So it's my first blog of the New Year – Shalom 2011 – and i'm going to completely ignore the 3 days I forgot to write about before chofesh and just write about my chofesh (holiday) time adventures. My chofesh began on Thursday the 23rd December. At five in the afternoon I hopped on a shirut, followed by a train, a bus and a taxi and three hours later arrived at beit shmuel to begin my holiday with the shvilniks. I spent the morning of Christmas Eve pottering around the shuk with Aaron (before anyone comments I didn't buy anything I just helped Aaron pick out birthday presents for his brothers) followed by a lovely catch up brunch with Ruth who has been studying at a Seminary in Jerusalem this year. That evening we decided to get the best of both worlds on Christmas Eve on a Friday night and went to synagogue first (Kol HaNeshamah) followed by an attempt at going to midnight mass in the old city in Jerusalem. We wanted to go to the church of the holy sepulchre but nobody told us that midnight mass started at ten and they locked the church when it was full. Instead we went to Christ Church near Jaffa Gate which is the oldest protestant church in the Middle East. The most bizarre thing about the service was not only did they introduce it in ivrit but at points during the service they said the Shema and blessings for the bread and wine as well! We were more than a little confused. On leaving the old city we went to investigate some carol singing and managed to bump into the Noam lot who had arrived the day before.
On Saturday morning we left for Ein Gedi, wanting to get there with enough time to look around and enjoy the place before the sun went down. We sat having a drink with the mountains behind us and the sea in front of us, it was stunning.
That evening we discovered what a treat we were in for when we sat down for dinner. The food was amazing and given our shnattie living circumstances we both stuffed ourselves to bursting (only to be repeated and each meal for the next two days). On Sunday we had passes to the spa so off we went to enjoy to sulphur pools, mud baths, dead sea and ice cold outdoor swimming pool followed by an ice cream and another amazing meal for dinner. We headed to Herzliya the next morning but even though it was a brief trip it was amazing and so much fun. It made us feel as if we had done something different and seen somewhere new - actually done something with our chofesh!
Herzliya consisted of a week of chilling a relaxing with a brief trip out for brunch with mamma and pops and off to a club in Tel Aviv to bring in 2011.
I returned to Karmiel on Sunday morning but continued being a bit unwell from chofesh so had a rather uneventful few days until mum and dad came up north for dinner with my host family which was lovely. We then went to their (rather bizarre) hotel in Safed were we spent my birthday pottering around the old city. We finished the day with a really lovely dinner in a fantastic restaurant not too far from the hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment