Day 34 - Independence Day

After 11 hours of sleep, I woke up to meet Ari for breakfast before he went to Jerusalem to meet friends and then his family. We both went back to Clore, he left, and I grabbed my stuff and went to work for a bit. I stayed, processing images a bit to catch up for yesterday, until a bit after noon. On my way back to Clore I called Asaf, and we met in the lobby so I could give him a CD i had made him. Then I changed and went to go meet the guys to go climbing (Nitzan, Yaron, and Ran) at 1 pm.

We went to the top roping/leading place, which was nice because it was relatively un-crowded and they had finally gotten new leading ropes. I tried the yellow route twice but got really stressed, so I took a long rest. Ran and I belayed each other on some top-roping routes, then I led one I had done before and one new problem. I was overly tired considering what I had done, though, so further lead-belaying lessons from Nitzan will have to wait until next time. We then bouldered for a while, and the guys each had a beer and we sat and chilled until leaving.

I returned to Clore at around 6, and showered in time to be clean and ready for the Shabbaton Stephen, Tamara, and Rachel had planned. Stephen had printed a Friday night service, in Hebrew and transliterated into English, for everyone, and he led the service and gave a brief interactive sermon about the portion. It was a great dialogue and a fun service, and there were about 12 people (but only 9 Jews, so no minyan). Afterwards, we acquired many more people as we headed down to the basement for Shabbat dinner.

Rachel had been the driving force behind the cooking, and Tamara and Stephen had done the grocery shopping. They had pushed all of the dinner tables together and set it with tablecloths and plasticware, but there weren't enough chairs, so we all grabbed some from our rooms before sitting down and filling our wine glasses. We said Kaddish and hamotzi, and began the meal with challah, pita, hummus and other spreads. Then there were two salads, rice, couscous, and chicken. We had juices and soda to drink, and cakes for dessert. Everything was delicious! We lingered for a while, talking and laughing, then cleaned up a bit before going our separate ways.

Stephen, Oren, Dan, Ari (who had gotten back in the middle of the meal), and I sat around a bit longer, having a hilarious conversation. Pretty soon, Ari, Ivonne, Dan, Joel, and I headed out to Hertzl Bar, where we met Ran, Nitzan, and a friend of Nitzan's from the army. The outing was ostensibly in honor of the United States' independence day, which was made amusing by the fact that Ari was wearing a tee shirt with a huge union jack on it (which he hadn't realized would be ironic when he put it on). We got a rather small table, but squished further around it to allow Zvonimir, Tess and Jonathan to join us. Everyone got various exciting drinks; I got a mango, pineapple, and banana smoothie which was delicious. We talked about a bunch of mostly unconnected things, occasionally jokes which are hilarious in Hebrew but just don't really translate, until a bit too late, then finally all headed home.

Pictures today are a continuation from yesterday. Behold: Ein Gedi! And Ari's outfit.

So typical of an oasis...

A hyrax

The caves in the cliffs

The first pool (Jonathan took this one)

A series of waterfalls

The second pool

The third pool

Jonathan holding a tadpole (with legs!)

A dragonfly

And finally, Ari's ironic tee shirt

(notice Dan is wearing a red, white and blue shirt like a good American)