Sara: So, life here is super sababa (which means 'great'). Our official birthright trip ended on Sunday evening, which meant sad goodbyes. Mayanot allowed us to stay in Jerusalem if it suited us better (which it did) so Amy, Courtney, Elisa, Noah, Jared, and I hugged about thirty-five people and the bus drove away and then we were free! It was an amazing thing. Funnily, the first thing we did with our new-found freedom was find a restroom. But, backtracking a little bit....
Amy: On Thursday we went to the Holocaust Memorial, which I know Sara already mentioned but I just wanted to talk about it a little bit, too. For me, it was the most moving and memorable part of the trip, aside from meeting all of my beautiful new friends. Our group scheduled a guided tour, but there were a few of us who got annoyed with the incessant talking of the woman leading us and decided to wander off on our own with our headphones on mute. We listened to dozens of video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and saw the "stripped pajamas" and bunk beds. I can't describe it, so maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead, but the entire experience was just unreal. We also got the opportunity to listen to and a Holocaust survivor, in the flesh, and ask her questions. I forget her name, but she was less than ten years old when she went to the camps. She just started talking about the Holocaust a few years ago, and still believes in God and tries to live a normal, happy life with her husband. Mordechai, our group's leader, lead a small discussion group at the end of our visit, just to get a feel of what we got out of the visit. I shared a personal philosophy, which probably made little sense to anyone but me: I think that there are good people and unlucky people. If someone can't recognize value in a human life, that's pure blindness.
On Saturday, we all split up and were assigned different homes of Israeli families who volunteered to host us for a Shabbot lunch. Sara, Ashlee, Amy #2 and I were assigned to the Mann family, who were originally from New York. We didn't have an exact schedule of how long we were supposed to stay, so we ended up talking to the family for almost five hours. They were an ultra/modern orthodox Jewish family, so naturally they had eight children (that's just average...strange land) and were very interested in the questions we had for them. They talked all about living the Talmud and what life is like in Jerusalem and their view of American politics. We all had such a good time that we were invited back, and Sara and I ended up staying over at their house last night! They're very different, but lovely nonetheless.
Sara: The final few days of our trip were fun, except for being cooped up in the hotel a lot due to the security alert. Basically, it was such a small alert that most Israelis didn't even hear about it, but Birthright is super cautious about that sort of thing. Luckily, we had people like our tour guide Mordechai and Israeli chaperone Moria fighting for us, so on the last day and a half we were able to go out clubbing in Jerusalem and to Ben Yehuda street (which is basically a shopping area.) We also volunteered at a soup kitchen, and for the last event of the day, we all planted a tree in Israel. As part of custom, we all named our tree and sang a song for it. I named mine "Caroline" and sang Neil Diamond, while Amy went a slightly more egocentric route and named hers "Amy" and sang it, "America" from West
Side Story.
Once we were released, Noah/Jared/Elisa headed to Eilat (we later found out that on the bus, a drunk man peed on Elisa...), and Courtney, Amy, and I walked about a mile to the Old City, where we stayed at a little hostel between the Armenian and Christian Quarters called Citadel. While the area was a little bit grungy, the hostel was AWESOME. If the Quad is reading, you guys remember when the hostel in Poland had an underground cave. This hostel WAS a cave. Our room was up on the third floor, which meant climbing up three steep, rounded flights of stone stairs. Just a few steps above our room was the rooftop, which had a view of the whole city (The Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, etc.) SO cool. While we were only there for one night, Courtney and I woke up early the next morning so that we could explore the rooftops and walk around the Arab shops in the area. I'm not sure if 'Arab' would be the PC-term, but I don't know more specifically than that-- Palestinian? I'm not sure. But basically, it's worth noting that we were basically walking in and out of Jewish areas, and the non-Jewish areas were very different from the Jewish areas. The Arab areas seemed darker or more hectic, with schoolboys offering directions (then asking payment) and more salespeople trying to get our attention. We definitely blended in better in the Jewish areas, which seemed more orderly. There were plenty of military men in all the areas we were at, though, so it all seemed reasonably safe.
From there, we were picked up by our dad's cousins Sam and Audrey Meline, who took us out to lunch and showed us around their part of town. They were incredibly nice and we got to talk for a couple hours about our family tree, which was great. We learned that, ridiculously, at one point in our trip we were barely fifty feet from their house! Crazy.
Amy: Incidentally, I got food poisoning three days ago--throwing up, and all. I feel better now, but I'm proceeding with caution and choosing my foods as wisely as possible from now on. I can only imagine what's to come in Cairo.
Miss you, love you all,
s&a
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