Hello from Arad!

Hello everyone and welcome to part two of my adventure! Sorry it's taken me so long to update all of you, but this is why:

Last Monday, we spent an overnight in a Bedouin guest tent near Arad. While the hospitality was fun (great food and lots of games of Banana Grams) there are two words to best describe my Bedouin tent experience: dust and camels. The first was responsible for me looking like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown, the second was good for two things: me smelling like, well, a camel, and later, me having to wipe myself down with Purell because the camel behind the one I was riding decided I looked like a Kleenex and sneezed all over my leg. As they say in Israel, labriut gamal (labriut is like "bless you" and gamal is a camel). I must say, riding a camel is significantly more difficult and less glamorous than it looks (if it even looks that fabulous in the first place...) Despite being VERY high above the ground, you feel every lump, bump and rock on the trail (I can't say road... it wasn't a road) and then the camel generally decides to spit, sneeze or display other bodily functions while you are on board. Ew. Furthermore, their teeth are abominable. A dental hygienist's right arm would probably fall off after doing one camel's lowers. Yes, they are that awful.

After a morning of camel riding, we hiked an "easy" trail (the Israeli idea of easy hiking and my idea of easy hiking are clearly two very different ideas) in the Negev. From the top, it's easy to see a long stretch of paved, black road roaming through endless mountains made entirely of reddish brown rock and sand. It could be something out of Aladdin if it weren't for something so modern (the tar road and the caravan of tour buses riding along it) right in the middle of an otherwise empty desert. I found myself thinking, "There is no way I can live here." As it turns out, I was wrong... keep reading!

Then came the worst part: saying goodbye to our tsofim and my friends headed to kibbutz. People who choose to spend our semester in Arad on kibbutz don't leave the kibbutz and don't see the rest of us until we move to Jerusalem in the spring. Being without them has been strange, to say the least, but I'm sure they are loving their new surroundings.

Speaking of new surroundings... I am now a resident of Arad! On Wednesday, we were given time to go apartment shopping. After buying some home essentials (yes, a trip to Home Center - I'm so excited there's one in Arad! - was necessary) I ventured, with one of my new roommates, to the Mega Bool. Mega Bool is where God would shop for groceries. Here's what's incredible about the Megal Bool: it's not actually in Arad, so the store sends a shuttle to your apartment to pick you up (free of charge), waits for you to shop, and then takes you and your purchases back to your front door (and, in our case, they send up a Mega Bool guy to the 7th floor with four crates of groceries). That, and the store itself is gorgeous; it completely puts the Douche to shame. I will not miss having my legs rammed into by dual shopping carts a la Super Douche. I am now beginning to remember that food shopping should be a pain-free experience (not that Shop Rite in New Jersey is such an example of civilized grocery shopping).

Another remarkable thing about the Mega, and Arad in general: everyone here is so NICE. Coming from Bat Yam, where I had to race taxi cabs to the crosswalk, hoping the driver would let me get across the street in one piece (and then would scream at me while I had the green light to walk), this is a very bizarre yet welcome change. In Bat Yam and Tel Aviv, "nice" is simply not done. Angry, frustrated, rushed and inconsiderate? Everyone seems very well-versed in those. But here, things are different. My neighbors don't scream at me, they talk and joke and ask us where we're from and why we're here (and when we tell them, they don't proceed to say, "Why? This place is awful!") One of my favorite members of my new neighborhood? A guy who looks about 90 and wears a sailing hat everywhere. I've been here for nearly a week and I have yet to see him without it. I'd love to know where he keeps his boat (or where he thinks his boat is); the closest body of water to Arad is the Dead Sea and I highly doubt that its sailing conditions are any good. Another one of my neighbors, Yaakov, heard my friends and me speaking English while walking home. He stopped us and asked where we are from, and when he heard New Jersey, he told us that he is originally from Elizabeth but he moved to Arad 23 years ago (he's about 80). He then proceeded to ask us who we know who lives in Elizabeth and he tried to figure out if the names were familiar. In Bat Yam, I can almost promise you this would never happen.

It's certainly been a dramatic change (it feels like I left New York City for Montana), exchanging the city for the desert and kitties for camels, but it will start to feel like home eventually. I've been making lots of latkes, hiking Shvil Yisrael (the Israel Trail - it goes through the all of Israel and takes almost 2 years to hike in its entirety. A portion of the trail is right behind my apartment, in the hills of the desert) and meeting (and adjusting to) members of my new community. It hasn't been easy, but I know it will be fun, and by the time I've embraced Arad as my home, just as in Bat Yam, it will be time to leave again. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Happy Hanukkah from the Land of Miracles!

Lots of love,
Elana