ilan hits up Southern Israel

First off, I am very angry (can you sense the anger in my tone) that I have not received any updates from any of you people. I also want to hear about your lives (clearly mine is more interesting but still!) Even if all you did was go to work and come home every day and you went out for a drink with work friends one day, I want to hear about it! Otherwise I have no idea what is going on back there. Are you happy? Sad? Having fun? Bored? on Vacation? Anything?!?!?! Are you watching the Olympics and find yourself cheering for Israel because of me?

FYI: Part of this blog is supposed to be picture updates and I'm realizing that I'm not doing such a great job with the pictures part of this blog. Someone needs to remind me to get on that (someone? anyone? hello? does anyone even read this?!?!).



Timeline Update: In less than 6 days (Thursday Aug. 14th at 06:00 AM EST but hey who is counting anyway right?!) I'll be leaving the comfort, humidity, and social scene that is Tel Aviv for Kibbutz Iftach in... Bumble Fu ...Northern Israel. Should be a good time!



News Update: Anywhooo so since last time, i received an e-mail from the Jewish Advocate (A Jewish Weekly Newspaper in Boston) asking me to write a weekly column for them about my life here. So I'm going to do that just so you know and if you happen to pick up a copy of the Jewish Advocate at some point I will impart more of my wisdom on you.



So before we went up North, it felt only right to go as far South as possible while still staying in Israel. Myself along with 13 other Garin Tzabar members of mine headed down to Eilat (Southern most city in Israel) for a week of fun and relaxing. This wikipedia link has some good stuff about Eilat but I'm going to give you my take on it anyway. Am I saying that I'm better than Wikipedia? Yes.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat



Eilat: So Eilat is really as far South as you can go in Israel and is located on the Red Sea on the borders where Israel, Jordan and Egypt meet. While in Eilat you can look out over the Red Sea and in the distance see the beginning of Saudi Arabia (they don't really like us yet, but we'll address that next blog). The bus ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat was about $45 USD round trip. It's no Fung-Wa but it will do. The ride down took about 5.5 hours with two worthless 15 minute stops in there somewhere. In Eilat there are tons of tourists from all over the world. I think the foreign language I heard the most was French. There are also alot of non-Jewish Africans down there working and such. Turns out that even though Sudan hates Israel, and no one else really agreed, Israel took in thousands of refugees from areas such as Darfur.




The Days: Okay before I tell you about my days in Eilat, let me describe the weather for you because it's really like nothing I've ever experienced before (well other than the other times I was in Eilat). So the bus arrived at around 2 PM in Eilat and we stepped out of the bus and it was 112 degrees F with a humidity of about 12%. What does this mean? Well clearly it means it was hot as hell but also that you don't really sweat. Well you do sweat technically but you don't feel it (I don't want to confuse my liberal arts friends). You walk down the street and all of a sudden your mouth feels really dry and your tongue as well and you are thirsty without even realizing it. The speed at which this happens is ridiculous. You basically always need to have water with you. I brought down my camel pack with me and at first everyone laughed that I walked around with it but by the end of the trip everyone was going to go buy one. If you are wondering what the low temperature is, it is around 88 degrees F and it happens at around 5 AM.

Right so back to the days. So the days are great, not a cloud in the sky and hot. By the time we woke up each day it was about 11 AM or noon so we'd head right down to the beach. Pretty much the same place everyone down there heads to when they wake up. The beach is loud! There are bars/restaurants along it that are blasting this trance music. It's actually pretty annoying. Then there is the chair guy. This bum lays out these crappy chairs all along the beach and naturally everyone sits down on them cause the sand is too hot and then he comes over and makes you pay 8 dollars US for each chair. It's such a sucker deal because the chairs pretty much take up the whole beach and if you don't use one you don't really have anywhere to sit. I guess I'm just ranting about this cause I'm annoyed I didn't come up with the idea first.

We'd go in the water and then on the shore till we were way too hot and then repeat a bunch of times until we'd finally be too hot. The water there is super salty. Not sure why really. When you dry up in the sun on shore you have these white salt marks on your skin. Everyone has them. It's quite sexy I must say (umm no it isn't). Usually after boiling on the beach we'd head to the mall (also on the beach) have some lunch and then back to the hotel for a dip in the pool (gotta get that salt off somehow right?) and then a little siesta before the night begins...

The Nights: The nights are pretty ridiculous and kind of start at sun down and end at sun-rise. What is interesting is that the people you see at night are pretty much the same you see in the daytime on the beaches (just a little more drunk). There are all these clubs about a block or so from the main beach strip. This one club is kind of a fenced off area in the middle of the sidewalk. We went there twice and the waitresses at this place dance on the tables (pretty interesting). It kind of felt like freshmen year of college with pre-gaming the hotel and then making our way over to frat row. There is every type of bar/club/scene you could ask for. There is the Irish bar, the trance music bar, the club that only plays black music, the club for 12 - 17 year olds, the strip clubs, etc. We tried them all out at some point (except for the 12-17 year old club since that would be sketchy). We were a large group so we split up at points but usually got back to the hotel at the same time (around 4 am or so). All in all the nights were really fun. I couldn't help feel that had I been a little younger like 18 or 19 years old, I would have enjoyed that scene much more but hey, whatever man. I'm doing a great job...

The In between:

So between the stops at the beach and clubs we actually did some cool things. On the second day there, we rented these ATV's (2 people per each) and went on a two hour ride through the red mountains of Eilat. It was alot of fun. We couldn't go as fast as we wanted since the guide was a bit anal but it was still fun. The first hour was geared at getting to this canyon in the middle of nowhere (as if this city wasn't in the middle of nowhere). We got there and for the first and only time all week we could hear quiet. Just our voices and it was awesome. Since there were two people in each, I drove on the way back. I'll be honest, about 2 minutes after I started to drive, we may or may not have driven into a small ditch and had the ATV flip over on top of us. If this did happen, it wasn't my fault and I have a nice black and blue (and yellow and purple) bruise to prove it. Must have been a faulty ATV...we flipped it back over and continued to drive the hour back and no one really noticed. One interesting thing on this little journey was that somewhere along the way we must have been close to the border because my cell phone switched on to the Jordanian Cell network and started talking to me in Arabic. Weird eh?

So the other cool adventure we had was the Snorkeling we did one day. It was about 35 shekels (10 USD) for 3 hours. You got the equipment and were free to wander. It was really cool there were some ridiculously awesome colored fish all around this area and some reefs too. The fish ranged from about the size of a can to the size of a large football. Speaking of footballs, me and two other guys were walking down the beach complaining about how we didn't bring a football with us to Israel and boom, all of a sudden we look down and there was a football. Yea so we stole it and now we have a football. If you were in Eilat last week and had a Nike Football that disappeared, sorry about that. It wasn't personal.

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Okay so next time (can't guarantee when that will be since I am moving on Thursday) I'm going to finally share with you my plans for taking over the world AKA my view of politics and the future of the Middle East...after all if I'm going to live here, there might as well be a future no? I'll also let you know how life on a farm (AKA kibbutz) is.