My Birthday

Here is a very belated account of my birthday:

Wednesday nights I have basketball at 9:45, so as usual I played until about 11:00.  Normally I shower and go to sleep when I get back, but the next day was my birthday so I wanted to stay up until midnight.  After basketball I went back with my friends Aaron and Jacob to their room where I stayed until about 12:15 when they told me they REALLY wanted to go to sleep. What was actually going on was that my roommates kept calling Aaron telling him to make me leave and come back to our room so they could surprise me. When I got back to my room I still had to finish my Hebrew homework but I kept getting distracted so it took a pretty long time.  Aimee and Roshana (my roommates) kept making hints that I should get in the shower and just forget about my homework for the night, but I was convinced that my teacher was going to collect it the next day (she didn’t).  When I finally decided to shower, I thought the shower would be filled with balloons (we had a TON left over from dressing up as grapes on Tuesday night), but there was nothing in there when I opened the door.  As I was showering though, I heard a balloon pop in our room, so I got a little suspicious.  I decided not to ruin the surprise though by trying to figure out what they were doing, and when I go out of the shower my bed and entire area were covered with balloons and my friend Elena was also there with a cake for me!  If you remember, on Sukkot I went with Elana to her family friends’ house, the Weiners, whose daughter is gluten free.  For weeks, Elana had been planning to go to the Weiner’s to bake me a GF cake for my birthday.  The scheduling didn’t work out, but instead David Weiner made the cake and brought it over to Beit Nativ.  It was such a sweet surprise, and so nice to have a homemade cake in addition to the store bought one my roommates had bought me.  Finally, after a great start to my birthday, I went to sleep around two that night.

Gluten free cake! (You can also see the cut on my leg here)

Yum =)

Me and Elana with the crazy hat she bought me

The next day was extremely hectic.  I had class until 12:00 then ate a quick lunch and came home to take a nap.  That weekend I was going to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea with my friend Eric, so after my nap I went to the shuk to buy some food for our trip.  As I was leaving Beit Nativ I passed Elana who (unbeknownst to me) was returning from getting me a birthday present and she came with me to the shuk.  On our way there, I got a call from Elkana, who told me that he had something for me in the office.  After trying on many different slipper socks and getting a variety of vegetables for the weekend, Elana and I returned to Beit Nativ and stopped at the office to see what Elkana had for me.  It turned out to be… more balloons!  My parents had ordered a balloon arrangement to be delivered to me at Beit Nativ clearly without the knowledge that my room was currently filled with so many balloons that I could barely reach my bed.  It was really nice to get something from my family though, and I still have them next to my bed (we popped at the other balloons).  After eating dinner at Beit Nativ (we get dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays) we had the first of four seminars/meetings to prepare for our trip to Poland in January.  The meeting was interesting and it made me even more appreciative of the great Holocaust class that I’m taking at Hebrew U.  Everything I’m learning in the class will allow me to understand better and get a lot more out of the visit.

After the Poland meeting I went to Talpiyot with a few friends to go bowling.  Though the bus driver forgot to tell us when to get off the bus, we managed to find our way there, and met up with some of my friends from school and camp.  This was definitely the highlight of my birthday.  I have a pretty big group of camp and school friends in Israel this year, and though we’ve been talking about getting together, it’s hard to plan something with all our different schedules.  Finally though, I saw all my non-Nativ friends in Israel, and I even had a surprise guest!  Aviya Cohen, who I went to school with until 8^th grade before she made aliyah surprised me by coming to the bowling place.  The night ended with Aviya, Yael Nurko, Gabi Remz, Sam Forman, Maya Lee-Parritz, and me (all Schechter 2006 graduates) reminiscing about the 8^th grade play, updating each other on what we’ve been doing for the last four years, and talking about what we’re each doing this year.  This mini-reunion was a great end to the day and a great way to spend my birthday.

Forman, Sam, Gabi, me, Maya, Aviya, and Yael.  SSDS '06 reunion!

Friday morning, I woke up very early to catch the bus to Ein Gedi.  Once Eric and I arrived at the Ein Gedi public beach, we walked back and forth between the beach and the the hostel a couple times before finally deciding that the beach where we were originally dropped off was, in fact, the campsite we were looking for.  We decided not to do any hiking that day, but we did go swimming in the Dead Sea.  I was a little apprehensive to get in the water, because I still had a huge cut on my leg from football and everyone told me it was going to hurt worse than anything else in my life.  Actually, the cut had scabbed so it didn’t really hurt at all, but what I was really worried about was getting water in my eyes.  Both Eric and I did a good job at avoiding our eyes for most of the time, though we weren’t so successful at avoiding our ears, noses, mouths. 

Eventually though, as I was effortlessly floating on my back with my eyes closed, some water splashed onto my face.  I kept my eyes closed really tight and Eric said he would guide me out of the water, but then he decided it would be a good time to play silent Marco Polo.  As I waved my arms around trying to find him with my eyes closed, he said nothing.  After a few minutes of this “game” I opened my eyes—not a good idea.  Once the water actually got in my eyes it hurt a lot more, but finally Eric guided me out of the water.  It was really interesting being totally dependent on someone else’s guidance and trust that he would tell me if there are any obstacles ahead of me. It reminded me of a museum I went to with my family when we were here last December which simulates what it is like to be blind.  The museum consists of a few different rooms, each a different environment with various smells, sounds, and obstacles, but every room is pitch black.  Everyone has a walking stick and a blind tour guide, and you’re forced to use your other senses to move through each room and figure out where you are.  The museum is in Holon, I highly recommend it.  Anyway, I finally made it out of the water, and before I realized that we had reached the outdoor showers, Eric turned mine on and shocked me with a gush of cold water. 

The next day we went to the Ein Gedi nature reserve for a very long day of hiking.  After going up and down one trail two or three times, we realized that the Ein Gedi spring we were looking for was just a small stream that we had passed a couple times.  Then we hiked to a small waterfall where we took a refreshing swim to cool off.  After looking for a specific trail on the map that seemed to not exist after lots of retracting our steps and looking very carefully for trail markers, we realized that when the map said “not drawn to scale” it really meant that it wasn’t accurate at all.  Though the trail was drawn in front of the waterfall, it was actually 15 minutes passed it and passed another waterfall that wasn’t even on the map.  Despite the inaccuracy of the map though, or maybe because of it, we got a lot of hiking in and saw lots of ibexes, too.  After a full day of hiking we stopped to look at the remains of a synagogue from the Roman-Byzantine period which had been renovated after a fire.  We finished the day with ice cream and then relaxed while waiting for the bus back to Jerusalem. 

Overall, it was a fun, though exhausting weekend, and as usual it was very nice to return to the comfort of Beit Nativ with a shower and a comfortable bed.