Last week was rather uneventful, but had a great weekend, and let's not forget purim! Here goes the story. On wednesday we had a great time having a bonfire just off campus in the national park (which surprisingly is legal here), we sat around for several hours singing songs and eating גריני חמנייה (garinay chemniah--sunflower seeds, an extremely popular snack food here). On thursday we walked into hebrew class to find a new teacher! A great surprise considering our last one was not so good and the new one is phenomenal!

That evening we went to a concert in Jerusaelm by הפרויקט של עידן רייכל (The Idan Raichel Project). It was a great concert! Idan Raichel is an Israeli with awesome huge dreads, who has musicians from all over the world---people from ethiopia, yemen, uraguay, israel and other countries. They play music in hebrew, arabic, spanish, and amharic. Here everyone knows them, think like Bruce Springsteen in the states. The two women in the band---one from I'm not sure where, but she speaks spanish, and the ethiopian woman happen to be stunningly beautiful--actually he's not a bad looking guy either. I'm not sure how to further describe their music, but I highly recommend them---here's a link to some promos on their site--http://www.idanraichelproject.com/en

After the concert most people stayed in Jerusalem for a night or two. My friend Sarah and I were going to try to couch surf there, but our potential place to stay ended up falling through. Also, the main reason we were going to stay was to go see אל-אקסה (al-aqksa--the dome of the rock), but we found out that it's closed to non-muslims on fridays, so we decided just to come back the same evening. Instead on friday we went and took a hike in a park in נשר (nesher--a nearby neighborhood where my friend Omri lives with his aunt) and visited the hanging bridges there, going right over a beautiful little ravine. Then we went walking down into the ravine where we found a huge cave! Unluckily for us we had no flashlights, so we couldn't explore, so we vowed to come back on sunday. Afterwards we went down to the mall in לב המפץ (heart of the bay) and went and had a delicious dinner at a place called Black n' Burger--a great burger joint where I got a lamb burger, which was phenomenal. Afterwards we went to go see השומרים (the watchmen)--which was sooo great! Just like the graphic novel.

On saturday we went to the beach, had a very relaxing day. Then we returned to campus and realized that we had no food for dinner, and furthermore we were planning on grilling the next day before visiting our cave. We went down to the supermarket, which was lovely and bought amazing sandwich ingredients. Then my friend Omri and I ate sandwiches that were each an entire half of a loaf of bread, but not before we put on the most epic song ever---The Blood of Chu Chulain from Boondock Saints to cue our appetites---not that we needed it at that point. Then we watched When Harry Met Sally--always an excellent experience.

Sunday was great too! After waiting for 2 hours for the bus to come and it not coming we eventually took a taxi back to nesher with a little grill to make food. The night before we had bought 4 pounds of chicken wings and after eating delicious egg salad sandwiches (made with leftovers from the night before) grilled and ate for almost 3 hours in the park. Then we went and explored our cave---it was really really cool! A legit cave, and the wasp nest in the entrance gave it an edge of danger.

Class on monday was uneventful but monday evening was purim! Purim is probably the most joyful of Jewish holidays. Here's the basic story---King Ahashveros replaces his wife with a new (jewish) woman named Ester--the winner of the most beautiful woman in the kingdom competition. Ahashveros doesn't know she's jewish, which will be important later. When Ester's cousin Mordechai refuses to bow down to a government minister--Haman, he decides that all the Jews should die. After being terrified, Ester decides tell the king that she's jewish and that the Jews shouldn't die--Ahashveros agrees and haman is shamed. Like most Jewish holidays we celebrate the fact that we didn't die by eating and drinking. More interestingly, there's absolutely 0 historical evidence to support the story--I figure enough people did try to kill us throughout history that fudging the details in this case isn't too too important.

Here in Israel, purim is kinda like a cross between haloween and mardi gras in the states. People dress up in crazy costumes and drink intense amounts of alcoholic beverages---unlike in the states where people either dress up as something for halloween or not at all--many people just wear random weird things--it's a lot of fun! We went down to Tel Aviv for the evening--we had a odyssey trying to get there--I went straight from volunteering down to the bus station where I waited for 2 hours for the 10 other people I was going with to show up. Then we missed the last train and had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get the money back and eventually took a שירות (sheirut- group taxi) down to tel aviv--about a 40 minute drive. When we finally got to tel aviv it was insane, literally thousands of people in weird costumes clogging the streets so much that you couldn't walk--giant sets of speakers and bands all over the place. Our sheirut driver had to drop us off several blocks away from the main party cause the streets were so full.

After staying on the streets for hours we wandered down to the beach for sunrise. Since we didn't have a place to stay for the night we wandered back to the train station and took the train back to Haifa---arriving back at the University at 8:30 in the morning. After sleeping for just a few hours I got back up to go out to a street festival in מרכז הכרמל (Meerkaz ha'carmel--carmel center), where we went to a really cute little cafe for lunch, and then wandered through the little local park, ending up at the Haifa zoo! We wandered in the zoo for about 2 hours where there were peacocks running free, a tiger that was frighteningly close, and a really cute back of monkeys. A marvelous purim to be sure.

Today after class I went on an adventure with my friend Raya---we went to מושבה גרמנית (moshave germanit--the german colony), a little street here started by the christian german immigrants in the 1800s--it's right next to the baha'i gardens, which go all the way up the mountain. We wandered around the cute street and stopped in a cafe where we had delicious fruit juice (I had mango) and hummus and pita. The most exciting part, however, was the fact that Raya and I spoke almost exclusively in hebrew (and had legitimate conversations) for the entire four hour adventure. It felt great to realize that I could say real things in hebrew, even if it was awkward and slow. Here are some pictures!

My friend Omri, who returned to the states yesterday :(, and I chowing down on our amazing sandwiches.

Omri, Sarah and me in our cave!


The streets of Tel Aviv on Purim---note how they are PACKED. Usually those streets are for cars.


The shore of tel aviv at 4:30 am on purim.

A view across the bay at some pretty building---don't know what it is---sorry.