So I havn't written in over 10 days, and I think I have some explaining to do. Here in Israel, from Rosh Hashana to yesterday is considered "Chag Season," where there is a new chag every few days. I have decided that, at least for my time in israel, not to break shabbat and that would limit my writing to 6 days a week. Between rosh hashana and now there was 2 days of rosh hashana, yom kippur, sukkot and simchas torah. but that's no excuse. i owe you guys a huge update. so here we go:
October 4th (Sunday): I wake up at 545 in the morning and board a bus with my track (Yerucham) heading due south to "the negev" aka the desert. after an hour and a half of riding the bus, we arrived at a synagogue in Be'er Sheva, the 'capital' of the negev. we daveded schacrit there, with our lulav's and everything, and had some pretty decent breakfast. i had a bagel, the first time (and last so far) since I left america. Sad :(. we then got back on the bus and headed more south. after another hour and a half, we found ourselves on a really random highway literally in the middle of nowhere, in the bus that was driving off of the road and into the desert. it then stopped after about 10 minutes of driving into the desert and dropped us off. thus begins the 3 day DESERT SURVIVAL ADVENTURE
DAY ONE: We started the hike around noon, but we started it off with a huge uphill climb. Our tour guides name is Michal, and our security guide's name is Tamir. they were both really cool, like 21 years old. the first day we hiked 5 kilometers (3ish miles?) up and down mountains. I was with my friend Adam for most of the first day. Adam and I were getting a little frustated with the slow pace of the group and the numerous amount of stops, so during most of the breaks we decided to hike up our own mountains. Some of the pictures posted are from that intense climb. while everyone was playing some stupid game with a stick, Adam, Seth Miri and I climbed up one huge mountain, then at the top we found another one, and got halfway up that one before Noah yelled at us to come down. It was right around sunset time, and it was absolutely beautiful. We kept hiking until we made it to the campsite. Night came and it quickly got dark and COLDDDD. We were expecting to have even worse food than we usually do back at beit Nativ, but it actually was unbelievable. We then made a campfire, and I played guitar for like two hours. it was amazing. once it was over, we were all absolutely exhusted. it was about 930 when we decided to call it a night. That night, the moon was unbelievably bright. We started calling it the nightlight because it really wasn't that much darker than it was during the day.
DAY TWO: Wake up at 530 AM. Davened schacrit in the desert as the sun was coming up with lulav's and all. We hiked 14 Kilometers that day, and went up one absolutely enormous mountain. We hiked up, and we ended up overlooking the biggest crater in Israel. It's a naturally formed crater, but its still really cool. We passed the Kibbutz group about halfway through the day. they told us the hardest part was still to come. We passed them and finished the final 8 KM pretty quickly, because it was all downhill. I guess they didn't realize that uphill for them was downhill for us! We arrived at the campsite and similarly to the night before, we made a campfire and I sang some songs for it. It was a really good time.
DAY THREE: Yea i realize that my summary's aren't the best, but I'll show you guys a lot of pictures in a second to make up for it. Sorry :/ It was a desert survival hike, walking over a lot of mountains, very hot sun beating down on my crispy body all day, very sweaty and dehydrated all the time. the usual. Day three ended with us reaching our final destination and getting into jeeps! the jeeps drove us for 30 minutes out of the desert and into a rest stop where we got cold cuts and juice for lunch. We made it back to base around 530, I had the best shower EVER and got to sleep around 10. I was gearing up for what was bound to be a very excited few days ahead of me: MDA TRAINING. That will be the next post, but until that goes up here's some pictures from the desert survival adventure!
No comments:
Post a Comment