We embark on our last trip before i start work again...

We decided to go visit the north. In the North there are many nice things. The Kineret, a lot of Kibbutzim, Haifa, The Joradan River and many ruins and other interesting things to see. The North, if i am correct in remembering all of the fantistic history i learned while i was here on taglit, is where the first bits and peices of the land are that the Jews were given to live in by the arabs in the begining. The Kineret is special because basically its a big lake where Israel gets most of its water from. Also, FIF, (Fun Israel Fact) because of how preciouse water is here in this giant state of desert there are a lot of advertisements to remind Israelis to concerve water, they are quite dramatic. In big red and blck letters the ominouse message is written "Israel is moving from red to black!" Anyway back to our trip.......

So we left today, Guy and I found ourselves once again, in a car just us, the open road, the radio, and some frosted flakes we packed for the ride. Except this time the music was in Hebrew, the car belonged to us, and the frosted flakes were a little less frosted than we Americans are used to. Also (FIF) the ride cross country here would only take about 3 hours, maybe less. And for kicks, let's say we are talking north to south. about 7 hours, maybe less. Not in anyway close to the 312 hours we took to cross the USA.

So, first stop was some roman ruins in Bet She'an. There was a roman theater, a little brush-up on my theater history knowledge, some bath houses, a main street, a street named after Guy (he eventually told me that his name means valley in Hebrew and so Guy Street was in truth Valley Street. Go figure it was between two mountains....), a market place, and temple, etc. Even though it was rather deathly hot it was quite nice and rather beautiful, those romans were quite genius i would have to say. The latrine in the bathhouse, absolutely remarkable, with a sewage system and a wall with wooden slats that stuck out with space between for your bottom.....(i am sure you can imagine yourselves how it all worked out)

Second stop, i was a little skeptical of at first.
Roneet: Guy where are we going now?
Guy: to Gesher Hayashan (the old bridge)
Roneet: what are we going to do there?
Guy: I'm not really sure, there's like a tour and then we make fuccacia bread and its like 3 hours....

A little vague, but in the end rather accurate. But there was much more to it than that.
Gesher Hayashan used to be the only place called Gesher. There was a kibbutz ((FIF) Kibbutz: is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The kibbutz is a form of communal living that combines socialism and Zionism but most of them have stopped functioning in the way they were originally started) , a transportation center (the last stop in Israel before traveling to Jordan, when the two countries were at peace of course), and a huge electricity dam. This was all before Israel became a state. (Please note i learned about all these things in Hebrew so if the wording sounds a little awkward please forgive my English as i do believe it is getting worse and worse as the days pass.)
This place is literally right on the border of Jordan and Israel. So we learned all about the people living there and how they came to live there and how they came to be evacuated during the war of independence. We learned about the dam and its builder and how during the British mandate it powered 90% of Israel. We learned about the bridges built by the Romans and the British giving the place its name. And we also learned how to make fuccacia bread, as was promised by Guy from the beginning. All in all quite the family attraction but we had a nice time anyway. When the people who were evacuated during various wars and open fire, decided to finally return home they decided to rebuild their Kibbutz a little farther from the border and thus it is called Old Gesher, across the street from New Gesher.

From there we moved on to Guy's friends dorm room in a kibbutz next to the Kineret. The room was basically a small room with kitchen and bathroom, large enough, nice really. We went out with some friends of Guy's from the army and then slept the night there. The next day we went swimming in the Jordan River visited Guy's friend that we stayed with in Vegas and ate a wonderful lunch by him. Then it was off to Haifa to visit the Technion exchange students that stayed in my house for the past few summers. We had a nice time with them, a nice dinner, a night walk on campus to a hill where we sat, drank wine and looked out over the city. It was totally beautiful with all the lights, it looked exactly like the emerald city or something accept bright white or silver. Too bad all the lights are from a plant and glow so beautifully because of all the pollution in the air.

The next day we met with another student who, since her stay with my family, has graduated. Then we went to some view points in a Druz city (i have no idea how to say that, where Druz (the religion? this may not even be the name in english) live). An Arabic area anyway, not dangerous though, no worries.

And that was it, we headed home.

I would like you all to know that i no longer have my iphone, yes i have sold my baby. It was a sad moment but the kid with the lame Mohawk-like hair-cut and shaved shapes on the side of his head seemed very happy, and i got the 1550 shekels for it. so if i wait until the dollar goes down again it will equal close to $500. The dollar is now at 3.5 shekels/$ so its just under $450. Not bad.

Anyway thats the exciting life that i have been leading, and tomorrow i go back to Israeli children and bus rides. I am interested to see what tomorrow will be like, what the kids will be like, and what the hell i will be doing there. We shall see.

Hope this blog post finds you well.
Good night Lilah Tov לילה טוב