I’ve been here in Israel for about 2 weeks or so and theres so much to write about, I don’t even know where to begin… so I’ll just start at the begining.

Instead of going into detail about the birthright trip I will briefly go over the events.
We land at Ben Gurion airport after a very long, bumpy flight and were greeted by an organizer that immedietly made us feel welcome and somewhat proud to be jewish. From then we went to a nice Mexican? resturant in Tiberias and then to our nice little kibbutz where we stayed for 3 nights, right on the coast of the Sea of Gallelie (kineret). Over the next few days we hiked up and down a few mountains whos names escape me right now. We also wandered through the mystical city if Tzfat, which was pretty amazing. Thats the first 3 days in a nutshell, and I’m definetly forgetting ALOT.

Later on we headed off to Jerusalem and met up with our new Isreali friends on the street. We played a few icebreaking games in the middle of the road and occasionally had to break for groups of people to walk through and the odd car or two. After that we headed into the old city, where we were rushed around and diddn’t really get much info on what we were seeing but it was still nice to look at. At one point we were told to blindfold our eyes and hold hands with each other. I had no idea what was going on at this point, but being blindfolded is usually a good time so I went along with it. As we stubmled blindfolded up and down stairs, around blind corners and into walls, I was told to remove the blindfold. And low and behold, right in front of us was a spectacular view of the Western Wall (kotel). There were people praying all over the place and sacraficing lambs and chickens as far as the eye can see… well, maybe not sacraficing lambs and chickens, but they were preying. I thought the whole blindfold thing was a really neat way of introducing us to the Kotel, especially those of us who have never seen it before.
The next day we went to the holocaust memorial museam, which was one of the nicer of the holocaust museams that I’ve been to. They really put alot of thought behind everything they do. Even the arcitecture is a symbol of the jewish people and our future. Sometime after the holocaust museam we went back to the Kotel for Shabbat services, which was pretty wild in terms of more people running all over the place and sacraficing bigger animals like elephants and dragons (okay, I lied about that again too). From there we walked back to the Hotel, it was a nice, but VERY slow walk. Later that night we ventured around the kibbutz compound and got word that there was a local bar nearby. We eventually found what was a bomb shelter with loud beats blasting out of it. After a few drinks we attempted to stumble back to the hotel only to be cut off by fences everywhere we turned. Luckily we found some more sober birthrighters heading back to the hotel and they seemed to know the way, so we followed.

Eventually, somehow, we made it to the bedouin tents where we learned about their history, culture, heard their music and ate their food. They have some neat set of rules that they use when someone comes to stay, for example you must cough 3 times before entering a tent and if you overstay your welcome they won’t directly ask you to leave, they simply fill up your next cup of tea to the top (as a sign that one should leave). We took part in fake military drills and I may have broken Emma’s shoulder.. sorry emma 🙁 Then we drank, smoked narghilla and had fun by the fire all night long.

Next stop was… uhh…. the dead sea I think. After hiking a few moutains earlier that day (cant remember the names, but they sure were beautiful) we finally make it to the dead sea. As we raced the sun to the beach we barely made it just in time. We only had a few minutes of salting before the sun had dissapeared behind the mountains. It was tons of fun to float around and pretend to defy gravity before we were quickly rushed out. On a sadder note, just before heading into the Sea we had to say goodbye to our new Israeli friends. I had tons of fun hanging out with them and learned lots of new things. It was also interesting to get a different perspective on life in Israel from someone closer to my own age. It was also fun listening to them talk openly about us canadians and them forgetting that I mostly understand what they are saying… but at least they didd’t say anything too bad.

Whith the soldiers now gone, we headed to tel aviv on our own. Tel Aviv was mostly raining and there isn’t much to see there. So we just had a good time on our own, going to some local pub and attempting to check out other scenes while avoiding the rain. We also got a very brief and soggy glimpse of Jaffa, but then retreated to the dry cover of some mall where I tried McDonalds here for the fist time (since I was last here)… it wasn’t so good.

So theres the very vuage, rushed, and broken synopsis of the Birthright trip. I know I’m definetly missing out on alot and there are some great details that are too much to recall right now. Maybe someone can fill me in if i missed something big and important.

oh yes, and we went up Mt Arbel.

END