Brrrrrr. I just made the trek up here to the reception desk through the rain, which has been turning to snow intermittently, and the almost twenty mile-an-hour winds. I’ve never seen such tempermental weather before coming here. For example, the other day started out beautiful and sunny. Then suddenly this massive black rain-cloud rolled in out of nowhere, the temperature dropped by twenty degrees, and we had our own miniature hurricane on our hands.

Yep, in many ways Israel feels like a microcosm of the entire world. It’s only a quarter the size of California, yet they have just about every kind of geography and climate you can imagine. Beaches on the Mediterranean, rocky hill country, desert wastelands, beautiful greenery up near Galilee, and even a snow top mountain with a ski resort. Many different religions are represented even in just the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s divided up into four quarters: the Christian quarter, the Muslim quarter, the Jewish quarter, and the Armenian quarter.

Well, let’s start with some pictures for now. I plan to keep adding more, so check back every once in a while!

My room from the inside, which I rarely use except for sleeping. I do have a nice little desk that
you can see in the back there though, which makes a good receptacle for all of my notebooks and books and things. Yeah, that’s Chewy on the top bunk there.

This is our dining hall. I know, doesn’t look so bad right? I actually really enjoy the food here, there is usually a little variety and almost every meal includes pita and hummus. The only downside is that it’s all Kosher L The thought of a cheeseburger is becoming more and more painful every day here…

Paradise on earth, otherwise known as the sauna. We go there every Monday and Friday, the two days that it’s open, without exception. It’s also a great place to meet the older Jewish and Finnish residents on the Moshav.

Israel was the last place I expected to find a café dedicated to Elvis, but there it was – just down the street from the Moshav. They make a mean cup of coffee, play nonstop Elvis tunes, and have an impressive array of Elvis photos.

There was something cool up there…I wish I could remember what it was.

Welcome to Ali Baba Souveniers! You like, you buy? This is the shop of our local contact in Jerusalem, an Arab shopkeeper named Shaaban (and possibly head of the Jerusalem mafia?). He handles all of our money exchanges, engraves rings, and is a great source of information.

You see these guys all over the place! As all Israeli citizens are required to do three years of service in the military after high school, most of them are ages eighteen to twenty-one. In this picture you only see the men, but women serve as well. As you can see they always carry their M16s around with them, so passing someone on the street lugging around a big rifle is a fairly common occurrence.

You're looking down into the Kidron Valley, with Jerusalem right behind us. A little Arab ghetto has formed down there, a lot of the houses having been built on ancient tombs and gravesites. But that’s how things are in this little country, you can’t hardly dig anywhere without desecrating someone’s final resting place. Some of the residents are part of the Hezbollah, which makes it a very unsafe environment for American tourists. No, we don’t go down there unfortunately.

Ancient toilet! Who left the seat up?

Did I mention that it snowed here in Jerusalem? We even had a little snowball fight with the little Arab kids.


More on the horizon! Be ready for my next blog about our excavation escapades, and the Holocaust museum!

Osher uvree׳ut (to your health and good fortune),
P.N.