This past weekend, we had a chance to catch up with a group of old friends. On Friday, my friend Noam and Valerie, his girlfriend, came to Jerusalem to visit us and to get ready for a cross-Israel bike ride. Seems like everytime we get together, there is always something else going on that is distracting us. Last year, Noam was at the wedding, but we were running around trying to see everyone. In June, we were both teaching and working at the Teva Seminar for Jewish Environmental Education. So needless to say, it was great to have some quality time with them and to get to know Val.

We also got to spend shabbat with some other old friends from when I was working at Teva. A few years back, a bunch of co-workers made aliyah, became Israeli citiznes, and are now living in and around Jerusalem. With Noam in town, we decided to all get together for Shabbat. It is amazing how things can change so much in 6 years, yet remain the same. Shabbat included 3 kids running around, yet the Teva-niks were still the same amazing people.

A nice thing about having Noam around is that he knows Jerusalem pretty well. So he took us into the Arab shuk, market, for some delicious dessert that I can’t remember the name of. We went to this place that is called ‘The Little Wall’. Basically, the Western Wall where Jews pray is a small part of the overall wall that the Orthodox run and manage. The ‘Little Wall’ is a stretch further north that is not run by the Orthodox. So it has the advantage that men and women can pray together and you can also pray in your own way without feeling like you’re going to be harassed by the religious Jews.

Football

Football went a lot better this week. We still got killed, but at least we scored a touchdown this time. As for me, I can actually walk today, and my muscles aren’t as sore as they were last week.

Hiking

This weekend, I’m going on a two-day intensive hike with an Israeli hiking club. I know one other English speaker, also a former Teva-nik, on the hike. Unfortunately, none of the HUC students could join us this time.

Google Translate

One of the difficulties I keep running into is all hebrew websites. For instance, the registration form on the hiking club’s website is all in hebrew. How do I fill out the form, if I can’t read it. Then I discovered that Google Translate now does Hebrew to English. You can either copy or paste the hebrew in, or you can direct the program to a specific web page, and it translates it for you. It’s not perfect, but takes a lot less time then going to the Hebrew-English dictionary. Here is the above registration form in english. Not bad, huh?

A Jessica update

Most of the updates have been about me, so here is some info about Jess. She’s busy. Between school, homework, her community service projects, and the community choir that she is a part of her time disappears quickly. On top of it all, HUC encourages them to go to a bunch of other programs during their free time. So this Friday (while I’m on my hike), she is going to be busy with HUC programs pretty much the entire day.

As for school, she is still enjoying it. She describes it as ‘High School’. School starts at 8:30 and normally goes to 4:30. They have different classes with different teachers. They have lockers and a cafeteria. Everyone takes out in the quad between classes, etc. Like High School, there are some classes and teachers she likes better then others, but is still learning a ton.

Hopefully, Jess will have some free time and be able to give an update of her own…but until then…you’re stuck with me.