Hilary's liturgy service was supposed to start at 7am. I planned to wake up at 10 and then catch the bus to the Central Bus Station, where I would meet Hilary and we would leave for the Dead Sea.
Hilary called me around 9am to let her in. It turns out that there was no Greek Orthodox service at 7am, so Hilary stuck around for a Catholic mass, then went to check out the Kotel/Western Wall. She was equipped with all of my maps (I have a map of Jerusalem that also has a close-up of the Old City, a big map of Israel that also has a small map of Jerusalem (not as good as the Jerusalem-only map, and a guide book with a map of the Old City that also has all the main sites), so she managed just fine.
We chilled for a little and then boarded a bus to the Central Bus Station, in hopes of catching the 11am bus to Ein Gedi, which is where part of the Dead Sea beachfront is. However, the bus was mad crowded, so we went to the ticket booth and bought tickets, then waited for the 12pm bus.
On the bus, we sat in front of some annoying/dumb Orthodox girls. Here are some of the conversations we heard:
-"We are in the land of Avraham Avinu (Abraham our father). HaShem (God) gave the land to Avraham, Yitzhak (Isaac), Ya'akov (Jacob), and Klal Yisrael (all of [the people of] Israel!"
-"I am petrified to go in Yam HaMelach (Dead Sea, but it literally means Sea of Salt) during the 9 days...simply petrified! (During the first 9 days of the Jewish month of Av, there are restrictions on what observant Jews can do. During this time, the First and Second Temples were destroyed (obviously a few centuries apart), and it's a period of light mourning. People don't go to movies and they don't eat meat. The holiday that is most similar to this is Lent.)
-(We passed some palm trees with bags covering their fruit to protect them from the sun) "I didn't know that bananas grew on trees! I thought it was only coconuts!" (They were actually dates, which are a popular produce in this part of the world.)
There were many other conversations. All of these were carried out VERY QUICKLY and in "Jewish" accents. Not quite Brooklyn...just Jewish. It was ridiculous and they were really annoying. Hilary and I exchanged many looks during the bus ride.
Open note to all Orthodox people: I know that in general, you guys are way more awesome/knowledgeable/savvy than those girls.
Anyways, we finally got to the Dead Sea! We changed in the locker room (after paying 2 shekel to get in) and headed down to the beach. In the locker room, a girl imprinted on Hilary. I say it like that because she was 8-10, but seemed a little off. Granted, English was her second language (Hungarian is her first), so that could be the issue. At any rate, her grandma couldn't go in the Dead Sea, so she seemed to think it was okay to have her granddaughter bug us. Of course, Hilary was much better about it than I was. I didn't feel like babysitting someone's kid for free. I'm just not as nice a person as Hilary, I guess. I'm okay with that.
The beack was really rocky. We left backpacks on the nearby rocks and our sandals close to the water (or so we thought), and carefully made our way into the water.
Time for an educational lesson about the Dead Sea! The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth. It's at least 400m below sea level. Water runs from Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee for you out of the loop Christian folk) in the north of Israel, down through the Jordan River. Along the way, it collects minerals. It then comes to the Dead Sea and because the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, the water has nowhere to do. It evaporates, leaving the minerals behind. (It is theorized that the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah happened nearby...Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, the Dead Sea is full of salt...)
Because of the extremely high salt content, you float in the Dead Sea. Seriously. You basically just sit in the water. You can't splash people and you can't get your head underwater. We lazed around, and I tried to find a cool spot in the water, which sadly didn't happen. It was cool, and I only stung a little bit! (This is a big deal for me because I have eczema, and my skin is really sensitive...in the winter, my skin gets extremely dry. In junior high, the skin between my fingers got weird and I was convinced that I was mutating into some sort of lizard freak, which made sense, because I was an unpopular kid in junior high.)
Sadly, Hilary got the water in her eyes and that basically ended it for us. Besides, you can't really stay in the water for TOO long (we were in for less than an hour), because you get seriously dehydrated. So we made our way to the shore. After spotting our sandals, I went to retrieve them. The rocks were REALLY hot. It was an ordeal. But I survived. We rinsed off (yay for liquid soap as shampoo!) and returned to Jerusalem.
Sadly, I had to do video editing for the Jerusalem Post, so we went there. It just so happens to be less than 10 minutes from the Central Bus Station. I did the video editing and poor Hilary had to move from chair to chair as the Internet staff kept needing different computers. I finished at 7pm, and Hilary and I walked to the shuk to go to the most awesome Indian restaurant ever. It's a hole-in-the-wall (literally) place that serves vegetarian Indian food. You pick the number/size of vegetable dishes that you want, and they bring them along with daal, rice, naan, and the little relishes. We got small bowls of all 4 of the vegetable dishes, and they all rocked. We then walked to Ben Yehuda St to get more of the World's Most Awesome Fro-Yo. Srsly. I will miss that stuff when I go back home. I think I'll walk home from work tomorrow and treat myself to some!
We then got back to my apartment and hung out. Then, the next morning, Hilary left. Her bus to Eilat went smoothly (I think), but the 12:30pm bus from Taba to Cairo broke down, so she had to wait for hte 4:30. But she got back okay (after losing her Egypt cell phone, or so I'm told), and will be returning to the US shortly.
Today at work, I translated a Hebrew survey and its summary into English. Before you get all impressed by my fancy Hebrew skills, wait. Google translator works wonders. And when it doesn't, morfix.co.il does. Also my Google homepage. When the sentence structure is wonky (I love that word!), I read through the sentences and then translate them myself.
The survey was about Israeli Jews and their levels of Judaic knowledge. 500 people were separated by level of observance and asked about their level of knowledge, their children's level, and their parents' level. Basically, secular Israelis are slowly becoming less knowledgeable, while religious and Ultra Orthodox (haredi) Jews are becoming more knowledgeable. Basically, the data wasn't exactly surprising. But I found the study interesting (though the wording was really repetitive), and I was glad to use my Hebrew skills...if I hadn't, I wouldn't have had a story to work on. I felt useful!
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