During the fall term the international school here hosted a talent show. I tried for a month to gather a small group to perform a salsa dancing routine. Finally, a week before the show I confirmed three other people - none of whom had much salsa experience. I choreographed a routine and, since our schedules all differed, taught it to each person individually. Two days before the show we found time to practice as a group. Everyone worked really hard and we got it down! We performed at the talent show and ended up winning! Here is the video.

The guy in silver is Jonah, who is a graduate student from New Mexico. We were roommates during the fall. I am in blue on the right. Jonah's partner is Florence, who is from Belgium and works in administration at the international school here. My partner is Leora, who is an undergraduate student and friend from the year.

Enjoy!

THAILAND, POLAND, SOLDIER REMEMBRANCE DAY, INDEPENDENCE DAY, JACOB'S LADDER FESTIVAL, LAG B'OMER MYSTIC CELEBRATION

Wow, it's really been quite a while. My time here is coming close to an end. I have done a ton since my last post. I will give an overview and throw in some anecdotes.

I travelled around Thailand for three weeks. I desperately searched for a travel partner for a solid month before going. No one could come, so I did it alone! I was thrilled to find an excellent priced ticket, but the catch was that the plane departed from Amman, Jordan. I bought the ticket and by doing so created a whole new adventure.

To say it shortly, the morning of my flight, it took me a very long time to make my way over to Amman from Jerusalem. The border crossing was not so efficient and on the Jordanian side I ended up paying a little to much for a cab that could get me there quickly. I made it on time and boarded my flight on Etihad Airways.

I had a 24 hour layover in the United Arab Emirates. Where's that?! It's a small country on the southeast corner of Saudi Arabia. Etihad airways surprised me and took care of everything: transportation to and from town, hotel, and food. Thanks Etihad!

Abu Dhabi, UAE was gorgeous. It's rich from its oil supply. The city is packed with skyscrapers, yet the streets are clean and crime is low.

I made it to Thailand and travelled around most of the country. I started in the islands in the south. There I obtained an egregious sunburn that caused the entire upper half of my body to peel for the rest of the trip : ). I then went to Bangkok in the central region. There I played an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with some fellow players that travel to the States to play each year. From there I travelled north where I went on a 3-day trekking adventure and floated back on a bamboo raft.

I returned to Israel.

My next international adventure, a complete 180 degress from the previous, was to Poland. We travelled to four concentration camps, including Plashow (where Schindler's list takes place), Auschwitz I and II, Maydanek, and Treblinka. The March of the Living was the following week so the country was filled with Jews from all over the world and plenty of Israeli flags! I also traced the cities of some family while I was there.

Now I can bring it back to Israel.

We just had Soldier Remembrance Day. I went to a solemn ceremony at the Western Wall during the evening and then in the morning to another ceremony at a cemetery at Kiryat Anavim, near the small town of Abu Gosh. That evening then marked the beginning of Israeli Independence Day. Solemn remembrance abruptly turned into a huge party and enough BBQ's to make one think the entire country is on fire. I went camping at the Dead Sea during this time and participated in the BBQ'ing festivities.

Coming up this weekend are another two large events. The first is the Jacob's Ladder Music Festival. This is a day of camping, dancing, and bluegrass music performances on the Kinneret (aka Sea of Galilee) in the north. I will follow this secular event, which completely breaks the Sabbath, with a totally Orthodox event. This event, also in the north, is a dancing festival for the holiday of Lag Ba'Omer. The event attracts thousands of Orthodox Jews and involves dancing near the grave site of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the rabbi who wrote the Zohar, which is the book of Kabbala, or Jewish Mysticism. The event goes all night!

That is all for now. Enjoy the photos that follow.


Danny K.






PHOTO 1: Here I am having a good old time on Ko Phi Phi island in Thailand. Unfortunately I forgot to by SPF 200 sunscreen.
PHOTO 2: This is a girl from our inside Auschwitz II, Birkenau, looking at the entrance. Auschwitz II was the main extermination camp that gassed up to 12,000 people per day. The trains full of Jewish prisoners came in on these tracks through the arched entranced and stopped to unload people right where we are standing. If you have seen any holocaust movies, you have probably seen this ominous archway.
PHOTO 3: This is the morning ceremony for fallen soldiers I attended on Soldier Remembrance Day. The event included a salute with a firing squad shooting blanks.

WHY STUDYING ABROAD IN ISRAEL IS EXCELLENT

FUN – You think there’s no nightlife in Jerusalem? You’re wrong. Ben Yehuda street and the downtown area is filled with more pubs and clubs than you could go to in a year. It’s full of English speaking New Yorkers and Hebrew speaking Israelis.

CULTURE - After the Birthright trip people asked me if I felt more connected to the land. The only reason I had enough courage to commit to studying in Israel for this entire year was because I had seen the land on Birthright. I didn’t necessarily feel “connected” though. Studying here has changed everything. I’ve experienced the culture and understand it now. When a little old lady tells me to move at the supermarket by running her shopping cart into my leg, I just smile and think, “Ahhh, culture.” I am more connected to Israel than ever before.

HEBREW – I have learned a ridiculous amount of Hebrew in just six months. I came in the summer knowing just a bit from Hal’s Hebrew classes at the UO. I now bargain fiercely with salesmen at the market and with taxi drivers in Hebrew and can hold a conversation with Israelis. It’s helped me feel more connected to the land to be able to speak with the locals, and has helped me understand more about spirituality in Judaism. Even if learning a language isn’t exciting to you, learning some Hebrew cannot hurt you. I promise it will strengthen your understanding and identity in one aspect or another.

UNIQUE TRAVEL EXPERIENCES - The school has also taken us on some wild trips.
They’ve taken us outdoor rock climbing outside of Jerusalem, on hikes through the desert, on hikes through the Judean hills, cave spelunking, and to the tropical underwater observatory in Eilat. Don’t forget that Egypt and Jordan are right next door and very accessible. I’ve done both without a significant strain on my budget. How about Turkey? How about anywhere in this half of the world during your six month winter vacation? Not a bad opportunity.

SPIRITUALITY – You’re never forced into it, but if you want it, it’s here. There are new invitations for Shabbat every week. I’ve had dinners in the Old City, and smoked hookah in a sukkah in the Old City. I was at the Wall on the eve of Rosh Hashana when it the square was packed from front to back. I watched a Torah be marched all through the Old City on Simchat Torah with singing and dancing. Did I mention that I get paid to study about Judaism? Whether you embrace it or not, you’re going to be amazed by what you see.

PEOPLE – My first roommates were Canadian, French, and Israeli. In the summer I had classes with Arab students, made friends with a Palestinian and went to his house where his sweet mother served us an amazing lunch. You can’t leave here without becoming more worldy.

ACADEMICS – Did you know that Hebrew University is world renowned? My history teacher can rattle off absolutely any date or number about Israel off the top of his head, my entrepreneurship teacher is a CEO, and my business ethics teacher is a lawyer who’s filing a case against Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, for incitement to genocide. These are amazing professors. There’s an archaeology of Jerusalem class here that takes 12 FIELDTRIPS through the term. Now that’s a nice class.

Did I miss anything? It’s likely. Let me know your questions! Send me an Email.
dakalman@yahoo.com

Dk

By the way – I live on the 7th floor in the dorms overlooking Jerusalem. I've added a picture of a sunset from my window. Come to Israel!

Shalom to everyone,

I’m now on a 6-week vacation from classes.

This weekend was my 21st birthday. To celebrate, we took a trip to Tiberias in the north, one of the four original holy cities. Tiberias is located on the Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee (although there’s no salt). Israel pumps its water to the entire country from this lake.

Our plan was to bike around the entire lake on Saturday. We silly Americans, however, didn’t bother to translate 55km into terms that we understood. It was a 35 mile ride full of surprises. We started with six people, and ended with much fewer. Suzanne, Mira, Ariella, Andrew, Jason and myself were the six.

Suzanne had never learned to ride a bike, so our hostel manager suggested putting her on the back of a tandem. In the morning, however, she woke up very sick, perhaps due to a food poisoning aftermath from earlier that week. She was unable to ride with us. Five people remained.

We set out at 8:30am and it took us half the day to ride about a quarter of the way around the lake. Three hours into the ride we stopped at an intersection to wait up for the people in back. 10 minutes later Mira rode up and told as that she had thrown up. She had ridden to her limit and called for a ride back to the hostel. Four people remained.

Our group’s energy was waning and we continued only for a little longer before stopping for lunch. We sat next to a banana farm and wolfed down copious amounts of pita and humus. After lunch we decided to split up. To stay safe we would create two groups of two: it would be me and Andrew, and Ariella and Jason. Andrew and I set out at a fast pace and the other group kept their own comfortable pace. Now, in a sense, we were down to two people.

Andrew and I made good time for about 20 minutes. Andrew’s recurring knee injury then flared up and put him in considerable pain. Simultaneously, rain started to roll in and we were on exactly the opposite side of the sea from Tiberias. There were no cities around, only farms and a kibbutz here and there. We had 2.5 hours until dark. We decided to push forward.

Although we hadn’t seen any lightning or heard any thunder, the storm decided to place one huge lightning flash directly to the right of Andrew and me. I swear I felt the heat from it and Andrew confirmed that he saw the flash. It was time to find shelter.

Finally we arrived at a gas station. We rested and ate there. An hour later, Ariella and Jason showed up! Now we were four again.

It was Saturday, the day of the Sabbath, so no buses would run until the day was over. We waited until dark and then went outside to the bus stop. Rather than taking a bus home, we ended up coming home with our bikes in a horse trailer full of horse dung. It was quite an adventure!

We’ve returned to Jerusalem and this week I am taking it easy and preparing for next week, when I leave to spend the rest of my break in Thailand.


Danny




I've added some pictures.

The first is Andrew, Myself, Mira, and Ariella with the bikes we rented from the hostel. Jason took the picture.

The last two give an idea of the landscape. The second is banana trees. The blue bags have something to do with harvesting the bananas, but you'll have to ask a banana farmer to find out exactly what.

The third picture is a nice shot of an enormous cactus with Sabra fruit on it. The fruit is tasty if you're able to get to the inside. The inexperienced peeler will end up with plenty of nasty spikes in his or her hands and/or mouth that are worse than stinging nettle.

SALSA DANCING VIDEO -

The International school at Hebrew you conducted a talent show in the fall. I put together a salsa routine and performed with three lovely people. We ended up winning the talent show! Here is the link. Be patient because it may take a bit to load.

http://www.jonahmancini.com/index.php/category/videos/

The Last Four Picture Are:

1 - View of Jerusalem at night from my room in the dorms

2 - Petra: This picture shows the landscape in Petra. Very
beautiful. On the other side of those mountains in the
distance is Israel.

3 - Petra:
The ancient city of Petra is carved into stone
mountain sides. The first picture gives an idea of
just how enormous and well preserved these structures
are. To get to this place we hiked for an hour up 800
stairs. This was originally created as a tomb about
1700 years ago and later converted to a church, which
is not in use right now. You can find us in the
picture at the bottom of the doorway.

4 - Jerusalem from my window yesterday, Dec. 27 when we had a nice snowfall!

Enjoy!

Danny

Hi everyone,

I could type half of a book about the last several weeks, but I'll just keep it to a page.

About three weeks ago I took a weekend trip to Jordan! We left Friday morning for a 4.5 hour bus to Eilat at the southern tip of Israel, crossed the border there into Akaba, then a two hour trip north through the Red Mountains to Petra.

Jordan was quite a different experience from Egypt. First of all, their Dinar is stronger than our dollar! I will add that our dollar is declining and the exchange rate to shekels has decreased from 4.7 to one when I arrived to 4.2. This saddens me. Regardless, we managed to keep expenses down.

People in Jordan spoke English quite well. This was not the case in Egypt. It turns out that the children don't learn English in school in Egypt but they do in Jordan. This made finding our way around much easier.

Our destination was Petra. For those of you who have seen Indiana Jones, the Last Crusade, the temple of the Holy Grail is in Petra. We watched the movie at our hotel during the night. The following day we re-enacted the entire film accordingly and I brought the Holy Grail back with me. It was tough to get it through customs at the border but they eventually allowed it.

Petra is a 2000 year old city carved into stone mountains. Therefore, all of the tombs are preserved incredibly well. The ruins were the most stellar I had ever seen. I promise pictures soon.

Back in Jerusalem, we had a talent show with the international students. I gathered three partners (two guys and two girls in all) and put together a salsa dancing routine. We had six days to practice. The organizers decided that there would be judges for the show. We danced our routine and won! They are giving us a free dinner at a nice place downtown as our prize. The video is on the internet and I promise to send the link in my next Email.

Coming up to date, Julie (my gf) arrived yesterday to visit and my mother and sister will be coming in a week. Hooray! December is a huge visitor month and everyone and their dog is having at least one visitor. And it's true, because there's Americans who actually adopted a lost dog from the Lebanon conflict last summer and keep it in their room - which is a horrible idea.

Happy Early Channukah to all.


Danny

Here are just a few Egypt pics. The first is at the Pyramids at Giza, which is next to Cairo.
The second is at a "perfume palace." They make perfume extracts there which are then shipped abroad, tampered with, and become all the perfumes and colognes that you know - Hugo, Boss, Calvin Klein etc.
The third is a pretty picture of the market in Cairo at night.

EGYPT: - posted by Danny

Here's something I wrote while I was in Egypt. We just returned from an amazing five day trip to Cairo and Alexandria.

"I left for Egypt with five other people on Thursday. We went through horrible complications and distributive negotiations with our travel agency in Israel. Eventually, we met our tour bus in Eilat at the Egypt border and jumped on our tour.

In two days we have gone to a handful of statues and monuments, ridden horses around the pyramids in Giza, seen the sphinx, goggled at the mummies in the Egyptian museum, and have even bought cologne extracts at a "perfume palace" (if there's anyone who knows perfumes it's the Arab people). Last night we were served like kings by five waiters like at a restaurant on the Nile - the meal was $22 for six people. What has impressed me most here is the friendliness and hospitality.

I was very nervous before coming here. In the city I expected to be uncomfortable and to be the recipient of dirty looks and remarks. I have feel like people stare and have a bit of contempt for me in every country I have travelled to. I have experienced completely the opposite here. People are completely friendly and constantly welcome us to Egypt. Last night on the street, four young men changed direction to come walk with us and talk for ten blocks. I expected a hidden agenda: maybe they would ask for money, or guide us into a friend's restaurant, or try to follow us all the way to our rooms. It was completely innocent. We just chatted and then parted ways. Perhaps it helps that we generally tell people we're from Canada, but perhaps not.

The best experience yet was in the enormous Arab outdoor market today. It is currently Ramadan and Muslims are fasting during daylight hours for this entire month. At about 5:30pm it was time to break the fast. In the market, the festive lights came on, people started carrying large trays of food that came out of nowhere, and tables and chairs were set up in the street. Rather than feeling alienated, I was completely welcomed. We talked to shop owners for 5 minutes and the next thing we knew we were in the back feasting with them. It was quite a remarkable experience.

The last detail I will add is that the coconut and mango juices are just as good as they sound, and cheaper than I can even handle."