hashamayim hayafim - weekend in haifa

Haifa in the background Pillars at the beach in Haifa
Ba'hai Gardens in Haifa

I love being here and find myself thinking frequently that at random times; walking out of the gym or taking the bus. I love exploring Jerusalem, meeting tons of new people every single day, and going places for the weekend and blindly navigating my way around a new city. Hannah, Alyssa and I traveled by bus to Haifa, a coastal city in the North, for the weekend and stayed with friends of theirs who go to Haifa University. Although the first night I slept on linoleum floor with a thin sleeping bag and my fleece jacket as a pillow, and the second night I slept on a "couch" (more of a metal bench with thin "cushions" half as long as I am), it's great to have a place to stay for free, it means I can travel that much more. Haifa is beautiful, exactly my sort of city because its set on a hill overlooking the sea. After some trials and tribulations we found the beach in the late afternoon on Saturday, with the help of many friendly residents of Haifa, which was one of my favorite times. There was a great boardwalk, and we planned on going back to swim the next day, but it poured rain and we had to change our plans. We saw the Ba'hai Gardens, which were beautiful, but could only go in to a certain point because you have to arrange tours to see the whole thing. The are on the slope of the hill and overlook the sea, which means you cannot easily go from one garden to another because its actually a steep hike, but the views are excellent. As Hannah said, once you see their gardens you can imagine the Ba'hai might achieve world peace. Our journey back to Jerusalem was so aggravating that it was jactually just really funny. A sherut (shared taxi) driver told us he would drive us from Haifa to Jerusalem (over 2 hours) for 40 shekel each. This is a good deal, but I had already bought a roundtrip bus ticket and didn't want to waste the money. In the end Alyssa proved how adept she is in Hebrew by arguing with the guy for about 20 minutes as he drove through the rainy streets of Haifa dropping off other passengers. This was very aggravating for Alyssa and not as much for me since I didn't understand the conversation, but she had to deal with the whole situation. He basically got us to accept the ride by telling me I could use my round trip ticket on his sherut, and then taking back this statement after being on the sherut for 20 minutes. This guy was the biggest ___ (insert expletive, Hebrew or English) I have yet met in Israel, but we ended up getting a ride with him to Jerusalem. On the way we saw an amazing golden explosion of a sunset over the ocean, which in my mind made any aggravation well worth it. It seemed to last forever, and the rain which had been relentless the entire day, seemed to have stopped in order to enjoy this lovely sunset.

Our household is complete with five roommates now. Morgan's parents are visiting and they invited me out to dinner. "Don't tell Morgan," they said, "but we like you better. We want to feed you and not him." Okay, actually thats not true. I'm invited and also Morgan is invited. Going out to dinner in Israel is fun because its a whole new type of vocabulary for me to learn. Like how I found a yoga class to go to! In Hebrew! I came out of it last night with a couple of new words learned and generally very pleased with the teacher and the atmosphere of the class. An Israeli woman named Hadas runs smalls classes from her apartment in a very cool neighborhood of Jerusalem. She actually has been to Boulder and met Pete of Illegal Pete's, which is just a funny connection to make with a yoga teacher in Israel. I'm happy to have found a yoga class and can thank my roommate Shirlee for that, who took me with her yesterday. We also went to the shook, the market I go to once or twice a week, where I bought about 9 bell peppers of all shapes and sizes. The idea that I spent less than two dollars on these and they are all waiting in my fridge, orange ones, yellow ones, light green ones...it's just a very exciting thing. I love bell peppers above almost all foods, but they are a special treat in the U.S. because they aren't cheap. There are also like a thousand tubs of hummus and many cucumbers in the fridge. I'm being taken to the falafel stand of all falafel stands tonight, according to a group of diehard fans, so get jealous. Did I write about pomelo yet? The most amazing fruit in the world? I cannot remember, but Morgan and I got one and then took on the tough job of opening it and eating it and was a very memorable experience.