middle east 5/27/09: jerusalem

Shalom all!

So right now we are in Jerusalem. We were supposed to go out tonight, but there's a TERROR ALERT. Poo. This means we will be having sangrias at the hostel to ensure our complete safety. So, no need to worry at home.

Anyway, Jerusalem is rad! This trip has been so busy, and I've had no time to write at all, particularly because this hostel has no computer. My only internet access is to pester Noah to use his laptop, but today my new friend Courtney needed his computer anyway so we are here, updating our internetz. Whee!

Let's see, quick highlights. Yesterday we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. It's interesting, it's really the first time I've dealt with the Holocaust since visiting Auschwitz two years ago, and in some ways I feel like I've just finally begun to digest that last trip. The museum gave us all a good cry, then afterwards our group got to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak. It's sort of funny I suppose, but I've always really wanted to meet someone who had survived the Holocaust and hear them talk about it. Even though this woman, Wertl, seemed to have to emotionally disconnect herself from the words she spoke, it was still moving to hear her speak.

Other things...last night we got to go to the desert and sleep under canopies at a Bedouin camp. So cool! They served us delicious food and had ceremonies with dancing and then a couple of us walked around under the stars. Super rad.

Finally, today we got to float in the Dead Sea! Totally excellent. It's amazing: even if you think you are totally scratch/scrape-free, after about five minutes in the Dead Sea, everyone knows exactly where all their injuries are because they sting! Ack. It's supposed to be healing, though. We also all covered ourselves in Dead Sea mud. I expect amusing pictures will come once everyone gets home and uploads
to facebook.

I hate to be so brief, but I think I need to run. Hope everyone is well at home. Much love!!!!
-Sara

middle east 5/23/09: shabbat shalom:-)

Shalom!


The past few days can definitely be described as (what Amy and I call) "extreme traveling." We have done so much, and we haven't even made it to Jerusalem yet! (Speaking of Jerusalem-- I have handwritten nearly all of your prayer requests, including the ones left at facebook, and I will definitely be done by the time we get to the wall.)

For the past two days we have been in Tiberias, in northern Israel. It is so exciting to finally be in an ancient city. From our hotel we can see the Sea of Galilee, and I'm hoping we get to walk all the way down to the water soon so that I can try to walk on top of it. (This is surely a simple thing, no?) The 'mifgashim' (Israeli soldiers)
have arrived, and they are pretty cool.

Amy: The mifgashim are all such wonderful people. A few of them are struggling and getting a little bit frustrated with speaking English, but they are all able to communicate if you speak clearly and are patient when they are speaking. One of the female soldiers, Yaara, is rooming with me and Sara now! She basically works in army human resources, and she interviews new soldiers and decides which position would be best suited for their personality. She speaks English fluently, and she says she learned from American television shows. She is definitely on Jewish Standard Time, though, and she's been late to almost every event we've done.

Sara: The soldiers arrived on Thursday, which was our first full day in Tiberias. It was a pretty awesome day. In the morning, we headed up north to the Lebanon border. The border, at a kibbutz, is literally a fence across a rolling hillside. We got an added bonus because when we arrived, we could hear morning prayers coming from Lebanon over a loudspeaker. The voice was slow and melodic and sounded eerie, but I could understand how it might be soothing for the people living there, as well. Adding to the eerie-ness was the view-- we could see the yellow flag of Hezbollah on the closest hill. We got to hear a speaker from the kibbutz, an American-Israeli who had fought in four wars, including the first war with Lebanon. He was intense and fascinating to listen to. Finally, after the speaker, I walked over to the fence on the pretense of taking a picture... then I reached through the fence and took a rock from Lebanon;-)

We also got to visit Tzfat yesterday, which is the city where Kaballah (Jewish mysticism) was born, about 1,000 years ago, where we were able to see a (pretty cool) speaker and run around town eating lunch and buying a gift for our "Secret Santa" (funny, on a Jewish trip.) After Tzfat, we went rafting in the Jordan river, which was so fun and refreshing. We weren't allowed in the water, but I "fell in" when an Israeli soldier "pushed" me. Naturally, he dove in to "save" me, as well.

Amy: The group of people on this trip who we've been getting to know over the past few days are fantastic. A lot of people who Sara and I have been sticking with actually live in Los Angeles, and I'm positive that we'll hang out together when we get home. Last night, after the Shabbat dinner, a group of us all went in someone's room and played cards and talked for hours. We actually stayed up until three in the morning, just visiting. We've bonded a lot about all of the annoying rules we have on this trip, like how we can't walk around town without a chaperone (which of course is understandable...but it seems ridiculous nonetheless). I feel happy and safe with all of these new friends we've made.

Sara: It's worth noting that the reason we were able to stay up so late last night is because today is Shabbat, the day of rest. Finally, we've all gotten a chance to sleep! Tonight we're going out to have dinner in the city, and then tomorrow we see the Syria border and head to Jerusalem.

Until next time, much love,
Sara and Amy

middle east 5/19/09: machadash? hakob'a seder

Shalom all!

We made it safely to Israel and we are now at a GREAT little hotel in Tel Aviv overlooking the Mediterranean. The water is so nice and warm! Okay, I (Sara...Amy is going to write some of this too) am sort of loopy so I'm not sure this will be in any logical order. But the beach is awesome, and the people on the trip are so nice. I already feel like we've known them forever. Amy and I actually made a ton of new friends, to the point that we decided to sleep in separate rooms so that we could socialize with more people. This is a little bit silly though, since Amy and I are sharing a lot of things (like shampoo.)

Amy here! The flight...was long. So long. Fifteen hours long. But it was actually not quite as miserable as one would expect, because we all were free to move about and visit with people on different sides of the plane and help ourselves to egg salad sandwiches in the kitchen. My row buddy and new friend, Theo, loved playing card games just as much as I, so we kept ourselves entertained for a good portion of the flight.There were also incredibly amusing instructional videos on how to stretch in your airplane seat.

Sara: Oh yeah, about the flight. It was all sort of dramatic because Israel takes security SUPER SUPER seriously. So, checking in to El Al, every single one of us was questioned. Amy and I were able to be interviewed together and they just asked us a few questions (like about where our relatives in Israel lived) but both my roommates, Stacey and Elisa, were detained for further questioning and had their bags searched and held until they boarded the plane, along with several other people. Jared, who will be going with us to Egypt, initially didn't get his bag back-- which had $4000 of camera equiptment. How stressful. But in the end everything worked out fine, phew:-)

Amy: Luckily, Sara and I were anticipating much hotter weather than what we were greeted with. There was a nice breeze when we stepped out of the airport, and so far the temperature is much milder than it's been in California recently. Tonight we have the option to go out to a nightclub, but a group of us decided to skip it and hang out at the beach instead. Because it's THAT awesome. I hope you all are doing
well back on the other side of the world!

Lots of love,
Sara and Amy

middle east 5/16/09: shalom!

Hey friends and familia,

It's travel time again...Monday morning, Amy and I are off on the
birthright trip to Israel! Our flight is at 1:45 p.m., but we have to
be at LAX by 9:45 to meet up with our birthright group...and since the
405 is crazy at that time, we actually leave for the airport at 6 a.m.
Eek:-p

We will be abroad from May 18 to June 18, and we will be visiting
Israel (two weeks with a free! Mayanot birthright group, plus a week
with familia at the end), Egypt (Cairo), and Jordan (Petra). During
that time I'll be sending out periodic email updates to share any
travel highlights. If you're not really into group emails, let me
know and I'll take you off this list, no problems.

Also, If anyone has prayer requests, let me know and I will tuck them
in the Western Wall for you:-)

Hope everyone is doing well!

Love,
Sara

mexico 5/24/08: Como se dice, "stuck in Mexico"?

Hola amigos favoritos!

So, omg. We are totally stuck in Mexico! Don't you worry bout a thang, though. American Airlines put us on a broken plane (something about an engine), but they noticed in time so we didn't die or anything. But, we were stuck on the plane for a couple hours, and then it turned out that we wouldn't be able to make it to customs in Dallas before closing. So, the airline has put us up in a hotel overnight. And they gave us a free dinner and stuff. So that's all fine. At this point we're expected home around 3 tomorrow, but who knows!

In other things, the last few days in Mexico have been amazing! I've been so completely happy. On Wednesday we all took a ferry to the Isla de las Mujeres, which has a very cool history about pirates and marauding buccaneers, woohoo! Melissa told us some sort of story involving love and death and a woman left on an island or turned to stone, but she wasn't sure exactly so neither am I. haha. Anyway, the food was excellent-- we ate at the greatest little place there, with delicious guacamole and fish. My fish was raw and had octopus and oysters or something. It was an adventure on a plate. Then we shopped at the little colorful stands and went to the beach.

On Thursday, we went to the water park. The coolest part there was that Amy and I swam with the dolphins! The dolphins were so cool. We have pictures of us having a water fight with them-- when you splash them, that's their signal to splash you back. The other signal that was really funny was that if you pointed your fingers and moved your hands up and down like a conductor, the dolphins made chirping noises. So that was all super cool. One of the dolphins liked me and turned over on his back so I could rub his belly. So fun.

And finally, Friday was the best day of the entire trip! April, Ben and I went to the ruins at Chichen Itza. The three hour ride was totally worth it because the ruins were AMAZING...possibly even cooler than the Roman ruins, maaaybe. The big pyramid is one of the new Seven Wonders, so I was really glad to get to see that. People aren't allowed to climb it anymore though, unfortunately. They just stopped allowing that two years ago, when a woman fell and died. But, just seeing it was cool. We clapped at the bottom because the echo makes chirping noises, and we saw the observatory and you could still see all sorts of engravings and some of the remains of paint. Also, April and I played funny games like "who can take the longest steps" because we wanted to play in the ruins, but it was also pretty hot out so we were trying not to go too crazy.

Anyway, I should run. But, hooray for our week in Mexico! I think this will wrap up my Mexicana emails for this trip (unless we're very unlucky tomorrow) but I'll be writing again from camp this summer. If it's anything like last summer, there will be lots of good stories.

con amor,
Sara

mexico 5/20/08: buenas noches!

Hola guapos!

Oh dear, its back to those tricky keyboards. Im writing you all from Cancun, Mexico! que divertido. Also, I will not be using...quotation marks? Flying comas? What are those called? Oh well. Either way, I cannot find them. Although, I do have nice access to the ¡ and the ¿.

Anyway, Cancun is just beautiful. We re staying at this great resort with Aunt Joanne and Uncle Dean, and their kids April and Allen, and their significant others Ben and Melissa (respectively). The weather is very warm and tropical and humid, which I just love. Although, it is a bit sweaty. But still, I think its great. The resort has a bunch of huge pools, too, and we re right on the beach. The beaches are white sand and the sand doesnt get too hot, which is kind of amazing. But at the resort, the pool is the coolest thing. We have a swim up bar AND a swing up bar~ how lucky are we? Pretty lucky! The swim up bar has seats built right into the floor of the pool, and the swing up bar is actually just a bar that has swing instead of seats. Im not sure if its actually called a swing up bar, but thats what Ive been calling it. The pool also has a volleyball court, so April bought one of those colorful inflated balls and weve been playing volleyball. woohoo!

So, the trip has been very fun so far, although the hardest thing has probably been coordinating eight people. We are lucky enough to all be easy going, but its still tricky trying to keep track of everyone without cell phones. (Some of our cell phones work, but the rates are expensive so we dont use them). It was all sorts of craziness flying in! Almost all the "couples" were on different flights, though Amy and I were with Dean and Joanne. For our flight, we had to be at the airport at 800 am California time, and we didnt arrive at the resort until 1130 pm Cancun time! It was a very long day, and we all laughed at how exhausting it is to sit around doing nothing much all day.

We ended up taking some R&R time at the resort the first couple of days (delicious food! yummy drinks! crafts! pools!) though we also had fun going into town and bartering. Today we had our first big excursion, to Tulum to see some of the Mayan ruins. They were so neat! We had fun poking around them and looking at the different carvings and things. But, the coolest part was going to the beach. There was a beach just below the cliff that the ruins were on, so we took this steep wooden staircase down to the bottom and left our things in the sand and went into the ocean. The water was warm and blue and the sand was soft and the waves were PERFECT for body boarding. I hadnt really intended to bodysurf but one swelled right in front of me so I dove with it and it carried me all the way to shore! And of course, all of this was with the ruins overlooking us. It was very neat.

I also got saved about $5.00 on sarongs, but I need to try Shannons trick. April told us her friend Shannon was the best at bartering--even if something cost fifteen dollars, Shannon would say "one dollar" and (according to April) it usually worked! I will have to try it at some point.

Hasta luego, con amor
Sara

europe archive 5/21/07: I'm home!!!

Wow.

We had a good flights, minimal delays (actually ended up arriving 15 minutes early into LAX, before our rides even got there!) and a perfect last two days in Italy. We splurged and got a gondola with our friends Lori and Randal on our last night in Venice (Saturday) and split 6 ways it was only 15 euro a piece for a beautiful ride at sunset. St. Mark's Square in Venice is awesome; Randal and Jill and I split a bag of bird feed and Lori and Mel and Mo took pictures of us with pigeons all over us which I will definitely send out once they're developed. I'm still getting used to a non-Italian keyboard. It was probably the biggest culture shock of the whole trip to arrive at Atlanta's airport for our layover: not only was everything suddenly in English, but it had a twang. LA sure is cloudy. What's up with that. It was HOT in Milan and HOT in Georgia...where is my sunny California? We landed and Mo and I looked out the window in dismay and wondered what on EARTH these gray clouds were, and I hypothesized they were smog and we both looked at each other with dread. I think they're clouds, though. I have now been awake for over 24 hours...I woke up at 6 a.m. in Italy, and over there right now it is 7:42 a.m. Thank goodness for Mel and Mo's no-jet-lag pills, but that would explain the mishmash of topics in this paragraph, oui? I simultaneously want to take a bath, sleep, and run all over the neighborhood because I've been sitting for nearly that entire time and the ten jet lag pills I've taken are I think basically homeopathic caffeine pills. So anyway, I'm going to go for now.

Love to all!!! Thanks for reading.
Sara