Hey, well, i have 2 updates.

yesterday we went and visited En Avedat, which is a very nice national park in the south of israel. its in the middle of the desert, but with a pretty nice feature, as you will see below.

here we are arriving. there was me, noa, noa’s sister, and 3 of her friends. so, we walked along the valley, and here is what we stumbled upon.

ibex are really common around here, and we ran into about half a dozen of them. they even came pretty close to us. so, anyways, on we went. and, next, we round a corner, and

i was pretty amazed by this greenery. anyways, behind this was a waterfall, which you can see here.

to finish of the trip, we backtracked a bit, and then climbed a sheer vertical face. well, it wasnt sheer, and it wasnt vertical, but there were some pretty crazy paths up the the cliffs to get back up to the plateau. so, anyways, check out the photo gallery for En Avedat here…

photogallery above

So, also, we went and saw mini israel. what it is, is, all the important monuments and buildings. its fun to see, and really lets to see all the important things there are, and then you can go visit the real ones later on.

here, for example, is the golden dome in jerusalem,

or , click this picture below to see the whole photo album.

Anyways, all is well here, im going to the North of Israel into Galilee for 3 days.  im planning on kayaking down the jordan river and maybe go ATV’ing too.

check back in a few days

So….

its been a while since i posted anything. Ive had some trouble getting my laptop hooked up to the internet here, and well, because of that, i just didint go online a lot. but i fixed it. my advice, never leave home without your wireless router!

Anyways, we now find ourself a little less than halfway thru our stay in Israel. up till yesterday, we had the most wonderfull weather, warm, sunny all the time. i dont leave my flip-flops and shorts. but it started raining yesterday, its still warm, but the rain here is more like short severe storms. so, you cant wanter out in them. they dont last long though.

So far, lets see. we have seen jerusalem, Karme Yosef, the city where noa grew up, Acco, a lot of Tel Aviv, and a lot more.

A major one week holiday just ended here, but during this time, we made a day trip to Jerusalem. it was, well, busy. it seems the rest of israel had the same idea, to go see the wailing during the holiday, and leave God note there. but it was nice to go back, and i still recognized most of everything there from my last trip 6 years ago.

Spent time in Karme Yosef, with noa’s grandparents, and went to a small market there. Its a really nice small village, and noa grew up there, so she likes going back. its sort of up on a hill, and you have a really nice view of the surrounding area from up there.

We have found ourselves walking around in Tel Aviv a lot, and ive gotten to know the city a lot better. still a little lost, but i recognize most area’s we go now. we havent had another chance to go to the beach, other than the one in the first few days after we arrived. the weather is supposed to get better, so we have our fingers crossed. the water here is so nice and warm, and its easy to get into and swim in. much better than the that stuff we call water in vancouver.

whats left here still? well, we have plans to go up to the North of israel, for a few days, and see whats up there. theres a place called mini israel we wanna check out, and if we can theres an airplane museum im interested in.

so, anyways. heres the new photoalbum for Israel taht i have created. its got sub-albums nicely organized by trips.

Hope you enjoy those pictures. ive taken a lot more, but its hard to trim them out so i dont upload too many pictures.

post again soon.

So, we arrived just fine in Israel a few nights ago.  slept a lot, still recovering a little over jetlag, but we have been busy around the city too.  Went out to eat lunch yesterday, and went shopping after.

Last night we went to a wedding, of a second cousin, and it was a lot of fun.  great food, lots of people, and it was all really interesting.  first time seeing a jewish wedding.  i dont think it was very orthodox though.  i was told it was pretty casual.

An interesting thing i see here is they check all the cars going into any shopping mall for bombs.  so they look in the back seat, at your bags, and into your trunk.  i think north americans would get pretty livid if they had to get checked everytime they drove to a mall.  then you get your handbags checked going inside from the parking garage also. 

what i thought was really funny, or rather at odds with all this, is as we were leaving, i saw someone walking out with a machine gun.  this guy didint look like a soldier at all, but i was told he is one.  they never get to leave their gun unattended unless its locked up at home.   otherwise, they have to and do walk around with it everywhere.

my hebrew is coming along good.  i can say bathroom, water, and some other things, like please and thank you.