OK, so, a quick recap. A few days ago I flew with my mom from Marrakesh to Madrid, where she got on a flight back home and I caught one to Tel Aviv. Before splitting up, though, we had a day in Madrid, went downtown, found a veggie restaurant and then wandered the streets. We accidently ran into a big anti-Israel demonstration there, which was more upsetting to me than I expected. More and more as this trip has gone on I feel like I can't think about anything but what's been going on in Israel and Gaza - and that's before I got here. Anyway.
The flights all went fine, blah blah. Because of the cease-fire I was able to go stay with my aunt and uncle on the kibbutz for a few days. It's in the Negev within rocket range so it was not always clear that that would be possible, and I feel very lucky that it was...since I flew in the morning after the cease fire people keep saying "couldn't you have come three weeks ago?"
The kibbutz is so small, peaceful and quiet. I wasn't there when there were rocket alarms and everyone had to go run to their safe room, of course. It's strange to be in a place that's in some ways so much calmer than anywhere else I've been yet and in other ways a thousand times more tense. It's great to be staying with family and real people again instead of bouncing from one rented bed to another. But it's also very hard to be here right now. Or maybe ever, I don't know. This is my first trip to Israel as an adult, and I had no idea how I would feel being here or how I would see it. I still don't know - I have been so emotional but I can't even interpret my own reactions.
The next day, after a nice tour of the kibbutz and its factory, my aunt Julia drove me all around on a zionist negev tour. First stop Revivim, one of the first kibbutzim in the Negev, which has the original settlement from the 1940s preserved and set up so you can tour it from its original stage as an agricultural research station, first basically just a cave, then some shacks and trenches and a stone lookout tower.
Posters - what's inside a grenade, and how to throw one.
This cave was where the original settlers lived, then became a makeshift hospital.
In case guns in caves don't do it for you, this place also has 2 airplanes and some creepy statues with clothes falling off.
To think that anyone came to this place and thought it was a good spot for agricultural experiments is completely insane in the first place - and then it worked??
After that we saw Ben Gurion's desert home (simple) and panoramic desert lookout (gorgeous.)
The final stop on the tour was this amazing house belonging to Julia's friend Tal and her family. Tal's husband Rodney is an architect and he designed and built this place completely with his own two hands out of found materials from the local area. I've never seen a house like it. It's built out in the middle of nowhere between two nature reserves, and they have wireless internet, but they don't have running water.
After that I came back to Tel Aviv and have been hanging out with a few of my many lovely cousins.
And, you know. Walking around downtown Tel Aviv. Watching the inaugeration. Talking about politics and life stuff. Watching the speech again. Sitting around by the beach some more, soaking up the sun and half-assedly trying to take pictures and think of how to blog this as a regular travel destination which is not what it feels like at all.
I don't want to get political here and I don't know if I could even organize my thoughts enough to do so if I tried, anyway, but the war and everything else has really been consuming my mind and making it hard for me to think of what I can write instead. I guess all I can say right now is that it seems different from here than it does on TV. And I'm learning a lot, and I'm glad that I'm here.
I miss you and am glad you'll be home soon, though I feel bad saying that since I also want you to be gone as long as you want to be. I guess it doesn't really matter what I say, since you'll just be home when you'll be home. Anyway, I like this post a lot.
Posted by: laurie | 01/21/2009 at 07:34 PM
Posted by: Malka | 01/22/2009 at 03:43 PM