Work. work. dead sea. work.

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Trip Start Sep 03, 2006 Previous
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  Arad, Israel
Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Back from a crazy weekend, back from a relaxed life and back into the crazy world of my work. It's Wednesday, been 4 days of work since the weekend and things sure have changed... we'll take this one day at time.
Sunday: Got back from Jerusalem the night before, woke up at our usual time of 6 this morning and we are exhausted. Same old same old morning and bus routine, always entertaining, now today, we weren't going to put up with Mya (this other lady who took over the top position while Gabi was off on our breaks... she definitely went on power trips with us) and our head boss, Yakov (Jacob in English) told us to just go hiking with some of the other volunteers (the two people whom we met at the very beginning who are volunteering instead of doing the army, Yael and Michael). Well, Mya being the crazy woman she is, decides to make us do weeds anyway, but we weren't about to let her get away with it. We told her that Yakov told us to just go hiking with Michael and finally she let us go hiking with Yael and Simon (the Bedouin, but actually we just found out his name is really Salimon), Michael ended up being in the other place. So we got to hike with them, cut some of the plants away from some of the trails, pick up trash and go swimming in some of the springs, it was definitely a very fun and relaxing day. Only bad thing that happened with me, while trying to out do the Bedouins crazy climbing skills and climb up a huge rock, I slipped in between some rocks and scrapped up my leg pretty good, it hurt the rest of the way, especially when going through the water which in that case it stung; it's looking a lot better now though. We got to play in two very beautiful, relaxing, and quiet springs (because these are the farther ones that a lot of tourists don't go to); once again, one of the best days yet.
Monday: Same morning routine, don't think I really need to go over this one again. Today was different though, today we'd be working back at Wadi David again (before we were working at Wadi Arugot, the smaller of the two sites) and we were going to sweep/rake the dirt/rock paths! Now lets think over this, a rock/dirt path and our job is to sweep away the rocks, hmm not too great of a job. We did that for about 2 hours (there's a nice example video of how it's done so be sure to check that out ha.) and it really wasn't that bad since us three girls keep each other very entertained in boring situations such as this one. After that, we took a lunch break and swam some in the spring until a group of about 40 annoying high schoolers (funny that I can now say that...) came into the spring and disturbed the moment of silence and peace that we did have. So we decided to head back, found Yakov who then told us to just take the rest of the day off and go to the beach, so we headed off to the Dead Sea! The Dead Sea is right across the street from En Gedi, we were walking along the sidewalk to head to the public beach but there was a dead end in the sidewalk and you had to walk on the highway to get around so instead we decided to just sit on one of the bus stop benches for about an hour, enjoy the nice breeze, watch cars go by. We even took a fake picture of us hitchhiking to show our counselor since of course it's not allowed with the program. After lounging around, we then headed back to the main place, boarded our bus and then got ready for our first shook (market in English) visit in our lovely city of Arad. Since we had no clue how to get there, the Salimon (the Bedouin) showed us once we arrived to the city and this place was crazy. Fruits, vegetables, candies, shoes, clothes, everything everywhere with people yelling to buy this and sell that and man was it a city event. I bought some pistachios and they tasted absolutely delicious so it was an excellent buy. We mainly just went there to check it out, get a look around, actually explore the city some which we haven't been able to in a while and then Salimon invited us back to his apartment for some tea, which we so gratefully accepted the invite. Now, in case some of you don't know, the Bedouin people (ones who live out in the tents in the middle of the desert) are well known for their tea and their great hospitality and we received all of that. He had the tea all set up and we sat around his table, he poured it for us, it was absolutely fantastic. I've been getting a little sick with a soar throat lately so the tea felt great on my throat, nice and hot all the way to my stomach. Then the entertaining stuff began, Salimon let us play with his gun. Now don't fret, yes they are real guns, but they weren't loaded and he knows how to handle them; we were being safe. Me and Micah of course got really excited with this opportunity (because it's a rule that anyone in the army that is carrying around the gun can't let anyone else touch is except for themselves, so all of the medics and guys we've had before to watch over our groups would never let us play with their guns) and we took pictures... lots and lots of pictures. It was just exciting, don't worry, I'm not obsessed with guns now and I'm not going to go out and play with them all the time, it was just a rare opportunity that I had to take advantage of. So after some tea drinking, music listening, gun playing fun times, we had to head back to our apartments cause our counselor was meeting us tonight to talk about things and what not. We said our goodbyes, and he was even so kind enough to walk us to the taxi station place to get us a ride home, so generous. We then got back to the apartments, had some talks with our counselor, went into our room, got ready for bed and fell fast asleep. Overall today was definitely one of the better days from the week, a day well done.
Tuesday: Perhaps the second, maybe even first, best day that we've had yet at work, same morning routine, of course. For our first task, we sweeped and raked the dirt/rock paths: of rocks. After that, we headed to the office area/entrance where we met the seed lady. She's this lady from Russia who is in charge or collecting seeds, planting them, basically taking care of the plants in the entire complex and making sure that certain endangered species live on; yep, this is who we were going to be working with for a while. She assigned me and Micah the task of sorting all of these different seeds in alphabetical order and then counting out the seeds; the largest amount of seeds I ended up cutting was 1,294 seeds: don't be too jealous of my task. After about 2 hours of the seed labor, Michael (our 20 year old Israeli friend) came by and saved us and took us to the Dead Sea. This time we'd actually be able to make it all the way to the public beach area since he's the Israeli and knows how to walk on the highway safely. We made it around, alive, and headed to the beloved beach where everyone but me jumped in. If anyone knows about the Dead Sea, since there's so much salt in it, if you have any sort of small cut it'll burn really bad once you get in, well, in case you have forgotten, I had a giant scratch going across the side of my leg from the rock so I was definitely not about to stick my leg in that liquid of death. So I just watched Lauren, Micah and Michael float around, I took some pictures, just enjoyed it all. They then got out and we headed up to the sitting shade area where Lauren whipped out her guitar and played some songs wow we just enjoyed the beach scene, it was very nice. We then headed back to En Gedi because our bus was about to come get us to take us home and know one wants to miss a free ride home. Now, to our surprise, Michael was actually coming on our bus (he lives at the field school right next to En Gedi) because he was going to be staying over at Salimon's apartment for the night which only meant one thing for the night: En Gedi staff party at the Bedouins place! So we hurried home, went to class (Micah and I actually had our first Hebrew class tonight, so exciting to learn new languages) and after that we met up with Lauren, got a taxi and headed over to Salimon's house for yet another well hosted night there. It was definitely an eventful night. The boys cooked us dinner, a hamburger like type of meat, in some delicious pita bread with lots of vegetables and some tea to go along with it along and some pickles... I have never been so full in a long time as I was after that meal. They had also bought two bottles of the infamous Israeli beer, Maccabi beer, to enjoy for the night (which two bottles for 6 people, 3 of which are guys... not to much can happen with that, it was just fun to finally try the beer) and then we turned on some of his Bedouin/Arab music and danced and talked and practiced are new awesome Hebrew skills; it was definitely a fun night for bonding with our co-workers, testing the language and just having a relaxing night. After a couple of hours being there, our night ended a little earlier then normal only because I'm a little sick and we are sooo sleep deprived and exhausted from work that staying out late wasn't really an option our bodies had in mind. The night was fun and very entertaining, especially with Salimon doing some crazy tricks with his body (we've figured it out, Bedouins can do anything) so the day, overall, was very successful and one of the best. Then, of course, same old night routine, we crashed into bed and none of us were looking forward to our wake up, just a few 6 hours later.
Thursday: Today wasn't entertaining at all, we basically spent a lot of time with seed lady and today I ended up counting 7,746 of this one type of seed... yea, tough stuff for the brain. Then we just hung around in the main area where the store is and stuff. I don't know if I have mentioned him yet, but we made good friends with the concession stand and store man. His name is Tom; he's 24 and is very, very nice. Basically, we entertain each other when one is bored, so it works out very well, plus he gives us really good discounts on stuff so that's always good. So today, for about the last 2 hours, it was just us sitting in that area, hanging out with Tom, all of us girls laughing at the most ridiculous things that really aren't that funny (being in the sun for 10 hours does that to ya), once again having fun with Tom and really just having a laid back day. Then of course, we got on the bus, headed home and here I am now. We just found the computer lab room in the complex where there is internet, definitely not the greatest, but hopefully it'll do.
This weekend is the Jewish Holiday, Rosh Hashana, which is like the Jewish New Years. I'm spending it with two of my friends from Texas, Chanel and Max, with Chanel's family, so I'm excited to be celebrating the holiday; Israeli style. We actually, surprisingly, got the day off tomorrow so that won't make us do everything in a rush before our bus leaves and we can just take it slow. I have to go pack now, but an update about this weekend should hopefully come soon (internet is a special treat in the place we live, so updating and being able to get on at all is very rare, I apologize in advance) so happy early Jewish New Year!

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tea with our bedouin friend!	the hang out room	the kitchen	the shuk in arad

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