STUFF OVERLOAD! (Annie)

So much goes on here at once that I have a hard time finding time to blog and when I do find time I have a hard time getting through it all! It is a daily challenge for me to describe my daily life here in a coherent way. I will attempt to scratch the surface of what has been going on this last week-ish.

Good news! I can now add the Red Sea as one of the bodies of water I have swam (swum?) in in my lifetime! Not something I really expected to do, but not to worry, I added it to my bucket list just in time to check it off of it. Just like I added "Swim in the Aegean Sea in Turkey whilst watching the sunset" on my list while I was Turkey. I checked that off, in case you were wondering.

Sunday we drove down to Eilat, the southernmost part of Israel, where there is a port to the Red Sea! Also called the Reed Sea, prompting jokes such as "Haha we're adding three more Reeds to the Reed Sea!" Hilarious. The beach where we went was sub-par because most of the beach area was occupied by a reef. However, this reef made for some AMAZING snorkeling, so I have no complaints! The reefs were for the most part colorful and abundant with exotic fishies of all kinds. It was exhilarating to be able to simply stare at the fish without having to worry about looking up to breathe. Sometimes I get a bit lost in the water and  forget that there's another world above me, which is eerie experience. The water was about twenty feet deep and my favorite thing to do was to dive down to the bottom and swim among the reefs and fish. You can almost imagine that you're part of life down there, until you run out of air and have to surface once again. We saw some animals I'm pretty sure I've never seen before (I'd have to check with Neil and Shawn--I think they remember what I've seen better than I do), including a sea snake, a lion fish, and an octopus! Octopi are my favorite animal and so of course I was thrilled to see one. It was blending in with the sea bed when somebody spotted it, and within minutes there were at least twenty of us swimming in circles above it. I dived down and was pointing the octopus out to the people above and I think I disturbed it, and it started to swim away. We watched it as it moved across the reefs, which was really interesting to watch as it would stop every few inches and change color and texture, camouflaging with the reef behind it. Its camouflaging capabilities are one of the many reasons octopi are the best animal.

An interesting side note to our snorkeling in Eilat story: every single person in our group chose to go on this activity, except for one. He said he just didn't feel like going. But after we left he was in increasing pain and by the end of the day he had been taken to the hospital and found out he had appendicitis. We came back and were told that he had had his appendix taken out. What are the chances that the ONE person who didn't go on the trip ended up getting appendicitis! Thank goodness he didn't come with us.

Monday the mood of the group took a more somber turn, as we went to the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum here in Israel. Like many museums, you could spend days there, but we only had time to briefly walk through the museum. It was very sad to see what happened during the Holocaust. Here I amend my post a little bit and am going to quote my Great-Aunt Virginia: "Hank was not, however, a "righteous Gentile"  just his parents...it was his parents that were made honorary citizens of Israel, not Hank and I.  However, Hank and Joyce did receive the certificate making their parents honorary citizens (of Israel).  The two grandchildren of the couple hidden in their home were there when it was presented and it was a out of this world experience for all of us.  Jay, Tara, Rochelle, Kirk and Rik were there with us when it was presented in Los Angeles by the Israeli Consul General." Recently the Israel Government honored Hank and his wife Virginia by making them honorary citizens of Israel and by planting a tree dedicated to them in Yad Vashem. There are thousands of trees in Yad Vashem dedicated to righteous Gentile families, and so it took about a half hour to find their tree (I will have a picture up of it soon, Mom and Alison). Afterwards we went up to Mount Herzl, named after the leader of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl, and saw the graves of Herzl and various Israeli presidents, prime ministers, and soldiers.

Yesterday we watched a Jewish movie called Sallah Shabeti. It was a comedy and I found hilarious--though perhaps not for the reasons that they meant for it to be funny. We watched it because our teacher figured we would understand more of the jokes now that we've learned about Zionism in class, but I think most of them still flew over our heads. I still thought it was funny though because the main character was so ridiculous. He was this lost, stumbling guy who had moments of cleverness but on the whole just staggered his way through life and made me laugh constantly. I'll put in a plug for the movie here and recommend it to anyone interested. Even if you don't get the jokes.