The Next Couple of Days

So back to Jerusalem... (I'm in Tel Aviv right now.) We started out eating the same Israeli breakfast which I once used to love, but now makes me crazy -- lots of bland eggs, bread, cucumbers and olives, yogurt, strange salty fish parts, chopped inedible vegetables, and strange pink creamy things. We headed to the Old City, entering through the Zion Gate. We walked down the 3,000 year old cobble stone streets, passing through the Jewish quarter, archeological dig sights, the room where the last supper took place, underground Arab markets, and we tried many times to see the Western wall, but there was always some kind of problem. The first time, it was too crowded, then it was too hot, then there was a suspicious package left on the road between us and the wall that had to be destroyed by the army before we could go through. The procedure for an unattended backpack in Israel is to block off the area and send in a robot that covers the bag and blows it up. It is VERY weird to hear an explosion like that in Jerusalem. Eventually we did see the wall though. We spent most of the day in the old city, but I can't remember much more that we did that day. We've done so much.

The next day we drove up to the Galilee, and we picked up 8 Israeli soldiers (all our age) to join us for the rest of the trip. We passed the separation barrier of the West Bank and climbed into the fertile, hilly North. We stopped in Zipori, an archeological dig sight with some of the oldest Jewish ruins in the world. We then went to the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) and hiked through a river that runs off the Jordan. After drying off, we headed to a Kibbutz youth hostel on the shore of the lake. We picked up some wine and everyone had a really great night down on the lake talking with each other and the Israelis about life.

Yesterday we went up to the beautiful Golan Heights and looked out over the entire country. We then went to Tzfat (which was REALLY hot by the way... over 105 degrees). There we saw a lot of Kaballah and religious sights. It's such a beautiful city. We drove down past the shore of the Mediterranean to Tel Aviv, and we visited Independence Hall before heading out the the Tayelet (promenade) on the beach where we spent the night in restaurants and drinking on the soft Mediterranean sand of Tel Aviv.

Today we're heading back to Jerusalem, where we'll be for the rest of our program. I'll try to give some more details and thoughts later on, but I've been pretty crunched for time, and computers are not easy to access.

L'hitraot!