Week before Pesach and Carmel Trip

This was an excellent week.

To begin, there was a lot of Ulpan - and furthermore, everyone who has had trouble making to 8:30 AM Ulpan asked for the 3 hour long sessions for the week to start a half hour later to give us additional time. It didn't help them, and some mornings only Jeff and I were in Ulpan. It was awesome, like private lessons. Eventually an hour or more after the class began, other students would stroll in.

Afternoons were without much going on since the schools here have two weeks of vacation. Wednesday evening was our weekly enrichment, a seder at Mazi's. Since coming to Israel, I have really enjoyed partaking in questions around challachah (talmudic law), despite my limited knowledge of it. You aren't supposed to have Matzah or sing the prayers prior to the actual seder is my understanding, so how can we have a mini seder with the group before pesach begins. A good question. Then there were other questions around the dinner itself, would it be in the spirit of Pesach without bread or could we put croutons in the salad since Pesach hadn't really started yet anyway. The debate amongst the group was enjoyable leading up to it.

Yosfetal - my home until Wednesday evening - was responsible for making a mixed green salad and bringing two bottles of soft drinks. I picked up everything for our group, and brought it back. I ended up making the salad as well, but keeping it separate until we went to Mazi's where we would mix it together (I never got to try the finished product for some reason, It must have been passed from just left or right of me, but it looked good, so I hope it was enjoyed).

The seder at Mazi's was nice, with Momo playing the role of Elijah and showing up and then leaving to go to other seders. I decided not to have Matzah, mostly because I didn't want any, not necessarily for religious reasons. The Haggadah we used, a mini haggadah, was a compilation of different pieces of the story. Some songs, some prayers. We got all four glasses of wine, the finger dipping (there was a discussion as to which finger to dip with) but we skipped the four children part, and questions were sung as a group.

The next morning, Izy and I arrived from our new residence at Herzl 15 to the bus stop where we met the group to begin our Carmel trip. On the bus, which arrived promptly at 6:50 PM (very unusual for Israel for things to run on time) was the new Ness Tsyiona group. I chatted with them for a while, or at least, those that were awake, before moving up to the front of the bus to talk with Asi, their organizer and some other Ramla people.

Nir managed to get hurt early in the trip, and returned home before the hike.

We managed to see some beautiful gardens planted around the Baron von Rothschild grave. I particularly enjoyed the rose gardens, where I used the color accent feature that I have come to enjoy on my camera so much. I only wish that it took two shots so you could capture the photo and then process immediately, so you can still have the original - which is the benefit of post processing in photoshop. I chatted with one of the new kids about the new photoshop coming out, it sounds amazing. I really need to learn more about photo processing. I loved what it said on Dorothy's tomb: "She tried to do what he wanted in the way that he wanted". Classic.

I stopped to smell red roses, which had a wonderful aroma. You aren't supposed to pick flowers in Israel, especially protected flowers - but smelling them is definitely allowed.

Below are views from the Carmel mountain looking out over the sea. It's stunning, from there, the majestic nature is not captured in the slightest with the camera. It was perfect weather with blue skies, not hot nor cold.

Here are one of the endangered flowers (shown below), oops! On the inside, each petal has a black dot, thus four black dots surround in the center of flower, and it is a vibrant red. They are protected, which is a good thing, since they are quite beautiful. In the background are other mountains close to Carmel, and behind us is a large cave.

 Unfortunately, stopping to take pictures earlier meant that I missed most of the lecture on the cave as a dwelling place in previous times.

On to the Bahai Gardens, in Haifa, where I lost the group for most of the time there.  I stopped when I saw some friends from other groups, and started talking.  When I looked up, everyone had disappeared.  I finally found them on the promenade just as everyone was getting up from the final lecture.

The coolest part of the day for me was running into Uriel in Carmel town.  Uriel was my brithright guide nearly  5 years ago when I first came to Israel.  I got his email, and the following day sent him some photos from the trip.  It was like coming full circle for me here in Israel.

The bus ride home was fine, we got back relatively early, and spent some time taking photos in front of the Ramla sign (must ask Rachel for a copy of her photos) before I went back to my new apartment.

Before shabbat started some friends and I went for dinner at the Indian Restaurant in town.  The food was alright, it made me miss New York indian food (London is still my favorite place to have indian cuisine!)  After was a low key evening of scrabble and