Walking my weight in Shwarma

Today was much busier - I painted a house, went to a monastery, walked up 200 steps, I had an awesome dinner of shawarma, and I met up with some friends at a coffee shop.

So, I wanted to do some volunteering during my time here - I figured I've come here to learn to help myself, wouldn't it be nice to help others? I contacted Livnot on Wednesday, and they told me that I can help finish painting a house for a project. It's kind of like "Habitat for Humanity" I guess, except they're fixing up a pre-existing apartment instead of building a house from scratch.

We met up at the Livnot office at 9, and I had some quality breakfast of a chocolate spread and honey sandwich, with some peach nectar to drink. I know it sounds gross, but it was good.

The house we were painting exists in Ein Kerem - a predominantly Christian village in Jerusalem. The reason mostly Christians live there is because it was the birthplace of John the Baptist. Also, there's a spot where Mary (Miriam) apparently learned of her pregnancy with Jesus (Yoshuah).

It's a pretty nifty place, and this guy's apartment had an awesome view of Jerusalem. He also had two dogs, one of which kept following me around as I was trying to paint this little outside roofed-area. Then we fixed up the bathroom. The other volunteer painted the ceiling (she was tall enough to reach with the ladder, I was not), while I cleaned it. We finished in about two hours, and then the Livnot guy decided to give us a tour of Ein Kerem.

We went to the Notre Dame Monastery to look at the gardens. They have a beautiful garden with flowers, funky plants like aloe, and lots of different fruit trees. It amazed me to see that in the winter the lemon and mandarin orange trees were very much alive and still bearing fruit. The pomegranate tree was very much not. They're not winter trees. Another tree they had there was this one.



I told you it was Christian!


We left the monastery and went to the spot where Mary got her pregnancy test results back - apparently some angel told her at this very spot, where the mountain water ends up into a little stream.

I went back to Liz's place to get ready to go to Har Nof. I had to repack a little, and then I brought my stuff to the main road on the other side of Liz and Ronen's to get a taxi. 50 shekel and 20 minutes later, I'm in the dorm in Har Nof. It's a cute little apartment, with 4 rooms of 2, a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and patio. After being welcomed by the dorm counselor (RA) an instant noodle soup, water bottle, and a welcome note, I chose my room and shoved my bag underneath my bed to claim it.

Here's the fun part: The RA was going to the school, so I asked her if I could come along to see it. She told me it was a trek, but it would only take me 6-15 minutes to get to school.
Let me just explain something about Har Nof. It means "Mountain with a view." It's been cut into a mountain, and it has quite a view. Everything in Har Nof is up-hill one way, and down-hill the other.

We walk out of the building and she points to the steps. 200 steps. TWO-HUNDRED!! I walked up 200 steps to get from the apartment to the school. By the time I got to the building I was panting, tired, and achey. This is going to be a fun two weeks.

After touring the school, I went back to Liz and Ronen's. We got shawarma! It was awesome yummy shawarma that made me very full. So full, in fact, that I decided to walk down to Emek to meet friends of mine who are in Israel for the year. Quick shout out! Their Israel trip blog.

We met at this awesome ice cream place that has a whole section of delicious looking pareve (non-dairy) ice cream. But then we went to a bagel place that was also a bakery, and finally decided on going to Cafe Hillel to talk and catch up. We talked about old Binghamton times, and slightly newer events going on in our lives. It was fun, and 3 hours later, we walked back home (them to theirs, and me to my temporary one).

Now I'm excited for shabbos - or should I say Shabbat... It's the Israeli way to say it.