It's hard to believe I've been back from my trip for almost seven weeks now.  Time really flies – one of the many cliches that I'm finding to be so true.  The grass is always greener on the other side is another.  I suppose their axiomatic nature is why they're cliches.  But I think they get an undeserved bad rep.  Sometimes the cliche is just the right way to express something; I don't care if my fifth grade teacher recommended against them.  In either case, my mom and sister Emily arrived to Israel yesterday morning, and I thought it'd be wise to write an entry before we fill up our schedule and I have too much material.  

As I said, I got back from my trip about six weeks ago.  In truth, though, I've been 'tripping' continuously for almost four months now.  Every day something happens which, even if I don't realize it at the time, affects me in some way.  As each day passes I like it here more and more.  Israel is so small.  Smaller in area even than New Jersey.  There are people here from every degree of the globe.  The community is unbelievably eclectic, particularly in Jerusalem.  They call America the diverse melting pot.  But the diversity here is so much more prevalent because of the size, or lack-there-of.  I mean to say that in the U.S., the Hispanic community, for example, while representing a significant portion of the population, is located primarily in one area, the Southwest.  Of course, it's a natural human, even animalistic, tendency for groups to stick together (as far as I've ascertained in my 20+ years).  Here, though, there's just no option for groups to be secluded.  The diversity is manifest even from something so trivial as sitting on a bus.  It's easy to get lost in the nature of the Jewish state and feel that there's a type of unity which supersedes any notion of diversity.  Yet, even disregarding the non-Jewish population, there's an extraordinary plethora of backgrounds, cultures, lifestyles, all which blend together within the lens of this place yet retain their own uniqueness.  It can easily be disregarded, but in reality the collision of cultures permeates the air, and is in fact illuminated by the select commonalities and stark nationalism.  Additionally, there is so much to do here.  Unbelievable natural beauty: The lunar-like expanse of the Negev, whose vastness the mind has trouble wrapping around, yet whose endlessness is beautiful; the Sea of Galilee in the north, whose glisten symbolizes its nature as a diamond of life in the middle of an arid dust-bowl; the mountains which scatter the country, whose height has been utilized for thousands of years for wartime advantage by some and spiritual journeys by others.  And of course the man-made history: Relics from before the common era, telling stories of ancient times and ancient peoples who paved the way for civilization as we know it, right alongside recent historical trends which still are prevalent today.  

So, overall, I'm having a really great time here.  The country itself is amazing, I've really enjoyed spending time with my friends that I have who live here, and the new friends I've made through my program are amazing people from all over the US and Canada, and elsewhere, who I hope to stay in touch with for my entire life.  Despite all this, I've decided to study in Madrid, Spain next semester.  It's going to be extremely bittersweet leaving here on the morning of December 31.  I'll miss my friends, the country, the culture.  It'll be depressing.  But then I'll be moving to a completely new culture, with new friends and new experiences.  Sometimes I wake up here in the morning sad that I'll be leaving so soon, but it helps to remember that before I came here I wasn't so keen on leaving Ann Arbor.  It's interesting comparing my feelings prior to leaving for Israel and prior to getting to Spain.  In the former, I was in the mindset of going for an entire year.  I'd been there before and I had friends who I'd hoped to see much of.  Thus I had myriad expectations.  Looking back, I think some of these expectations, particularly regarding the level to which I'd see my friends, played a large role in affecting my first couple weeks here, in which I was often disappointed and unsure of my purpose.  Eventually, though, I think I was able to let go of these and just roll with it, and I haven't turned back since.  Now, approaching Spain, I'm hardly even thinking about it.  I'm excited, but due to the combination that a) I've never been there before and b) there's too much to do here to think about a different world, I have practically no expectations.  My man Ricky will be there on the same program, with his twin brother Matt, who's also a boss, so I'm excited about that.  It'll be a crazy year, and I'm not even halfway through...

I've started classes here.  Well, we're in the fifth or sixth week.  They're okay.  Meh.  The school-week is Sunday-Thursday because of Shabbat, but my schedule is such that I don't have class on Thursdays.  The classes I'm taking are: Foreign Policy of Israel (my favorite), Hebrew (required), Israeli Literature, Jews of the Greco-Roman World, and an academic component to the internship I'm doing, which I'll discuss next paragraph.  The material is overall pretty interesting, but the biggest difference between here and Michigan is the teachers; to put it bluntly (and accurately), they suck.  Wildly unorganized.  Sometimes torturously boring.  They're nice people, but they just don't know how to teach.  Thus, my classes have for sure been the worst part of my experience.  But they're easy, and my grades don't transfer back to school (only the credit), so I'm enjoying diverging from my studious nature and kicking back and living it up.  I must say, though, that it is rather incredible that in one day I'll learn about various conflicts and confrontations in and around Jerusalem between Greeks and Jews in 500 BCE, then two hours later learn about the battles over it in the 1948 Independence and 1967 6-Day War, then walk back to my apartment with a view of the entire epicenter right in front of me.  It's another one of the ineffable sensations that I've been experiencing.  

I'm doing an internship, facilitated by the Rothberg program, with the Ethiopian National Project, which is an organization that seeks to provide social and academic assistance to the Ethiopian Jewish population to help them assimilate into Israeli culture while still maintaining their own roots.  It's been a really amazing experience.  My role for them is to a) visit various youth centers and programs and write about them for the ENP publications, such as their blog,  and b) teach one of the guides how to speak English.  I've primarily done the latter; for the past couple weeks I've taken an hour+ bus ride to Ashkelon (just northeast of Gaza) to meet with Eli Melech, a 35-ish Ethiopian G, and give him English lessons.   He speaks the Ethiopian language Amharic along with Hebrew, so if he doesn't understand something (which happens often; I speak Hebrew better than he does English), we'll meet in the middle and I'll do my best to explain in Hebrew.  Last week we went over the use of "to be" in English, which is not used in present-tense in Hebrew.  It felt rewarding to hear Eli Melech's diction progress from "I teacher" to "I am a teacher."  Along the way, I've learned about his and others' epic journey from Ethiopia to Israel in the 1984 Operation Moses, trekking through the perilous Sudan desert with a group of 60 or so people, under constant threat of looters (seeking both possessions and women), lacking food and water, until ultimately being picked up on a plane from a dangerous Sudanese refugee camp, and transported to Israel in a completely gutted aircraft to fit the record-setting number of airplane passengers.  I've heard other stories, such as those of some of the teenagers to whom ENP especially seeks to assist in hopes that their children won't require the same programs, many of whom have come in the past ten years, leaving behind family and friends to arrive to where they feel their true home is.  It's amazing to be exposed to all of it; I'd been familiar with the phenomenon of the Ethiopian-Jewish immigrant, but the phenomenon is now more personal, more real.  It's an integral part of Israeli society and policy, and I'm getting a unique opportunity to delve into it.  

I've had some really great encounters with various saintly people.  My friend Mickey, from Jerusalem, has been in Germany the entire time I've been here (he's coming back November 30), but that didn't stop me from meeting up with his parents and sister and having a wonderful Friday night shabbat dinner at his house, and going out to town with his sister Jennie and her friends.  I also went back to Haifa and met up with a nice, elderly couple, Ruthie and Jacob, with whom I was set up by a distant relative in Michigan.  They were extremely welcoming and seemed to relish the opportunity to treat me like a grandson, feeding me to my heart's content and offering various life lessons, such as the dangers of cell-phone waves and using a water-bottle too many times.  Jacob took me for a nice ride through a mountain pass which he explained to be often ignored by tourists.  It was beautiful, sharply reminding me of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  The next day, I met up with my friend Daniel, who I'd met two summers before in my first year working at camp.  I went around with him and his army friends to a beautiful park/garden and to a very chic area called Zichron Yakov.  We ate at a nice restaurant and all had a ball passively retaliating to the negative vibes we were getting from our admittedly hot Israeli waitress.  It was a nice weekend.

I also went to the Old City with my man Julian and, after taking in the unique scene of hoards of Hassidic Jews gettin' their prayer on (some with a groovy hip-swing), we were hooked up by the Student Center with a family who lives within the walls of King David for a bangin' Friday night Shabbat dinner.  It was a modern-orthodox family, a young couple with two young children.  The man, originally from South Africa, now studies Judaism at Yeshiva for his career, and the woman is a US emigrant.  The food was terrific and bountiful, and I took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions about Judaism and the lifestyle of an observant Jew.  It was interesting hearing his ideals and practices, and he answered many questions which could have perhaps offended a less progressive, open-minded man.  It didn't feel like proselytization, but rather a welcomed discussion and unique opportunity to learn about a lifestyle and ideology with which I was largely unfamiliar.  

I've received some terrific hospitality in Tel Aviv, particularly from my friend Ronen, who's let me use his place, two blocks from the beach, as if it were my own, and my friend Nir and his family, who have done likewise and have hosted me for multiple delicious dinners.  They're great friends and they've been nothing but family to me.  I'll miss them.  

Jerusalem's night-life I've found to be hit-or-miss.  On some nights, such as the last two, it's totally dead.  Particularly on top of the cold, which seems to affect the Israeli blood much worse than it does mine (they call themselves tough; psh, try out a winter in Ann Arbor), some nights even the often-bustling Ben Yehuda area is ghostville.  Other nights, though, you'll find a jackpot out of nowhere.  A couple friends and I went to a Black Party in an underground parking garage and had an awesome time grooving to good tunes (Balkan Beat Box) and had no difficulty to take notice of the plethora of beautiful Israeli women around us.  Another night, my boys Jacob, Julian, and I went to a concert at a bar and saw two very... curious bands.  Honestly, they were just so off-color and unique that I couldn't make up my mind.  The first band was almost overwhelmingly hipster.   The lead singer was an Israeli who sang in English with a British accent, reminding me of the band Caesars and their song 'Jerk it Out.'  At points he would say things which made us think that he thought it was English, but it just... wasn't.  The chorus of one song, for instance, was the repetition of something along the lines of, "Energy Mosserelator."  He was overtly flamboyant, too, at one point remarking, in Hebrew, "My mother thinks I'm gay... I'm cool with it."  After they left the stage, it was humorous seeing Jacob's reaction to it; he was simply the definition of bop – the bounce in his step was unparalleled by anyone's I've ever seen.  He loved them.   Not the next band, though.  This was a 3-man band, with an unreal drummer, a decent bassist, and a guy dressed up in an octogenarian suit who screamed phrases (in Hebrew) like, "I ALSO HAVE LEGS! (YESH LI GAM ET HA'REGLAYIM!)"  They were kind of terrifying, but also funny at points, as far as I could discern.  It couldn't have been more obvious that they needed a guitarist, though, as the bassist wasn't nearly good enough to carry the music himself.  Jacob's reaction turned a complete 180º, and at one point he even had to leave.  I still couldn't say how I really felt about the bands; confused, maybe?  Either way, it was a fun night with good friends.  

One weekend, about two weeks ago, I signed up for a hike in the Eilat Mountains, in the very southern point of Israel.  A couple of my good friends did likewise, and we together struggled to make it to the 6:30 departing bus Friday morning.  We were led by a fantastic guide, a late-20s Israeli who really loved what he did.  The trail we took was absolutely beautiful.  Breathtaking views of the contrasting colors of the granite, limestone, and sandstone made the steep ascents completely worthwhile.  At certain points, we could see the city of Eilat, with all their tourist hotels and buildings, as well as the developed Jordanian city of Aqaba.  Our guide explained that along the border, called the Jordan Valley, there was a large crack several eons ago, whose effects still prevail, with the Dead Sea in the middle of the country and the Sea of Galilee in the north, all along the same longitude.  It was a rather rustic trip; we made all our meals along the way, used mama nature for our bathroom, and slept outside (the desert is COLD at night!).  As we hiked, the paths reminded me greatly of my time in the snowy Rocky Mountains.  I really enjoyed straying a bit from the line, swinging out to either side, up a mountain-face or down around a slightly different route, similar to what you're able to do when snowboarding.  I got a kick out of the contrasting image of the snow-covered mountains in my mind and the hot, dry, yet equally beautiful ones in front of me.  It made me miss snowboarding a lot; it's gotta be one of my top-5, maybe even top-3, favorite things to do.  Hiking's up there, too, especially hikes like this.  

I was offered to join up with an archaeology class for a field trip to the Old City of Jerusalem, and ended up incredibly pleased that I did.  Piecing all the eras together, going back into the First Temple Period circa 800 BCE, up through more recent days, and having all this evidence right in front of you was really amazing.  Contemplating also how it all fit in with other eras around the world had a big effect on my opinion of ancient history.  I'd been thinking that it's just impractical and essentially useless, carrying none of the value of studying contemporary history.  But with this rare opportunity field trip, seeing ancient walls from 2700+ years ago, how the city has continually been built upon itself over and over, I was really interested and even amazed.  I'm in a great place to be studying ancient history, and this field trip really highlighted that, along with just the overall intrigue and prominence of where I'm at.  I've been saying for awhile now that I'm eager to see how I feel about Israel – the culture, the people, the history – once I'm gone.  It's things like what I've just discussed whose weight I feel will only be really felt and appreciated once it's no longer just a stone's throw away (with minimal gravity working against the throw.  But still, damn close).  

Mommy and Emmy are now gone, and we had a terrific time together.  I'll write about it soon and add pictures to this blog, particularly of the Eilat Mountains.  Tonight, I'm going to see Shotei Ha'Nevua (The Fools of Prophecy), my favorite Israeli band by far and arguably the best Israeli band ever.  AND Mickey comes home today!  So excited.  Going to be a terrific last month...