people in lots of clothing, not at all like the beach. and i felt like what i wrote at the top of this post.

starting Pesach break...

life is spinning pretty beautifully here...

we're on break from ulpan for two weeks because of Passover. so my first day off was on wednesday and was spent mostly at Amanda's...

as a birthday present with her hubby Chanan (her birthday was on wednesday), i slept over the night before and got up with kids so she could sleep until whenever she wanted. Chanan gave her little treats throughout the morning then made her brunch (french toast and fresh carrot/apple/ginger juice!), and i left around 2 - after which they went for a nice mountain drive and played in a river while the kids slept in the car. pretty awesome. :) and that night i went back to amanda's so we could bring and have cake. :) then eyal and i went to a 'school's out!/pesach' party at our friend Yoav's place.

DAY 2/thursday:

i spent some time at amanda's again, came home, fell asleep for a few hours, and was woken to the sweet whisperings of 'let's go on an adventure.'

OK!

so eyal and i ended up at the dead sea around 11pm with snacks and a blanket... we (let's be honest here - he) built a fire, and we (this 'we' is acurate) ate baguette and hummus and baba ganoush and cucumbers, then decided just to crash there. so we slept under the stars huddled under a big wooly shawl, woke a bunch of times to stare at the expanse of stars around me, got up around 530, and watched the sun rise over the sea while sitting in a hot spring pool up the way from the seashore. amazing. i got out when it was too hot to endure the sun AND the pool, then napped in the sun. amazing. i woke to find eyal grinning and covered with dead sea mud, looking like quite the creature. he washed off and i took another sit in the pool, then we packed up and drove toward home around 9.

when we stopped to refuel (the car and ourselves) at a gas station/cafe, there was a bus travelling south that had stopped for the same reason as us. and this guy walked from the cafe onto the parking lot and dropped his empty drink bottle on the ground, with the cafe ten feet behind him and a garbage can ten feet in front of him. so, for those of you who knew me well enough, you can only imagine how fuming i became. littering is something that makes NO SENSE to me. it's dirty, disrespectful, wasteful (if the thing is recyclable), and passive. i have no patience for it, so don't ever do it when you're around me. (or at all, really.) there are appropriate receptacles in most civilized areas. and if not, i'm the kind of person who will walk around with garbage and recycling in my bag/pocket/hand for hours/miles/days until finding such an appropriate receptacle. also, admittedly, i will take recyclable items out of the trash (as long as it looks decently non-diseased) and redeposit into - ba ching - an appropriate receptacle. so this guy clearly does none of these things. he stopped to smoke a cigarette before getting on the bus, and as he finished, i took his bottle over and gave it to him. unfortunately, i couldn't sweet talk him and help him to see his error in the friendliest way possible, cause i don't speak hebrew sweet-talk. also unfortunately, he was an a--hole. (i think some adults read this blog...) so i just smiled, offered him the bottle, and pointed to the garbage can. he cursed loudly in hebrew, waving me away, so i put the bottle in the bus on a ledge beside the stairs (it's like a greyhound bus) and started to walk away. the guy - you won't even believe this - started shouting and angrily kicked the bottle out of the bus, perhaps even at me. it didn't quite make it out of the bus, but landed loudly on one of the stairs, so he cursed again and kicked the bottle practically right at me. so i smiled at him (really tried not to laugh - what, are you FOUR or something?) and picked up the bottle and took it back to my picnic spot to put in our garbage bag. it was infuriating and hilarious. eyal said that he's the stereotypical immature macho piggish israeli man. some just turn out that way, i guess. i can understand that; we have that product in American-flavour too.

so now... we're up north in Haifa, at Eyal's dad's place. last night we slept outside again, this time in a little wooded area nicknamed 'the balcony' because it's very high up and looks over a valley and some the city. really beautiful. super windy last night, and today a huge cloud passed right into our area and made everything really eerie. very cool. and tonight is the seder at Savta's house (hebrew for grandmother - her name is Sarah), and ten driving down to Eilat to leave our car in a parking lot and walk across the border into Egypt. we're going to spend 5 days on a beach in Sinai, a favourite vacation spot for Israelis. apparently though, the beach we're going to is great because "there aren't a lot of israelis there." haha.

so updates on seder and Sinai in a week or so.

Chag sameach to all you out there who knows what that means!!

xo