El Al is much better...

Shabbat was really nice - Liz, Ronen and I were invited to a meal with Liz's co-workers - so it was chock-full of Answers.com jokes, stories, and of course, answers. There were 16 people altogether, and although some people spoke mostly Hebrew, others spoke mostly French, we were all able to get along and enjoy the Moroccan-influenced food. (She made her own matbucha!)

We had about an hour's walk home, after which we bid each other good night and passed out.
I woke up at about 9, and was mad with my cold for giving me reasons to wake up so early on shabbat. I sat up and read this weird book called, "Still Life with Woodpecker." The guy's writing style was a lot more interesting than the plot, which is pretty impressive considering the plot was about a royal Spanish family who got kicked out and is now living in New York, where their daughter is a environmental-loving, vegetarian, cheerleading, outlaw. Yeah, it's weird.

Liz's friend Shira (who we went to college with but only really became friends with her afterwards) hosted a meal at Liz and Ronen's apartment, and much of the same people from my first shabbat at Liz and Ronen's were there again. Good people, and we had a good meal. Dessert was a really good apple crumb cake, which Ronen likes to call apple crumble - it's an Aussie thing I guess, and a bowl of citrus salad. There were kumquats and little lemon things where you could eat the peels! weird. but good.

By the time everybody from lunch left, shabbat was pretty much over, so I packed up my stuff and chilled out until we thought it was dark enough.

Shabbat was nice, calm, relaxing - pretty much everything after Shabbat wasn't.

I left my rugelach from Marzipan in my freezer in Har Nof, so the plan was to drop off my stuff at the hotel Prima Royale (where the JEC's sheirut was leaving from), take a bus up to Har Nof, pick up my rugelach, and come back down to the hotel by bus with enough time.
Here's what actually happened:

I got a cab to the hotel at around 6:30, get there at around 6:50, put my stuff in a room, and asked the lady worker at the hotel where I can catch an 11 or 15 bus. Apparently the closest way to get there is to take another bus and transfer, so I do. I transfered at one of the stops in Mea She'arim and got on the SLOWEST BUS EVER. He was stopping in-between stops, talking to the passengers, driving at 3 kilometers an hour - it was torture. And then, we get up to Har Nof and the bus starts making an obnoxious beeping sound. He hits a few buttons, nothing changes, so he stops the bus. He turns off the bus and turns it back on, hoping the restart method works for busses as well as it does for computers, and Eureka, it does. We go a few more blocks, somebody hits the "stop request button" and the noise comes back with a vengeance. Argh! He then pulls the bus over, shuts it off for good and tells us all to get out. We are now at the high end of Shaulzon. My apartment is on the low end of Shaulzon. I start walking towards #90, trying to flag down any cab I can find, and nobody's stopping. I see an 11 bus pulling up at the nearest stop (by # 50) and I get on. In my best pitiful pleading voice, I tell him how I was kicked off the other bus and I would just like to go two stops on the bus - can I get on without buying another ticket? He says ok, most likely because he couldn't understand my frantic English, and I thank him a hundred times. I get off at my stop and RUN into the building, where some kid decided to rebuild his bookshelves in the middle of the lobby. I get on the elevator, wishing it to go up first, and of course it doesn't. At this point, it's just about 8:00 and I had to be down at the hotel at 8:15, when the sheirut would be leaving. I go into the apartment, grab my rugelach, say goodbye to my roommate again, and run back downstairs, where the cab I had called was honking away.

I don't know how, but I got there in time. I overpaid the guy about 10 or 15 shekels, but I didn't care - all I cared about was getting on that sheirut so I could get to the airport on time.

This is the other story - remember how my first post was all about the horrors at the airport? Well, yeah, guess what... IsrAir SUCKS. Our direct flight has now been changed to a flight that's stopping in Ireland for an hour. I don't really know why, nor do I think it will only be an hour, but I'm annoyed, to say the least. The idea of being on a plane for 14 hours with a head cold less than thrills me. Who knows, maybe when we stop in Ireland, they'll give us all a good Irish beer. I know I'll need it.

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.