So much has happened since my last post. The last four days of Birthright were a blur. Birthright in general felt like a fast current, one you couldn't escape from. Wake up calls at 7am. Nights that lasted til 2 or 3am. No sleep, one bus that you spent hours on a day, the same 46 faces who you see every day. People become unveiled to you, and I was really surprised by how quickly I got to know- really know- people. I also ended up very sick at the end of the program- my body was aching and tired and I had a bad cough, but still had to get up early every morning and do what the group was doing. In the last four days of Birthright we:

-went to the desert, the Negev. The Jews became a people in the desert, and I was awestruck by how beautiful the area was. It was very rocky, unlike the Morocco desert, which is full of finely grained sand. We rode camels (and some of us rode donkeys) into the sunset. Halley and I had a camel that Zach dubbed "the belle of the ball." She really was very pretty- she had long coquettish camel eyelashes and light skin. Cammy, as I called her, was very calm. All the camels followed eachother in a line, and when the leader stopped the camel line, the camel behind us came about an inch from my face! I couldnt help thinking about his big camel teeth and how easily they could sink into my leg. But camels are very chill- as long as you don't get up in their face and bother them, they won't hurt you. One of the funniest moments of the camel riding experience was when I looked up and saw Jason, sitting contentedly on his camel while lighting up a cigarette. That boy never stops smoking.

We stayed in a Bedouin tent and met local Bedouins. The Bedouins are the people of the desert. They live anywhere there is a desert in the Middle East region- I met some in Morocco and they were very similar to the ones I met in Israel. The Bedouins in Israel used to be a nomadic people who wandered the desert and moved their homes from place to place, but the Israeli government encourages them to settle down in one place permanently. So, although we stayed in a tent, many of the Bedouins had actual houses nearby. Our host sat our group down, served us the most addictive tea of my life, and played us traditional Bedouin music on his guitar-like instrument. He was fantastic. Apparently he traveled throughout the world playing his Bedouin music. His strumming and his rythym were awesome and the combination of the tea and the music put me in a nice trance. Then, Bedouin dinner. Under tents, we sat in groups of 5 on cushions and were served a feast- beef, chicken, pita, vegetables, rice. We ate everything with our hands and were served seconds, thirds, and fourths- Bedouin hospitality is something they take very seriously.

After dinner it started to pour, and right as it started to pour Jessi asked me if I'd go with her to the bathroom, which was about 400 yards away from our tent. There were about three tents of Birthright groups staying at the camp that night, and the bathroom was the farthest from our tent. It started to POUR as we reached the bathroom. When we left the bathroom, it was so cold and raining so hard I could barely see her running in front of me. We got rapidly disoriented and ran in circles for a while, until we found the camel den, which was right next to our tent. Completely soaked, we walked in to the tent. Five minutes later, all the power in the camp went out, so we played a game with flashlights until it came back on. Exhausted, I fell asleep at 9pm, passed out on the sleeping back in the heated tent.

The next day, we woke up to sad news. Masada, one of the most important monuments in Judaism, (here thousands of Jews committed suicide to avoid being captured by the Romans in 70 AD after the temple was destroyed) was completely impossible to get to because all of the roads were flooded. Apparently, the Negev had not gotten that much rain in five years. There was so much rain that flash floods had formed in the desert. There were newly formed temporary waterfalls and streams that the past night's rain had created, which completely shifted the sand formations. Six of our students got Bar and Bat Mitvahed in the desert, and afterwards we threw candy at them and sang songs and danced to celebrate their emergence to adulthood. Dring breakfast, George, Lee, Brandon, Josh and I could drank four cups (!!) of the Bedouin tea, which was incredibly addictive. We had a drink-off- even though we weren't thirsty, the tea was so good we kept having to get up and drink more.

We went to the Dead Sea- luckily, the road to the Dead Sea was still open. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth- and the salinity in the Dead Sea is 10 times saltier than regular ocean water. We ended up being the only people at the Dead Sea, because all of the roads, except the one we took, were blocked. We got in to the Dead Sea, which is aquamarine, and the second you get on your back you float! And once you start floating, getting upright on your feet is very, very hard. I plopped down on my stomach and without doing anything, I was floating above water. Swimming freestyle in the Dead Sea was really fun- you feel almost as if you are flying. Then, we got out, smeared mud all over our bodies, let it dry in the sun. Once we were caked in mud, we got back in, and reached down to the Dead Sea bottom to get the salt rocks out. We smeared sea salt all over our bodies to get the mud off and my skin was as smooth as silk afterwards. I felt like I had just left a fancy spa, I felt so smooth. It was a great end to a sad opening day.

The rest of the trip is a little more hazy. We went to a kibbutz that functioned as a secret factory during the war of independence. A group of people who were quite young- about 18-21 years old, formed a plan to make a bullet factory under the laundry room of their kibbutz, in an area streaming with Brits, who controlled the country before the independence war. Many people on their kibbutz didn't even know about the secret bullet-making operation that was going on. The bullets they made (and they were never found out) helped the Jews win the war of independence in 1948. Those kids risked their lives for this pipe dream of Jewish independence. It was a cool factory.

I am quite quite tired but will write more tomorrow. Birthright is over but there is much more to say.

Love love,
A