Tales from the Holy Land: Day 35 - Swimming, Spices, Pork and Puzzles

First, administrative news: you can now comment even if you don't have an account. This is to make it easier, but I'd still kind of like to know who says what, so please sign your comments if that's not too much trouble.

Anyways, moving on. Despite getting to bed a bit late after a chat with my parents last night, I awoke early to head to the pool with Asaf for some laps. We left at 9, but unfortunately when we got there and I tried my best to be sneaky, I was unable to enter the pool area without being noticed, and had to pay to get in for the day. Sadness. I had brought the goggles and swim cap Asaf had lent me which are his sister's spares, but the goggles were sadly broken, a fact I only discovered as we were about to get into the indoor pool. Luckily Asaf had other spares with him, and located some in the bottom of his bag which had holograms of piranas on them. They were definitely hardcore.

We swam for a bit, but the lap pool filled up to the point where we couldn't go the pace we wanted. So we grabbed our stuff and headed for the outdoor pool. As we were putting on our sunscreen, though, they removed the lane ropes, opening up the whole pool for free swim. This was problematic for laps, so we decided to work a bit on Asaf's butterfly and flip turns, then swam a few obstacle-filled laps before having a breath-holding contest which Asaf definitely won.

Once we'd dried off and showered, I got some falafel and we both got malawah, a doughy pastry-like thing. It was pretty good but very flaky and messy, and I couldn't finish mine so I brought it home. Since I had woken up so early, after the walk back to Clore I took a nice afternoon nap, then woke up again and went up to the lobby to hang out. I blogged about the last two days and went through all my photos, and chatted with Zvonimir and others. The circle got larger as the day went on, and eventually the evening arrived. Stephen suggested havdalah, so we went down to get his cup, candle and very fancy McCormack container of whole cloves (a "spice box"), and recruited Rachel, her friend who was visiting, Maxime, and Oren to join in. Once we lit the candle we began to worry about the smoke detector, so we headed outside and stood in a circle to do the prayers, using tunes and swaying in a way very reminiscent of Camp Ramah. It was nice.

We headed back inside and sat chatting a bit more, and I continued blogging until I ran out of power. When I went down to my room to get my adapter, I happened to look at my phone and noticed a few missed calls. The first was Nitzan, who told me when I returned his call that he had meant to invite me to dinner with some friends at Yaron and Rotem's apartment. The invitation was still open, so I changed and started the walk, during which I returned the other call (my parents, about shipping me my chalk bag (yay!)).

I called Nitzan when I was close by to let me up, and he came down and walked me in. Yaron and Rotem live only a 5-minute walk from campus, which is nice because they both are students here. Their apartment was lovely and spacious, and, having the impecable timing I do, I arrived just before we all sat down to eat. Yaron is the cook of the couple, and a very capable one at that. We had rice, dumplings, pork (!) in a sweet sauce, and a chicken and vegetable dish.

After clearing the dishes we decided to turn on the air conditioning and sat in the living room talking. Dessert eventually happened, and consisted of a cheesecake (which apparently improves with age) and chocolate cake (which apparently is a hit because it's standard kindergarten fare here and then disappears for the rest of your life). Both were great, and afterwards we sat some more. Eventually Rotem broke out a few three-dimensional puzzles (wooden blocks and such, and a terra-cotta face thing which I really can't describe). We all took turns trying them except our hosts. Surprisingly, I finished all of them relatively quickly. The others completed some of them as well, but Nitzan unfortunately resorted to making his own "creative sculptures" with the pieces.

Eventually it got late, and some people had early lectures the next morning, so we all said our thank-yous and departed. Back at Clore, most people had gone to bed, but I caught Ari (who had recently returned from a weekend with his family). We chatted a bit before I went to sleep.

To continue pictures from last Thursday...

...behold, the Dead Sea!