Chadica.com

I was going to post the pictures from our trip to Turkey, but for some reason the software that I normally use is crashing my web browser. That is Lo Tov (not good).

So here is a link to the Flickr page instead. In the upper right corner, there is a link to a slideshow which is the easiest way to view the pictures.

Hiking near the Dead Sea

In March, Jess and I went with some friends hiking near the Dead Sea.

Trip to the Negav

At the end of March, HUC took the students on a trip to the Negav. This included going to a solar facility, hiking, hanging out in a tourist Bedouin tent, and going to 2 kibbutzim.

Birkat Hahammah

According to Wikipedia: Birkat Hachama (ברכת החמה, “Blessing of the Sun“) refers to a Jewish blessing that is recited in appreciation of the Sun once every 28 years, when the vernal equinox, as calculated by tradition, falls on a Tuesday at sundown. Jewish tradition says that when the Sun completes this cycle, it has returned to its position when the world was created.

This happened on April 7, 2009.

Paris, France

For Passover break, Jess and I met her mom and Aunt for 5 days in Paris. We explorer Musee D’Orsay, the Louvre, Versailles, Arc Du Triumphe, and eat a ton of great food. After they left, it happened that my old friend Julie and her husband were going to be in Paris for a few days, so we met up with them. Here are the pictures:

When I uploaded the entry about Africa, I left out the pictures for Zanzibar. They have now been loaded below.

Well, we are back from Africa and life has officially resumed in Jerusalem. Jess is back in class and I’m back at the laptop working. In the past few days, I’ve edited and uploaded about 180 of the 2800+ pictures that we took. I feel like they are a good sampling of all of the wildlife that we saw. We also took some very amateur video, so at some point I may edit a short movie together

I’m not really going to talk that much about non-safari stuff, since we didn’t have that much time to walk around any of the cities we were in.

You can either view the pictures here, or click the link to ‘view the slideshow on Flickr’. I’d recommend doing that as the pictures will be larger.

Masai Mara, Kenya

View slideshow on Flickr

Masai Mara is a national park in Kenya. It is the Kenyan part of the Serengeti. Our safari started with 3 game drives in this park. Our driver, Jackson,  was great. (He has a daughter who is 6 years old) He talked about the different animals and how they are inter-related in the great ‘Circle of Life’. We also had a Masai guide, Kim (short for something I can’t remember). Basically a native Kenyan who lives in a village outside of the park.  There is a picture of him in the slideshow.

We had the jeep to ourselves which was great!  We got to move around the Jeep and didn’t need to make room for other people.   Unfortunately,  at the same time…we didn’t get to meet anyone else and trade pictures with them. The campsite here was much better than expected. We had a permanent camp site. The tent was huge and had a separate room in the back for a toilet. Outside there was a heated shower. They cooked our meals for us and had a campfire going both nights we were there.

Highlights:

- seeing all of the animals together. Apparently, zebras have a great sense of small, so lots of other animals like to graze near them for protection.

- baby animals, especially the 3 Cheetah cubs (adorable)

- standing on the border of Tanzania and Kenya

- meeting a bunch of Kenyan’s who are studying to be guides. They were very friendly and extremely jealous that we saw male lions while all they saw were lionesses

- Watching the monkeys play in the trees

- seeing all of the vehicles crowd around the ‘unique’ animals. A driver would radio in that they saw a leopard, and then every driver in the area would go there. This helped us to see a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t normally see.

- watching a bunch of cheetah hunt. we were too far away to get any good pictures, and they didn’t catch anything, but it was still cool watching them

Lowlights

- eating some bad spaghetti sauce. Jess was sick, while both the driver and I weren’t feeling well in the morning. We skipped our last morning game drive so that Jess could have some more time away from a bouncy vehicle.

- extremely bouncy jeep. Nobody told me that I should bring elbow pads on safari

- Too many vehicles crowded around the ‘unique’ animals.

Lake Nakuru, Kenya

View slideshow on flickr

After Masai Mara, we drove north for a couple of hours to Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru is a soda lake (A lake, fed by alkaline springs, that has no outlet). Due to the nature of the lake, there are a ton of pelicans and flamingos that inhabit the shore of the lake.

Highlights

- watching a herd of zebra running through the savannah.   Every once in a while,  a couple of the zebras would attack each other. I got a picture of one of them biting another

- standing at the lookout in Baboon Cliffs we  heard some cracking branches in the trees behind us.  Then I  saw a leopard walking in the trees. We promptly got back into the jeep.

- thousands upon thousands of pelicans and flamingos

Lowlights

- Jess still not feeling 100%

- this being our last game drive with Jackson

Driving to Tanzania

The drive to the start of our next safari included great views,  incredibly bumpy roads, and a pain in the butt border crossing. In the morning we got to see Kilimanjoro which is cool because it’s the highest mountain that I’ve ever seen. We also met a bunch of people that were about to climb, or had just finished climbing the mountain.

Lake Manyara, Tanzania

View slideshow on Flickr

Of the 5 parks that we went to, this was the least exciting. Pretty much just saw some monkeys and baboons.  (However, there were some cute baby monkeys and baboons.)

This was the start of our second safari. Like last time, it was just the two of us. Although we stayed in different campsites, we kept running into the same people.   That part was nice. This time, we were actually camping. The guide set-up our tent and we slept on sleeping pads at night. There were shelters in the different campgrounds, and they served us dinner there.

Highlights

- the smallest cutest little elephant

- seeing lots of baby monkeys and baboons

- watching the male baboons fighting

Lowlight

- the realization that we didn’t like our guide that much: he definitely wasn’t as good as our previous guide

Serengeti National Park

View slideshow on flickr

The Serengiti is the same park as Masai Mara (see above), except it is the much bigger half that is in Tanzania. Throughout the year, the herds of  millions of zebra and wildebeests migrate between the 2 different parks. In January, the herds are in the Serengeti grazing.

Highlights

- watching 3 lionesses and 3 cubs, while watching a nomadic lion approach them. Nomadic lions will attack and try to kill the cubs of a tribe as they are future competition. Needless to say, the lionesses were very alert and slowly ran off with the cubs. As we were leaving, a second nomadic lion walked down the road right towards the same spot. In fact, it walked right past us, within a couple of meters.

- seeing a lion and a leopard in a tree

- the huge herds of wildebeests and zebras

- elephant knocking down a tree with it’s trunk

- listening to the gaseous sounds of the hippos (that one is all Chad)

- watching the starry night

- the rainbow that appeared at sunset

- watching a leopard and it’s cub eat a gazelle or impala

Lowlights

- our guide. he would find cool stuff, but basically drove around and didn’t tell us anything unless we asked

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

View the slideshow on flickr

Ngorongoro Crater is a huge crater with a diverse amount of wildlife. Normally, there is a huge soda lake with a ton of birds, but it’s mostly dried up right now. Needless to say, we saw several  similar animals, just with a different backdrop.

Highlights

- watching a lioness lie in the field with zebras walking toward her. then watching a warthog walk right past her.

- seeing 2 warthog piglets playing and knocking each other over

- watching the kites (birds) fly around our lunch spot

- seeing the flamingos flying in the distance

- elephant that hung out near our campsite

- beautiful sunrise (again, this was all Chad, I was asleep)

- laying in the field watching the stars

- seeing a baby rhino in the distance

Lowlights

- as much driving as we did, realizing that this was our last game drive

- the amount of dust that would fly in the window (not good for people who wear contact lens)

- having to spend 12+ hours driving back to Nairobi

Zanzibar, Tanzania

View slideshow on Flickr

So once we finished up with our different safaris, we flew to the island of Zanzibar for some R&R. According to a The Guardian, a UK newspaper, the beach we were staying at was one of the top ten beaches in the world. Nice It was definitely a beautifully white sandy beach, with very calm blue water.

Highlights:

- watching the inauguration at the bar. We sat there, watching a beautiful sunset, with CNN on the TV. As it got closer to 8pm (12pm in Washington D.C), more and more people started pulling up chairs. You could hear people from all over the world (Americans were in the minority) excitedly talking about the upcoming inauguration. During the actual ceremony and speech, everyone was clapping and really excited.

- Jess went on a discover dive (where they teach you the first of the 4 days of the scuba class, and then you dive with a dive master), and I got to dive with her. So it was fun sharing an activity that I absolutely love with her.  (and Dan, the dive master was excellent and really patient, he went out of his way to make sure that I felt comfortable… )

- at the end of the dive, we saw a pod of 30 dolphins, and I was able to jump in the water with my mask and snorkle and watch them swim around underwater

- walking down the beach at night

Lowlights

- knowing that it was the end of the vacation

Animals

If you haven’t seen this video yet, it is truly awesome. I only wish that we could have seen just a small piece of what this video shows:

President Obama

I just like the sound of those 2 words. More importantly, it was really cool to be traveling around Kenya and Tanzania because there were  Obama posters and paintings everywhere. Obama’s father was born in a village in the far west of Kenya, so the people there feel incredibly proud and excited that Obama is the president. I took some pictures of different Obama signs that I saw, but I haven’t uploaded any of them yet. It was one of the few times that I was proud of America while traveling. All the rest of the times, I felt like I had to apologize to the rest of the world for the country that I lived in, but not this time. This time, I’d say I was from America, and then we’d talk excitedly about Obama. Way to go America!

Conclusion

Well, that’s our trip. We have a ton of other pictures, so if there is a favorite animal of yours, we could definitely find a good picture to send you.

Well, it’s definitely been a couple of weeks. So here’s the update.

Christmas Eve

The strangest thing about Christmas in Jerusalem is how normal the day felt. Stores were open, people were all around. No Christmas lights, or Silent Night on an endless loop. To be honest, it didn’t feel like Christmas at all.

Since Chinese food is hard to find, and the movie theater is far away, we decided to fore go the usual Christmas Eve festivities.  So what to do instead? Well, Jess and I ended up doing different things, but in the same line of though. So what did we do? Well…we went to Midnight Mass. Ironically, in Jerusalem it seems like a cool thing to go to Midnight Mass and see how Christians celebrate. In the states, I would probably never go to Mass. Figure that out?

Well, Jess went with her friend Nikki (grew up Catholic and converted to Judaism about 4 years ago) to a service in the area, while I went with a few people to Bethlehem to see how Christmas is celebrated in the city where Christ was born.

I’m not sure what I expected in Bethlehem. First off, it’s in the West Bank. We needed to bring our passports and go through a security checkpoint to get in. Once across the fence, the entire landscape changed. We went from nicely paved roads, nicer buildings, and Hebrew signs, to very rundown, dirty, and Arabic signs. It was a bit of culture shock, and it was only about 30 minutes from where I live!

We got there a few hours early and they had this whole concert set-up. The weird part of it was, they had a lot of the groups were singing in Spanish. Huh? They would say all of these pro-Palestinian lines at the end, but again it was in Spanish, so nobody was really listening until they said something like ‘Viva Palestinian!” and then everybody would cheer.

Around midnight, we tried to get into the services, but tickets had been sold out for weeks. This is the service that a lot of the big wigs show up to. Supposedly Abbas was there. Outside of the building were a ton of dignitary limo’s with flags from all different parts of the world represented.

We were able to go into the Church of the Nativity by entering the ‘Door of Humility’. Basically it’s a door that is about 4 feet high, so you have to bow to enter or exit. From there, we were able to go to an alcove and listen in to the services, which we did for a few minutes. Unfortunately, we had no clue what was going on, so it wasn’t that impressive.

The most interesting part was just walking around and watching the people. Palestinians were walking around in Santa outfits handing out pro-Palestinian rhetoric. People were there to celebrate, others were there for the free music and festive atmosphere. It was a cold night, and tons of people were walking around selling two from what looked like the tea kettle from their house.

Jessica on the other hand, went to the entire midnight mass, and probably had a much more interesting experience since she was able to get the play-by-play.

New Year’s Eve

So one of the students organized a New Year’s Eve celebration for any of the students that wanted to join. She rented out a bar, organized the open bar, decorated the place, and bought snacks. The theme? Prom. So you know what this means? In the mighty words of Barney….SUIT UP!  So everyone got all gussied up in the finest clothes that they brought to Israel.

Ever weeks of trying to get up the courage, I finally was able to ask the girl I was interested in if she wanted to go to Prom with me. Thankfully, she hadn’t been asked yet and said yes. So Wednesday night finally came along, and I showed up to pick up my date in my finest suit. There was much dancing and hanging out with friends, and midnight came and went.

Overall, a very fun evening. To top off the evening, we caught up with almost all of Jess’s family on Skype.

Packing and Finals

So this week is Finals for Jess. She has had 2 ten page papers to finish, one oral exam in chanting Torah, and 4 additional tests. Needless to say, she has been a bit stressed. As of right now, she is over half done as she handed in both papers, took both the oral exam, and one of the written exams. I’m just tired thinking about all of the work she is doing. Right now, her and a friend are studying Hebrew in the main room.

We are also leaving for Africa late Thursday night (Jess’s last final is Thursday morning). So this week, I’ve been finishing up work and trying to remember where I placed all of the things that I want to make sure to bring with us to Kenya and Tanzania.

This will probably be the last post for a little bit. If we have the opportunity, we’ll try and post while we are traveling, but if not…there will be a long post when we get back with hopefully a ton of pictures!

So apparently, we haven’t been very vocal about our plans for winter break. Instead of telling you where we’re going…I thought I would bring in some video and just show you:

Yup, we’re going to Kenya & Tanzania! We’ll be spending 10 days on safari, followed by a couple of days relaxing on the island of Zanzibar. Our trip starts on January 9th and we will be back on Jan 23rd. Sadly, we will miss Obama’s inauguration, so hopefully I’ll be able to find an online source to watch it.

I’ll be posting pictures and travel journals to this blog, so keep checking back. We’re bringing both cameras, so hopefully we’ll get some great pictures and hopefully we’ll get some good video to put on the site also.

Last weekend, I went on a hike with an Israeli hiking club. I knew one other person on the hike who is American by birth, but has now become an Israeli citizen.  The hiking club is known for being a ‘hard-core’ hiking club. You basically hike with water and food for the day, and then end up back at camp. The next day, you do another intensive hike.

Our hike started at the Dead Sea. For those that remember, the Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth at 420meters (1377 feet) below sea level. Needless to say, it is very bizarre to hike up the side of the mountain, and get to this amazing beautiful viewpoint of the Dead Sea, and you’re still below sea level. Hiking in the desert is a beautiful experience. The harsh beauty is something that everyone should get to see. Although, everytime I’m in the desert I keep wondering, why people are fighting over this land. it’s beautiful and all….but I’d rather be fighting over a beautiful lush land with mountains and valleys, with rivers, and not a desolate wasteland. It also amazes me that people live and survive in the desert.

So the first day we hiked 10 miles and that hike was okay. The second day, we hiked 15.5 miles and it was much more intense. We gained 800meters of elevation, ending up on a peak with a beautiful panaromic view of the desert. From the peak, we could also see Jerusalem. It felt like we could have just walked there instead of back to the bus.

Overall, the people were good. I ended up hiking out with my friend, her boyfriend, and one of their friends. Her friend was gracious enough to translate what the guide was telling us and they were also nice and spoke in English for my benefit. Most of the rest of the people on the hike spoke hebrew, although would say things in Englsih to me. It was a good experience, and definitely a great way to see a different part of the country. Now that my body has recovered, I’m ready to go again….

Jessica + Chad Update

On the home front, Jess and I are both recovering from being sick. Jess got sick, and then a few days later I also got sick. It’s been going around HUC, so it was our turn. Jess also just completely a big Second Temple history test that was stressing her out. Their first big test, the teacher kind of blind sided them with all of this information that they were supposed to know, and it was very stressful and people were very upset. So, everyone was stressing that this test was going to be similar. Instead, the teacher said what was on the test, and that was what was on the test. So everyone (including Jess), felt much more confident and in better spirits after this one.

Throughout the year, the Rabbinic students and the Cantorial students pair off to lead Monday morning services. Jess’s service is on Dec 1, and she has been actively preparing for that. You think, it’s just a service, but there are a lot of prayers that they do here that we didn’t learn in our reform synagogues back home. Guess Reform Judaism is becoming more observant.

Another one of my friends was in from New York, so we got to see her for dinner. It’s always nice to see visitors who know a different part of Jerusalem then we do. It seems I always learn about a new spot, or meet some new people because of it.

Two weeks ago, my old co-worker Noam and his girlfriend, Val, came to visit. They were riding on a Jerusalem-Eilat bike ride. Well, I’d like to congragulate them, because along the way Val got a huge surprise when Noam proposed to her! On Wednesday, they are arriving back in Jerusalem, and all of the Israeli Teva-niks are getting together to celebrate their Simcha (Joy!).

So everyonce in a while, I just feel like writing about a bunch of smaller topics, so here goes.

It’s Cold

Ok, not really cold as midwest goes…but man, these buildings really don’t have insulation. It’s in the mid 60′s right now, and I’m already in sweatshirt, pants, shoes, and drinking hot tea. Of course, I could turn on the heat…but I’m stubborn and electricity is expensive.

Scuba Diving

I needed to renew my visa (it’s good for 3 months), so I headed down to Eilat for a couple of days. I made a 5 minute cross into Egypt to get my visa renewed, and also went on 3 dives. For those of you who don’t dive, 3 dives is exhausting. Not necessarily physically exhausting, but there is so much nitrogen in your system, that you just feel zonked (that is the actual clinical word for it….).

Some people go to temple, church, or a mosque to feel connected with something bigger then they are. I guess I go SCUBA diving. Diving is one of the few times in my life where my mind is just focused on what I am doing at this exact moment. It’s not thinking about work,  or who I need to call, or what I want for dinner. Focused on relaxing and breathing. Focused on observing the amazing diversity of life. For a perpetual multi-tasker, this is pretty impressive.

Sukkot (Festival of Booths)

So in hindsight, I’m saddened by the fact that I never went around Jerusalem taking pictures of the sukkot (booths) that were set-up. For those that don’t know, 2 weeks ago was the Festival of Booths. A week long harvest festival where you traditionally build these four walled temporary shelters and then you eat and sleep in them. Growing up, we always had one at Temple, but never really followed the tradition of eating and sleeping in them. Walking around Jerusalem and seeing them everywhere is pretty special. The Great Synaoguge had a humongous one that was at least 50ft x 50ft…but probably bigger. Other ones were tiny. Restaurants set them up outside so that people can eat there and still fulfill the commandment of eating in the sukkah.

A friend of mine took pictures of the different sukkot, and here is a link to his blog.

Voting

Our absentee ballots finally arrived on Monday. So Monday night, Jess and I sat down and cast our Ohio absentee ballots. Absentee ballots have to be postmarked before the 4th of November and arrive on or before the 14th…so we spent an extra dollar or two to make sure it gets there in time.

I hope all of you are either planning to vote on Tuesday or have already voted.

I feel that this year, people even more polarized about the candidates then in past years. So I’m not going to get into which candidate you should vote for, but I do feel that it is important that everyone votes. So evenif you disagree with me politically, I still encourage you to get to the polling stations and vote.

The Jewish holidays are finally over and live and school will go back to normal. It also means that are break for Sukkot is also done. For Sukkot, we went with our friends Nikki and Rachel to the Haifa area in the north, and then Jess and I traveled south into the Negev.

Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea

Ein Gedi is a beaitufl river valley not far from the Dead Sea. The main thing to do is go on the short hike and swim in the falls. If you’re looking you might see Ibex (which we did) and Gazelle.

We stopped at a beach that included a gorgeous restaurant and a pretty clean beach. If you’ve never been in the Dead Sea, it’s quite an experience. You don’t even need to try. It’s so calm and easy that you could bring out a book and read while just floating in the sea between Israel and Jordan.

Caesarea

Ceasarea is a city that was originally built over 2000 years ago and has since been modified and changed throughout the years. Walking around it was nice, but like most ruins, you just get hot. You also have to have a pretty good imagination as to what the place would have looked like back in the day. Thankfully, there was a pretty modern movie that had some 3D recreations of what they think the city looked like. The most impressive part of the city is completely gone and only available to see if you go on a scuba trip into the ruins of the harbor. This harbor was huge, and made all the more impressive in that it was made without any modern conveniences like tractors and dredging equipment.

Haifa

Haifa itself is a port city in the Northwest of Israel. Much of the city is pretty unassuming, except for the Baha’i gardens. My knowledge of the Bahai faith is limited to what a friend of a friend told me 10 years ago, so instead of trying to describe their faith, you can go to the wikipedia entry to find out more information.

The gardens themselves are absolutely gorgeous. Physically, they are impressive. Covering the side of Mt. Carmel with 18 terraces of lush green beauty. As it is a holy place, access to most of the gardens is limited. You can enter an overlook at the top and a garden near the actual Shrine of the Bab anytime during the day. But that is about 5% of the whole gardens. They have tours that take you through the top half of the gardens, but we missed out on that. The bottom half is pretty much off limits to everyone but pilgrams making their way to the shrine. The shrine is open and available to the public between 9 and noon. There is one proviso, none of the sections are open when it is raining. And it rained both mornings that we attempted to go to the gardens. D’oh!

Rosh HaNikra

The Israeli costline is pretty flat and full of beaches all the way up to the Lebanese border. At the border, the coastline becomes a beautiful cliff face with these large grottos that they have built paths that you can walk through and around.

Akko (Acre)

Akko is another ancient city with a turbelant past. It has been around since the days of the greeks in 333 BC,  and since has traded hands between the Egyptians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottoman Empire, Turks, British, and now is a part of Israel.  Phew. The main section that we walked around was the Old City. Walking around old walled cities is amazing. Old cities that still have a population living within the walls in a non-touristy fashion is even coolor. Just the small narrow streets underneath covered archways that span imbetween the buildings. Walking through the market place that are selling things beyond cheesy touristy stuff. In fact, I was amazed at how many cheap toy stores there were.

While walking around, our main stops included the old Citadel, Al-Jazzar Mosque, and the harbor.

Mitzpe Ramon

Our adventure then took us south of Jerusalem into the Negev (desert). Maktesh Ramon (The Ramon Crater) is the largest natural crater in the world. We stayed at Sukkah Bamidbar aka Tents in the Desert.  The place consisted of 7+ small primitive (no bathroom and a single solar panel for lights) huts of various sizes. The place also had a communal eating area and some gardens and some animal pens. Bathroom facilities were of the camping variety, which meant you either walked away from your cabin and went in the desert or there was an outhouse. The place was definitely not for everyone, but was great to spend some time experiencing a little bit of what life in the desert must have been like.

I can see why people fall in love with the desert. It is beautiful and stark. I’m constantly amazed at how much life can exist in a place with such harsh conditions.

While in the town of Mitzpe Ramon, we stopped at the visitors center, Bio Ramon (they have some of the desert critters on display in their native environments), and an Alpaca/Llama farm. We also drove down in the crater and went on a canyon hike.

On the way back, we stopped at Ben Gurion’s grave and his house on Sde Boker. Also went for a short hike to a cold water spring in a beautiful canyon.  As luck would have it, my camera battery died…so alas…no pictures…this time.

Other stuff

When we’re driving around, I constantly have thoughts and ideas that I’d like to share with you all. Of course, now that I’m writing I can’t remember any of them. Must be in the family genes.

Things are quieting down now that the holidays are over and we can get back on a regular schedule. Jess is at class right now, and I’m at home either working or if there isn’t work…finding something fun to do. We have some friends that are coming out to visit Israel (and in turn us) in November, so that is exciting. I need to make a border crossing in the next 3 weeks so that I don’t overstay my Visa.

So I’m curious what you’d like to hear more about. Travels? Classes? Jewish Life?