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

Bye bye, Sedot Micah

It's been swell.  We've made a lot of memories together, and dont worry - my cement-dried skin won't let me forget you for at least another week.

End of the work day.  Tucker in the corner mixing mud.  Completed section of the mud wall to the left.
Posing with a pile of manure. just filthy.

My birthday present was the beginning of the rainy season.  To celebrate, and to leave our mark, Albert and I made a royal bird statue out of a pair of old rusty pliers, old rusty wire, and blunted saw blades.

Its late now and time for bed.  Best birthday ever.

This Is What a Memory Looks Like, by Albert

Back in Israel...

...Slingin mud over rubber tires to build a wall to surround a museum of Moroccan Jewry. I am not speaking so much Hebrew, but I did learn the words "botz" for mud and "m'cheel" for contains. There are three other volunteers (Georgia, Argentina, Hungary) on this here moshav near Beit Shemesh, last weekend we drove ATVs in the desert

dipping in (or attempting to) Yam HaMelach (The Salt Sea), eating Moroccan food, and sleeping out in abandoned Jordanian army barracks.

The next day in hitching to Ein Gedi (below) we picked up a tour of an old Hilton Hotel abandoned since the war

.

Life is really great. Ive been listening to a lot of music, working real hard, eating well, and sleeping out under a huge sky nightly. Tomorrow is my birthday.

Turkish Farming

Greetings from Turkey! For a week I worked on a family organic farm in Basmakci, a very small town in nowhereland where I harvested peppers and tomatoes and from them made paste, picked beans and pickled things, wore a headscarf, learned the top 10 turkish pop songs by heart, and began saying "tamam" ("okay") with nearly as much frequency as the natives.

And tomorrow, the adventure of life whisks me away to Egypt.

Aquatic Ape Theory

First off, TED is awesome. Expand your horizons here.
Oh, all that goes on in life unbeknown to us.

Also, this is the Iraqi Shuk (tucked away right near the Israeli Shuk). I just discovered it this week. It's character is certainly different than the main Shuk, though I'm not sure I could articulate how. Certainly less tourists, more elderly people.

Ima called me on the telephone. I was distracted talking with her, then I turn around, and see two live fish flapping about wholeheartedly in this here box.

The edge of the Shuk where all the boxes are relagated to.