A weekend in the galil

After resting off our massages (that vibrated our butts just as much as they massaged us) we met up with our family and headed for north-eastern Israel. We were headed to the Galil, the region around the Sea if Galilee (Yam Kineret) in Hebrew. There was a lot of traffic and eva's uncle shlomo, who was kind enough to drive us, was irritated by the Israeli lack of respect for road rules. A normally one-lane street turned into three lanes, cars drove on the wrong side of the road, and as David told us, drivers could be seen reversing down the shoulder if they had missed their exit.

Once we arrived at our absolutely beautiful moshav on the yam kineret (where Jesus walked on water) we exited the car into the scorching 104 degree heat (imagine a bikram yoga studio but with real sun). We were greeted by shlomo's family: safta (grandma in Hebrew, shlomo's mom) shook Coles hand and kissed eva five times; the uncles said hi; and the 6 little cousins ran around screaming and crying. We joined them in the swimming pool, where Soccer Ball Pool Yoga was invented. The most advanced position, created by eva, was the Floating Butt. Eva also enjoyed putting her little cousin Itai in Azkaban. We made a mistake, however by publicly promising to sing Safta a song in Hebrew later, (we were thinking Idan Raichel) but then we realized that we kinda sucked at the words... And that this family actually spoke Hebrew. Safta's sister, Sarah, was very eager to hear our singing, and since she didn't really know that much Hebrew aside from "you need to sing for me", she nagged us about it the entire trip. On the very last day of the galil, she was very grumpy that she had never heard our voices, so we left it at that.

That night, while the rest of the family enjoyed some delicious array of desserts, cole and eva went to sleep. Among a group dominated by grandparents and elementary schoolers, cole and eva were the first to hit the sack. We were tired ok?

The next morning, while david and the rest of the fam went boating, we went with the rest of family to the Golan Heights. We visited a war memorial, and strolled through a fresh water spring garden of "Eden", israel's bottled water source. It was beautiful and extremely for everyone at the park, until the raging cousins announced their presence. A little deaf Israeli family, who was bathing in the spring, decided to take a lunch break when small children started throwing crocks at them. We dangled our feet In The refreshing water, and the same pair of little blue crocks with an airplane button kept splashing us.

Afterwards, we entered the third and final car (now we have been in all the cars woohoo) where we listened to sarit hadad (an Israeli pop star) and a techno remix of tic toc. From there we met up with cousin shira (love her) and went boating on the kineret. While in the water, eva's life jacket was so big that she insisted that it was pulling her down instead of keep her afloat. While eva struggled to stay alive, cole practiced raft kineret yoga on foam mats that were thrown to us. Of these, the main position being proud seal. We then did a modification of tubing (instead of sitting on the tube, we held onto the sides), and tried to keep our bathing suit bottoms from being ripped off of us by the current. This ended when eva slipped off.

That evening, we went to dinner on the Jordan border. We looked at Jordan, as we ate our food in a very old building with bullet holes on the sides. It was really cool, except for that in the middle of dinner we all got really tired again. Everyone fell asleep on the car ride home and went straight to bed, except for the grandparents who went out for a swim.

The next morning was quite eventful. Cole got locked in the bathroom. For how long? nobody knows. It was quite hot and steamy in there since he had just taken a shower, so he was very relieved when eva finally saved him. As we were packing up, eva began to sing some lovely little Hebrew songs that she knows. Safta heard, and pretty soon they were having a fun sing along together. Then, as we were getting ready to go, a little cousin opened our door and let a huge wasp in. Yikes! For the next part we want you to close your eyes and imagine this. Ok you can't because you are reading but here's the scene: eva stands by the door holding it open while cole stands in the middle of the room with a towel, flapping it at the wasp so that it keeps buzzing around, hopefully at some point out the door. Of course we both freak out when it seems like it's coming at us!

Afterwards we started to head home from our trip. It was a lovely weekend on the galil and with the family. Next stops: tel aviv, cholon, bat yam and Jerusalem!"

Asaf: israel's number one guy

So, after leaving the technion, we went to our youth hostel in chaifa, where we made a friend named peter, who loved us so much that he sweat through his entire shirt to get us sheets and then ran back in the blistering heat to get us our key.

Then we took a nap.

Afterwards, we chaotically met up at the train station with our one and only David Sasson and glorious cousin Noam. Unfortunately, in a hasty panic, we lost each other in the train station and missed our train. But fortunately, we just caught the next train. When we arrived at binyamina, we were picked up by asaf (israel's finest) and went to the BBQ. We met many of asaf's friends, and his dog, who were all really nice. They made us lots of delicious food, which was much appreciated since our lunch consisted of half a bowl of penne pasta soup. After dinner we played rock band with asaf, who was incredibly talented. He also told us all about his neighborhood band he was in, which consisted of 4 clarinets and 1 drummer. (we met all the band members woohoo). They asked us to tell them a funny story, and David told them a story about how Or (see previous post) saw Ashton kutcher at 3 am at the western wall.

After dinner, the science guys went back to their dorms and asaf and a couple of his buddies took us out in chaifa. They thought that college was like in the movies because one of their friends stayed in a fraternity at UC Santa Barbara, so that was what they used to base their impression of college life. They told us that they have prom in israel, but that the people who dress up are all nerds and get laughed at, which supports my dads ideas that when Israelis want to be fancy they switch from flip flops to sneakers. We had a really great night. Which is why Asaf is our number one guy. We told him we would dedicate this post to him.

The next morning was not as great. Eva woke up feeling sick, who woke up sleepy Cole. Then we probably had the strangest breakfast ever. We walk in to this large room, where there are two tables of people who are all friends, who stop talking and stare at us as we enter. Then, we go to the buffet table, where we grab ourselves some untoasted toast (Aka bread) and sit by ourselves in the corner, munching. We decide that one of the groups is German, and they came as a German volunteer group to israel, or they just all happen to be at the same place at the same time and then were like "woah we are all German" and decided to become friends. The other group was a weird combo of people with multiple generations. The oldest guy turned away from the table (towards us) and blew his nose really loudly. After breakfast we went to the mall and spent 5 sheckles each on a chance to sit in one of those massage chairs. It was 5 sheckles well spent. (cole does not approve of eva's bad grammar in this paragraph, but is too lazy to change it, so ha eva wins!)"

We can't write text into blogs from the iPhone... Sorry. So we will do it as soon as we can from a computer.

Asaf: Israel's number one guy

Days 1 and 2

Shalom!

We have reached the holy land after many long hours on Air Canada (woo!). The flights were pretty much uneventful. There was one rather unpleasant foot that kept reappearing on cole's armrest (ew) but other than that everything went pretty smoothly. We watched a marvelous documentary called "Oceans," which had great footage of under the sea creatures until we got bored of it.

After arrival at Ben Gurion Airport we took a cab (with a kinda mean driver, he made fun of our Hebrew) to Eva's relative's house. When we got there, there was just one lady who we didn't know, who we are now best friends with, even though we still don't know her name. (we have decided to call her Ima, which means mom, so that is how we refer to her now). This morning she made us eggs and pita and nana tea, walked us to the taxi reunion (stand), and tried to give us money. After a lot of reassuring her that we had our own money, she stopped offering.

Yesterday after we rested at our house we went to the beach. We were driven by Ima's daughter Keren, who invited us to go to Eilat with her (a resort town at the very Southern tip of Israel). We went to a couple beach side cafes and swam in the water. While sitting on some comfy cushioned seats drinking fruit smoothies at one cafe, we watched this little girl in front of us deal with her bathing suit issues. Her suit was probably twice as big as her, and when she let go of it we saw her whole butt. Basically, we were mooned multiple times in a row. We felt bad for her, especially since her family was not very sympathetic towards her awkward plight.

Then, we got kind of lost. We weren't lost in the traditional meaning, since we knew where we were. The problem was that nobody else knew where we were. People who were with us didn't even know where we were. We called Ben, who is the son of the husband of Ima, and he agreed to come pick us up, but since we were lost... we couldn't really tell him where to come get us. After unsuccessfully asking a janitor, we scored the golden token with these two middle aged ladies. Then Ben came and picked us up, and only then did Ori tell us that Ben had a broken leg... and that it was also his birthday. So we went to his birthday party, where the whole family was there. (lots of little kids running around). The family force fed us plenty of fruits and desserts (we expected no less), until eventually we used the word for "full"in Hebrew, and for some reason that was funny to them. Luckily, there were a couple people there who spoke English, so they helped us out a bit.

Today we took the train to Haifa and visited David Sasson (Eva's bro bro) at the Technion (Israel's version of MIT basically). Right now we are writing this blog post from the computer lab at Technion, where we aren't really supposed to be. (David's counselor sneaked us in. his name is Or, and according to David's British friend, he attacks people, but he was nice to us). About five minutes ago we got yelled at by this computer lab guy in Hebrew because we laughed. That is not allowed in this facility.

Tonight we will visit Asaf, one of Eva's friends, and we are having an "on the fire" (bbq) with his friends and family. David might come too. Just now someone's cell phone rang and it was Idan Raichel ringtone. yay!!

Alright that's all for now folks,

Lehitra'ot!

Cole and Eva

Eva a

pre-trip

hey guys!!

We leave tomorrow morning for the land of milk and honey. Super bright and early, possibly before the sun! We are excited for our adventures, and we hope that we can share them with all of you lovely people on this awesome blog. Don't get too excited about it though, because we make no guarantees that it will be very good. We might not even update it very much, you will just have to wait and see. It could be like a pleasant surprise here and there.

Cole and Eva