Grand Beach Tel Aviv

... nicht schwimmen etc...nun ist es wied** bess**. Am Samstag Abend waren wir Tanzen mit Rita aus Litauen und haben dann auch Judy und Avi getroffen. Sie waren beide ganz nett und wir gingen gemeinsam am Strand Bi** trinken...unglaublich.
Heute bin ich den ganzen Sonntag mit Sibylle im Kafe gesessen. Wir haben dort gel**nt mit Laptop, Blick auf Haifa ...und wie gesagt: 37 Grad...

ICH VERMISSE EUCH ALLE! Schreibe dann nach Warschau wied**, dort bin ich von Freitag bis Sonntag :)

... for the train. C'est la vie.) After getting off the bus at the wrong spot and walking AWAY from my destination for oh probably about a km, I made a giant circle (still loaded down with all my ****, of course) back to the train station. I made it to Jerusalem about an hour after the buses stopped running, so I had to take a taxi to Rabbi Tzvi's place (where I had an invitation to spend Shabbat dinner with him, his family, and Jeff and Roland from the Taglit ...

... denn d** endlos lange Strand ist ein** d** besten des Landes und von keinem Punkt in d** Stadt weit.

Somit habe ich nun auch das letzte Puzzleteil Israels gesammelt und glaube nun behaupten zu koennen, dass ich nach ueb** neun Wochen ein bisschen Ahnung vom Land habe. An keinem and**en Stop auf mein** Reise habe ich mehr Zeit v**bracht wie hi**, obwohl ich wed** Jude auf Heimat**kundung, noch Christ auf Pilg**fahrt war, und damit in keine d** beiden groessten ...

... stricken, underdeveloped or third world. The buildings continue to crumble, children run around dirty and sick with anemeia because of the occupation, which includes this siege. Anyway, it's almost time to leave behind my beautiful house (it has a pool, a huge yard, I think 4 floors) and my wonderful host family (the mother just gave us jam to take to our own mothers). Although my trip is far from over, this journey is over. No matter how ...

... became clear that El Al did not translate to "Most High" in English, but rather "Flying Daycare." I was told later by one of our group that there were 41 infants on board. Based on the number of strollers and crying babies, I found this incredible yet probably accurate. At one point during a fitful sleep, I was awakened to the crying of 3 different babies at the same time. Sleep would not come easy, despite the eye shade, neck ...

... to walk along the beach and I recognized the spot immediately as the place where I'd been on the Birthright trip. Almost as if on cue, we spotted a Taglit bus on the walk back and sure enough, there was the hotel. I only mention this because of my ongoing theme of "accidentally" standing in places where I had previously stood (briefly) on the trip--it's hard to describe the strangeness of it. It's like, I see these Birthright kids, and then I ...

... were you in Jayyous?" asked the young Israeli soldier while I was detained behind the Wall last week. "Don't you know they're all terrorists?" It blows my mind! What the Palestinian people have to put up with - the ethnic cleansing, occupation, the apartheid system, the land confiscations, the house demolitions, the siege, the killings, the torture, the discrimination, the rocks thrown at their children ...

... place were in both english and hebrew which I thought was pretty neat. They fed us almost immediately, a heated-up frozen dinner of pasta and some other stuff. I tried to start a movie and passed out before I could really get into it (it was a long day). I have been doing some yoga recently, but I could never imagine the crazy positions I had to get into to try and sleep... I was so sore when I got off the plane because I actually slept ...