Our First Full Day

In attempts to combat the horrible jet-lag, we were given the beautiful opportunity this morning to sleep in.  I woke up at 9:20 to a lovely and simple granola breakfast before packing a backpack and making my way to a short class with the rest of the students.  When that was over we headed to the bus, which would take us to a wonderful park in Tel Aviv called Park Ha'Yarkon.  Walking off the bus, each student made a similarly loud sigh-like noise in response to the very surprising heat.  We grabbed backpacks, boxes full of lunch, and plastic bags with drinks and cups and headed across the huge grass field to the river which flows through the park. 

We all sat down together on a nice shady patch of grass, ate delicious Schnitzel sandwiches, and slugged down bottles and bottles of water.  After lunch we walked to an REI-sized rock climbing wall which stood in the middle of the park.  Without any questions the two staff members there- Amir and Ofir- handed each of us a harness and showed us how to put it on safely.  We all paired off because we were responsible for belaying each other... That's right- it wasn't a trained employee who held my life in his hands as I climbed to the top of a very large wall with only small plastic knobs to step and hold onto, but rather my new friend Rachel.  Good news is: we both survived! And truthfully had a fun and exciting time, at that.

After the tiresome rock climbing we made our way across a very interesting bridge.  I describe it that way only because the metal walls of the bridge had cutouts of hearts, hexagons, and magen davids.  I was quite curious about why those three shapes were chosen because as far as I could tell there is no common denominator among the three, but who knows?

We spent about an hour paddle or row boating around on the river that we ate lunch by, and let me just say: despite my ridiculous will to submerge myself in water I was able to refrain due to the deep brown color of the water.  Yucky! The four of us on the paddle boat that I was on mostly spent our time working to orient ourselves so that our boat remained underneath the shade of the bridge, but because of the current it turned out to be quite the task.  At one point when I was lucky enough to not be in the paddling seat, I got super comfortable in my seat and even started to dose off.  As I was enjoying the serenity of the river and the surrounding foliage, thinking about how un-American the experience felt to me a very large ride-the-ducks type tour boat flew past us with Flo Rida's Right Round blasting from the speakers!  And I thought I had escaped America...

When everyone finished boating, we went to a store called Yesh which is basically the Walmart of Israel.  I bought kitchen stuff, some food, and big plastic drawers to keep all my stuff organized in my baby-sized apartment. 

After a most glorious shower I was picked up by the most lovely Carol, Dahlia, and Yonit Jacobson who brought me to their wonderful apartment in Raanana for dinner with the Jacobson family!! It was so nice to be reunited with them, and I must say that Carol made a great, dairy-free dinner :).

I'm now laying in my bed and going to pass out momentarily because of the mass confusion regarding the time that is currently taking place inside of me, so I'm out for now but tomorrow is a jam-packed day in Jerusalem!