Carmel Park

What a gorgeous day it is today. What an excellent weekend this is shaping up to be. I spent most of yesterday with Menachem. We went to the Grand Kanyon mall (it's a pun, the word "kanyon" in Hebrew means mall), where we had lunch together, traded stories and did some grocery shopping. I came back home that afternoon and did a little work, but mostly tried to be with people as I anticipate my time in Haifa dwindling. After Shabbat dinner in the dorms moadon, I went with a few of the boys out into the park for a night of camping.

I didn't really take advantage of the park much last semester except to job. I'm glad I know better now. The Carmel Park is the single greatest advantage Haifa has over every other major city in Israel - a massive nature reserve literally a 5 minute walk away. We walked about a half hour out, cutting East and South away from the campus to a nice clearing with a fantastic view of the water and parts of the city below. What we didn't anticipate there being were a group of drunken, jackass locals who were screaming and carousing until 4 A.M. I'm not exactly an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, but this was way over the top.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK!

We had trouble finding the wood we would need for a fire. We got out there late, didn't have enough flashlights to go around, and there just wasn't any fuel on the path. A crashing into the forest we would go. Finally, we pulled a huge, dead branch down that had fallen but gotten caught in the lower branches of a tree. It made for an excellent fire when all was said and done.

Just a cool fire pic.

The next morning we hiked a little further East up the road and hit up a different Druze pita stand. They are multiplying! This guy was more engaging than the group who runs the stand by campus, and they had a hummus option to go along with the labneh and za'atar. A good time was definitely had by all. We trecked back home for a quiet afternoon. I did some laundry, a little reading, and hung out with my friends. Tonight I'm going with Menachem to my final Maccabi Haifa game of the season, vs. Maccabi Herzlyia. Beitar has already clinched the championship based on points (bastards), but we're still going to pull for our team. Shabbat shalom.

Hamsin

A Hamsin is a local term for a hot, dusty wind that blows through Israel from the Negev and Sinai. It brings with it unbearable heat and heavy air pollution. It is generally unpleasant. Some have speculated that the term (Arabic for 50) refers to the number of days that a Hamsin blows through the country every year. I've heard another suggestion though: The temperature in the desert can reach 50 degrees (Celcius) during a bad Hamsin. That translates to about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a heat I simply cannot fathom. Lucky us, we've got a Hamsin coming through the area now!

Midwesterners who may or may not still be getting snow in May will want to bash me for bitching about the weather here. Sure, it may be sunny and comfortably warm almost every day in Haifa during the Spring. I don't underrate that. Unfortunately, when it does get hot, I have no way to cope with it. I am a cold weather individual. Everything about me is built for the cold. I'm short, heavy, and hairy. When the heat hits, I just wilt. Give me sub freezing temperatures and ice any day over 100+ degree heat.

Singing The Heeby Geeby Blues

I'm ready to come home. Not that I don't love it here. It's just that I'm ready to come home. I've been here since early October and that is a really long time. It hit me Sunday afternoon while I was on a bus on my way down to the beach. I was daydreaming and slipped into my parent's Neon on North Lake Shore Drive. Suddenly, we were at the central bus station at Hof HaCarmel again. The beach was as nice as it always is - perfect weather and all that. Still, I'm ready for the comforts of Chicago again.

School certainly isn't captivating me anymore. I am no longer enjoying my classes, and am very much looking forward to finishing them. I'm not learning much anymore in Hebrew. We read newspapers in class, but go too slow for me and have to spend too much time defining words I'm already familiar with. The grammar work is tedious and focusing on minor turns of phrase that my Israeli friends don't know how to do correctly. Plus, my classmates were a lot more fun last semester. I'm sticking it out, ready to finish my last exam and put an end to my Ulpan days. I got a 99 on my quiz from last week. The class just isn't challenging me anymore.

At the very least, Ofakim is going great. I love working with the kids, even though they are not always easy to work with. I underestimated little kids going into this job. They are not simple in any sense. I've learned how to relate to each child, how to get them to do their exercises and how to get them to participate in activities. It is going to be hard to say goodbye to them.