Just Uncovered: A really adorable picture!

Oh those lovely long hot israeli summer days and jackal nights spent slept outside...

Visiting Louis at Kibbutz Hazorea with Ross & Julian

Home Again, Home Again, Lickity Split

or, How I Spent The Dead of Winter:
A Photo-Essay

I got real friendly with some older men

I freaked out about the coming takeover of technology demise of humankind as we know it

I successfully watched a move a night
(from all corners of the world) and
1. wished i was still traveling
2. finished my socks in the process

I held Israel close in my heart and tight on my face







I did in many Fun Activities with my mom (like sweeping the roof!)

had my fair share of sushi
and ate my weight in challah

Relived my childhood years

I was here, fifteen minutes before this happened...

...Family huddle, transistor radio, headlamp equipped.

So I survived the 6.5 earthquake, and am making the pilgrimage back north tomorrow.

Much love,
health and happiness to you all in the new decade

Merry Merry Christmas Christmas, from the Wolf pack

Preparing for Departure

שלום ישראל
I will miss you.
If you were cleaner, I would kiss you.
Your university was bland, so I took to the land
Layered coats of בוץ
And herded goats.
Met a boy which sounds cliche
But it wasn't at all because I read him Nietzche.
He's gone now, anyhow
and I am left with your fine sand in my hand.
The days are growing colder
as I am growing older
So glad my twentieth year
is not spent as a soldier.
On the bus they look at me
and I think how they travel for free.
My jealousy, though, never got my too down
I simply started tremping around.
They say that you are a dangerous place
so all those uniforms aren't a waste.
What's scariest to me
is that I ain't scared one bit -
Nothing can bring me to the end of my wit.
Those bomb bursts at night
and planes in midday
Never once got in my way.
Now listen hear, folks
for what shocked me most, I read in the post:
The exodus from Egypt
was all a hoax.
Still, I'm a Jew
so I learned some Hebrew
למשל, ממש כזה כאילו
I'm thinking of writing my thesis on you.
Oh Israel your varieties of religions never abate
they bind communities and they create hate
my goodness just look at the West Bank Gate.
For this reason and more my Judaism did not flourish
I told my mother this and it gave her much surrus.
But even though I chose not
to wear a head cover,
she should rest assured I did not
become a Jesus Lover.

The Miracle of Life

I look happy, buy its all just for show.

According to Leo, one in six baby lambs does not naturally drink their mother's milk from their tits. In a certain case one December in a certain place, humans decided to intervene. I was given lamb feeding responsibility. Morning, afternoon, and evening, mama sheep was milked by Theron and baby lamb was bottle fed by Maya. I did not enjoy it, which made me feel rather like a really bad person. It seems that I helped save the lamb's life, but it drank so little anyways and it was such a fight and so so so filthy it was hard to focus on the positive. Every time when Theron went to milk mama she poo'd in the bucket. I guess that boys dont have as much of a sense of cleanliness as us girls in such instances, because this stopped neither Theron nor Albert from indulging in the very same liquid that was moments before harboring big brown turds. (I hope you aren't eating your cereal as you read this)

The situation went as follows:

Albert: Do people drink sheep's milk?

Maya: Hmm, good question. Ive never seen it. Cheese, either. I wonder why.

Theron: There's only one way to find out.

The report back is that it is tasty as can be, creamy and fatty goodness. This became a daily occurrence. The leftover milk once the bottle was full went into the bellies of these two growing boys. In the meantime, I covered myself with milk throwup and poopie wool. The lamb, plain and simple, did not want milk. But it was a strong sucker, boy, we all suspected that somehow it was milking from its momma, though none of us ever witnessed the act.

Well, its still with us today. May it have a long and prosperous life, In Shallah.

Goats With the Wind

חלב עם הרוח
(Halav Im HaRuah, or Goat With The Wind)
I am here.
There is no internet access. (I am logging in from Tiberias)
But be assured that I am happy as a bee,
Planting gardens and building walls, cooking gourmet dinners and drinking tea, overlooking Nazareth and practicing my Hebrew.
Much love to all of you,
Maya

Jordan

Snippits from Jordan.Ready to hit the sandstone rock for a day of climbing in Wadi Rum.
This was a sweet donkey. You can see, it was sad. It didn't have nearly enough rope room.
Hitchhiking in the Desert was hard. So was walking. The camels beat us to the village.
Nighttime walk. This hill looked a lot closer than it actually was. The desert plays tricks on the mind!

I arranged to CouchSurf with a Bedouin who referred to himself as Desert Wolf in Wadi Rum. I called him from the Jordanian border and, as he works in tourism, he arranged a taxi for us at a good price. He met us in the village and drove us straight into the desert, to his Bedouin tent. We talked for a bit and then Albert and I went for a walk (see above photo). Soon after we set off, we hear a beep and turn around to see Desert Wolf's Jeep drive away. He had warned us that he might decide to sleep up on the mountain, and so we were not too alarmed. We had establish that, as he had to work the next morning and so would not be able to give us a ride to town to catch the bus to Petra, we would spend the day walking around and leave the following day. He had noted that as we didnt eat dinner, we had some food for the morning - Good, He was thinking of our health. The day was great, the sandstone mountains are a paradise to even the most rookie of rock climbers. And the weather couldnt have been better - always there was a nice cool wind to balance out the desert heat. But Desert Wolf didnt return, not that night or the next morning. We tried to hitchhike to the village, but the highway was not too well establish, if you know what i mean... We made it there eventually but the bus was long gone. So, we spent the day journaling over hookah and tea with Ali, a native Jordanian who had studied Japanese at university in Cairo before opening the first grocery store in Wadi Rum and who now makes great food and has lots of information on rock climbing in Jordan, though he doesnt do it himself. Well, we made it out of town eventually, traveling into the mountains to our next destination for one night, then headed to the northernmost border crossing. Unfortunately, this was not successfully communicated to our cab driver from Amman, and we ended up at the middle border crossing which lets out into the West Bank, and so takes all day to fully leave behind. Oh well, I finally made it back to the land of milk and honey. All I can say is that despite it all, Jordanians are nice like no one else. Wow, nothing like traveling to really reaffirm my trust in humankind.
Like the smart girl that I am, I am planning to spend the night with another Bedouin in the mountains above Tiberias. Well see how this goes second time 'round...
Love, Maya