My apologies to my steady blog readers who asked if I had abandoned them- the answer is no. I have not forgotten, I have been busy and not near a computer as you will see below.
Wednesday night I took a bus after class to Afula where I met Hannah and all of her cute kids in one of the Gans. Then we went back to her room and showered and dressed. When Ari got to the kibbutz, we climbed in the car and headed to Haifa where we attended the wedding of Tamar Cooper and Yehonatan. It was nice to see some TBH-BE familiar faces. The wedding was prided on being a mesh of cultures and backgrounds; Ashkenazi-Sephard and American-Israeli. There were close to 500 people who rocked out to mizrachi dance music and a dixie-chicks style band with three female violinists. There was lots of Ruach and a good time had by all.
We went back to Hannah's kibbutz for the night and early the next morning, we drove to Tiberias where Ari was running in a 10K race as part of the festivities for the 33rd annual Tiberias Marathon. The weather was amazing for those of us cheering and a bit warm for those running. While he was running, I went and bought him a flower and then waited for him near the finish line. Unfortunately I missed him crossing at the end as I must have been too distracted by the older woman next to me who was showting "SLICHA, BACHURIM, ZUZU, ATEM MACHSIMIM ET HASHAAR. oof. hem lo zazim. BACHURCHIKS, ZUZU. ATEM MAFRIIM. Slicha gever, tagid lahem lazuz.Ah todah gever." ("Excuse me, boys, move!, you are blocking the gate. oof. they are not moving. Boychicks, move, you're in the way! Excuse me sir, will you tell them to move. Ah, thanks sir.")
Ari finished in under an hour! Then we met up with some of his friends from his army unit (Yiftach) and spent over 2 hours waiting for friends of theirs to come through while running the full marathon. It was great and there were a bunch of runners who thanked us for telling them that they were about 500 meters from the end of the 42 kilometers. Our hands hurt from all the clapping. We went and got lunch and then headed back to the car.
On our way out of Tiberias, we made a slight change of plans and went and met his parents, sister and nieces and nephew at Nachal Hashofet. We took a stroll by the stream and waterfalls and played. I got all muddy trying to run up an embankment and then washed my hands off in the stream. We were then invited back to his sister's house in Yoqenam for dinner and then went the rest of the way back to Ari's apartment. Ari's mother was my Spanish teacher during the semester that I spent in Israel on MUSS and checked her records- I was a good student and she wrote me a positive note for Akiba- what a relief since I did not remember if I had behaved that semester. I must have known to be good and she must have also been good for me to not have acted up. Whew!
Today, we went grocery shopping and then back to cook for shabbat. Ari has a bunch of his friends coming over and then tomorrow night after shabbat, it is back to Jerusalem to go out to dinner with Jean and Xhev to celebrate a slightly belated 30th birthday for Jean.
It really has been a great mini-vacation weekend. I hope to be able to enjoy enough that finals prep will not be as daunting.
Shabbat Shalom!
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