נודד מדבר יהודה!! (Our trip in the Judean Desert!)

I just got back from a 3-day backpacking trip in Midbar Yehuda, the Judean Desert, which is in the Jerusalem-ish area, next to Massada and the Dead Sea. I was the logistican for the trip (along with Yoella, another American here), which basically means that we were in charge of all the food and equipment for the trip. It also means that this post may include many descriptions of the food we ate, since that was one of my main time-consumers during the trip.

We started on Sunday morning; we left the mechina at 7:30, got to Midbar Yehuda by 9:30, and started hiking! It was a medium-level day, with some uphill, some downhill, and everything in between. We had an optional "summit" in the beginning of the day, where about half of us left our bags at the bottom of a hill and ran up. It was very steep, but the view was totally worth it. I have many pictures; I'll probably put them up later. Anyway, we got to camp by 4 pm, did some stretching, and then Yoella and I (along with the "toranim"-basically food-helpers) started making dinner. It was stir-fry. We were dissapointed because they didn't give us all the ingredients we asked for, but it ended up still being great! It was kind of funny because we spent all the time preparing dinner complaining about how there was no soy sauce and how we didn't have enough spices to make the stir-fry how we wanted, and then when we were cleaning up, we found the soy sauce. Oh well.

Monday was harder. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to start making breakfast for everyone because we had decided that we would do something nice and make pancakes, even though they take longer. It was pretty much a huge fail. The person that made the pancake mix put way too much water in it, and that combined with the fact that we had no spatula and were cooking on a small hill basically made it impossible to make regular pancakes. Therefore, I had the great idea of making scrambled pancakes. So we poured a lot of the mix in and started scrambling it. It did not turn out the way we planned at all-the oil mixed with the pancakes and it turned into a disgusting mush that didn't cook at all. At this point, it was already 5:20, and everyone else was up and ready for breakfast. There were about 20 people crowding around us, watching us make the pancakes, and screaming unhelpful advice, criticism, and questions. An example of a question I got probably three times: Person: "Why do the pancakes look disgusting?" Me: "Because the mix is too watery." Person: "Why is the mix too watery?" Me: "Because someone put too much water in the mix." Yeah, so I probably wasted about 5 minutes of my life on that pointless conversation. After we were finished with that whole disaster and we had finished washing the dishes, we only had 5 minutes left before we had to leave, and I hadn't even stuffed my sleeping bag, let alone changed into my hiking clothes, brushed my teeth, etc. So I was pretty much a mess when we left that morning.

The whole day had a very stressful undertone for everyone. We were rushing to get where we needed to go, and our breaks were all very short, with the boys always counting down the last 30 seconds, as if they were trying to find the way to stress everyone out the most they possibly could. There was a huge gap between the first and last people; at least 20 minutes I would say. Near the end of the day, we had a discussion about this gap, and I think that most people took it to heart and tried to help the people in the back as opposed to rushing in front. Also, in our "sicum yom" (day conclusion? basically a discussion we have every night about how the day went), many people voiced their opinions that the day was not fun for them and very hard and they felt that people did not help them a lot. Therefore, "Chulyat Tiyulim" (my committee that helps plan the trips) decided that we would shorten Tuesday and make more breaks and "hadrachot" (short lessons about where we are). For dinner on Monday we had pasta with tomato sauce, hot dogs, and a delicious salad, if anyone was wondering.

Tuesday was really fun! We walked pretty slowly and saw amazing views the entire time; it really looked like a scene from The Lion King. I played many word games, such as Ghost, Contact (family members reading this: it's that complicated game that we played one time in a car ride somewhere), and 20 questions. The hardest 20 questions things that I guessed were the trident in The Little Mermaid and a check mark on a sheet of paper. Pretty intense.

A question to think about: What is the best way to get your plate clean without wasting too much water? In my opinion, you should lick it. This hasn't caught on yet to anybody else, but I'm pretty sure people will start to follow my example at some point. Some people prefer to rub dirt into the plate to get the oil out and then either just bang it all out or use a little bit of water to clean the dirt out. Others just wash it out with water. All three work, but I invite you to think: What is the best way to get your plate clean?

Sorry this is so long.

"Madasim" (Exercise classes) and the Army

So we have exercise classes here usually 3 times a week, which is good because we eat SO MUCH and then sit in class all day, so without these classes we would gain a lot more weight than we are already gaining. Which I guess would be not-so-great in a program that is preparing people for the army.

Anyway, a few interesting things about these classes. A few weeks ago, we had a class where we had to run around in zig-zags (we don't have any exercise facilities, so we have to be creative) and then our counselor would yell things and we had to stop and do them. It started with pretending to shoot a basketball, hit a tennis ball, do a kickboxing kick, and things like that. It moved on to doing push-ups, sit-ups, etc. Finally, we had to crouch and pretend to shoot a gun, and then crawl on the floor and shoot a gun, and then hide behind a bush and shoot a gun. I just remember thinking to myself-if somebody who didn't live here had a movie of us doing this, they would think it was the weirdest and most terrible thing ever. It's really something that could be used against Israel-the whole idea that society thinks about the army so much. There are soldiers everywhere you go in Israel-it's a normal occurence to see them everywhere (very unlike how it is in America).

Today we had a really hard class, composed of basically sprinting for 40 minutes. Another thing that would never have happened in my gym class at home (we wouldn't have done sprinting anyway, but in case we did...)-people started to get really tired and their heads and chests were hurting, and our counselor was just like, "don't worry, a little headache is fine, don't drink any water, work through it, you can all do it!" It just seems like everyone is usually obssessed with hydration (which is a good thing) and it was weird to feel like they already think of us as people who can deal with the pain and work through it, just like these Israelis are going to have to do in the army.