If you would like to see the pictures from the slideshow on the right larger and with captions, they can be found in my Google Pictures album here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kaleibowitz/Nativ28#
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Shabbat Shalom! 3rd Shabbos
Hello everybody! It's been another wonderful week here in Jerusalem and right now all is quiet at Beit Nativ as everyone is napping to prepare for Shabbos.
This week I feel like I really was able to experience a lot. On Tuesday afternoon our Jerusalem class learned about Jesus, and so we went to the room where it is believed that the last supper was held, as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was incredible, and hands down one of the coolest places I've ever been in my life. In the church there's the stone where Jesus was laid down after being crucified, as well as the actual spots of his undressing and crucifixion. There were people there from all over the world kissing the stone and lining up to pray in the spot of crucifixion. The entire church is divided into dozens of sections so that each denomination has its own place to pray in the church. At one time, there was so much disunity between the different denominations that no one could decide who would get to be in charge of holding the key to the church. As a result, there's a Muslim family that lives up the street that has been in charge of holding the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for years now - which I thought was pretty funny. We saw Franciscan Monks chanting and waving around incense and the Armenian Priests chanting and holding candles. I'd definitely never been exposed to anything like this before, so to me it looked like something out of Da Vinci Code, and it all seemed very foreign, which made me wonder what someone who'd never seen a Jew before would think while looking into the services that we have every morning. Being in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was so cool to me because whether or not anything that is believed to happen there actually happened there doesn't matter, what matters is that where I was standing and what I was seeing was the cause of innumerable events throughout history. It felt very significant.
Tuesday night some of us went to the Taste of Jerusalem Food Festival in town, where we walked around and ate all different kinds of foods from the stands that were set up. There were also some little shops and live music. It was really lovely.
Wednesday in Jerusalem Class we learned about Islam, which was also very interesting. We then toured the Islam section of the Jerusalem Museum at the Tower of David and climbed up to the top of one of the towers for an incredible view of the city.
Last night, Thursday, a bunch of Nativers went to the Jerusalem Philarmonic Symphony. I'd never been to a symphony concert before, and it was a lot cooler than I was expecting it to be. They opened with a single oboe player playing "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav," and they also played HaTikvah. It was really a great evening, seeing everyone dressed up to go out and experience the culture of Jerusalem. I couldn't believe the tickets were free.
This morning I did the usual trip to the shuk and the grocery store to prepare for Shabbos. As much as things are becoming a little more routine now, I'm still so happy to be here and I'm really looking forward to picking my classes for the upcoming semester at HebrewU. I'll be putting up more pictures for everyone soon.
Kari
This week I feel like I really was able to experience a lot. On Tuesday afternoon our Jerusalem class learned about Jesus, and so we went to the room where it is believed that the last supper was held, as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was incredible, and hands down one of the coolest places I've ever been in my life. In the church there's the stone where Jesus was laid down after being crucified, as well as the actual spots of his undressing and crucifixion. There were people there from all over the world kissing the stone and lining up to pray in the spot of crucifixion. The entire church is divided into dozens of sections so that each denomination has its own place to pray in the church. At one time, there was so much disunity between the different denominations that no one could decide who would get to be in charge of holding the key to the church. As a result, there's a Muslim family that lives up the street that has been in charge of holding the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for years now - which I thought was pretty funny. We saw Franciscan Monks chanting and waving around incense and the Armenian Priests chanting and holding candles. I'd definitely never been exposed to anything like this before, so to me it looked like something out of Da Vinci Code, and it all seemed very foreign, which made me wonder what someone who'd never seen a Jew before would think while looking into the services that we have every morning. Being in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was so cool to me because whether or not anything that is believed to happen there actually happened there doesn't matter, what matters is that where I was standing and what I was seeing was the cause of innumerable events throughout history. It felt very significant.
Tuesday night some of us went to the Taste of Jerusalem Food Festival in town, where we walked around and ate all different kinds of foods from the stands that were set up. There were also some little shops and live music. It was really lovely.
Wednesday in Jerusalem Class we learned about Islam, which was also very interesting. We then toured the Islam section of the Jerusalem Museum at the Tower of David and climbed up to the top of one of the towers for an incredible view of the city.
Last night, Thursday, a bunch of Nativers went to the Jerusalem Philarmonic Symphony. I'd never been to a symphony concert before, and it was a lot cooler than I was expecting it to be. They opened with a single oboe player playing "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav," and they also played HaTikvah. It was really a great evening, seeing everyone dressed up to go out and experience the culture of Jerusalem. I couldn't believe the tickets were free.
This morning I did the usual trip to the shuk and the grocery store to prepare for Shabbos. As much as things are becoming a little more routine now, I'm still so happy to be here and I'm really looking forward to picking my classes for the upcoming semester at HebrewU. I'll be putting up more pictures for everyone soon.
Kari
Monday, September 15, 2008
Week 1 of Mini-Mester
Shalom everybody!
To pick up where I left off last time, after Shabbos ended last Saturday night all the Nativ kids went to the Israel/Switzerland World Cup Qualifying Game outside of Tel Aviv. This was my first ever professional sporting event and it was SO cool. Switzerland was beating Israel 2 to 0, and there were about ten minutes left in the game when Israel scored. Everybody went NUTS and all the Israelis in the crowd were screaming and chanting and just going crazy. Then, in the four minutes of overtime, Israel scored again to tie the game, which was absolutely unbelievable. So overall my first sporting event was very exciting.
Last Sunday morning I started my classes at Hebrew University. Today was my 7th day of class, and I feel like I know SO much more Hebrew than I started with. I learned all the cursive letters and wrote an entire letter in Hebrew (with only a few revisions). Hebrew is a very easy language, because all the spelling is phonetical and there aren't any linking verbs like is/are/etc. My friends in my Ulpan class and I have started using little Hebrew phrases in every day language and I can really feel that I'm learning a lot. We have two different teachers, each of which teach 2.5 days every week, because here they believe that for learning a language it's better to be exposed to two different teaching styles and accents, which I found really interesting and also helps to break up the monotony of having twenty hours of a single class every week.
Three days last week I also had my Jerusalem class, which consists of a one hour lecture and two hour field trip every time. Although the lectures can be a little bit confusing, the touring is always incredibly interesting. So far we've toured the old city and the city of David. During the tour of the city of David, we hiked through Hezekiah's tunnels, which I did last year on pilgrimage. These tunnels were used during the First Temple Period to bring water into the old city. Hiking through them consists of walking through a pitch black, very narrow tunnel that's filled knee high with water for about thirty minutes. It's a really cool experience even though we had to sing the whole way to keep me from freaking out. The touring around Jerusalem is always amazing to me, because in America when you see historical sites they're old if they've been around for 300 years. Here buildings are 1000 and 2000 years old. And although we all know not to take the Bible as an actual historical document, it's very interesting to look around and be able to point and say "This is where King David did such-and-such" or "This verse of the Bible took place here."
On Thursday we had a ceremony and watched United 93 in honor of September 11th. We were all really happy to be honoring that day even though we're not in America at the moment.
Later Thursday night, since there's no class on Friday and you can't go out on Friday night, we had a party on the roof of one of our dorm buildings hosted by the Nativ kids that live up there. It was a lot of fun to just hang out on base with each other. I really think we have a great group of people on Nativ 28.
This Shabbat was the first open Shabbat, so many Nativers went away for the weekend. However I, with a few of my friends, elected to stay on base for a relaxing Shabbos instead. On Friday I went to the shuk, a sort of outdoor market, and bought all sorts of good food for Shabbat, including amazing freshly made chocolate rugaleh, a pomegranate, my favorite Israeli mint lemonade, and delicious guacamole. There weren't very many people left on base for Shabbat, so we went to Friday night services and then slept in on Saturday. Saturday we were invited to the apartment of one of our former USY staff members for lunch, which was SO nice because it was the best food I've had since arriving in Israel. It was also nice to just spend a Shabbat relaxing and eating and catching up on sleep.
Lastly, I want to say a huge Mazel Tov to Emmy and the Jeffreys on Emily's Bat Mitzvah! I was very sad I couldn't be there but I know she was amazing and everyone had a great time, and everyone looked gorgeous in the pictures I saw.
Love you all!
Kari
To pick up where I left off last time, after Shabbos ended last Saturday night all the Nativ kids went to the Israel/Switzerland World Cup Qualifying Game outside of Tel Aviv. This was my first ever professional sporting event and it was SO cool. Switzerland was beating Israel 2 to 0, and there were about ten minutes left in the game when Israel scored. Everybody went NUTS and all the Israelis in the crowd were screaming and chanting and just going crazy. Then, in the four minutes of overtime, Israel scored again to tie the game, which was absolutely unbelievable. So overall my first sporting event was very exciting.
Last Sunday morning I started my classes at Hebrew University. Today was my 7th day of class, and I feel like I know SO much more Hebrew than I started with. I learned all the cursive letters and wrote an entire letter in Hebrew (with only a few revisions). Hebrew is a very easy language, because all the spelling is phonetical and there aren't any linking verbs like is/are/etc. My friends in my Ulpan class and I have started using little Hebrew phrases in every day language and I can really feel that I'm learning a lot. We have two different teachers, each of which teach 2.5 days every week, because here they believe that for learning a language it's better to be exposed to two different teaching styles and accents, which I found really interesting and also helps to break up the monotony of having twenty hours of a single class every week.
Three days last week I also had my Jerusalem class, which consists of a one hour lecture and two hour field trip every time. Although the lectures can be a little bit confusing, the touring is always incredibly interesting. So far we've toured the old city and the city of David. During the tour of the city of David, we hiked through Hezekiah's tunnels, which I did last year on pilgrimage. These tunnels were used during the First Temple Period to bring water into the old city. Hiking through them consists of walking through a pitch black, very narrow tunnel that's filled knee high with water for about thirty minutes. It's a really cool experience even though we had to sing the whole way to keep me from freaking out. The touring around Jerusalem is always amazing to me, because in America when you see historical sites they're old if they've been around for 300 years. Here buildings are 1000 and 2000 years old. And although we all know not to take the Bible as an actual historical document, it's very interesting to look around and be able to point and say "This is where King David did such-and-such" or "This verse of the Bible took place here."
On Thursday we had a ceremony and watched United 93 in honor of September 11th. We were all really happy to be honoring that day even though we're not in America at the moment.
Later Thursday night, since there's no class on Friday and you can't go out on Friday night, we had a party on the roof of one of our dorm buildings hosted by the Nativ kids that live up there. It was a lot of fun to just hang out on base with each other. I really think we have a great group of people on Nativ 28.
This Shabbat was the first open Shabbat, so many Nativers went away for the weekend. However I, with a few of my friends, elected to stay on base for a relaxing Shabbos instead. On Friday I went to the shuk, a sort of outdoor market, and bought all sorts of good food for Shabbat, including amazing freshly made chocolate rugaleh, a pomegranate, my favorite Israeli mint lemonade, and delicious guacamole. There weren't very many people left on base for Shabbat, so we went to Friday night services and then slept in on Saturday. Saturday we were invited to the apartment of one of our former USY staff members for lunch, which was SO nice because it was the best food I've had since arriving in Israel. It was also nice to just spend a Shabbat relaxing and eating and catching up on sleep.
Lastly, I want to say a huge Mazel Tov to Emmy and the Jeffreys on Emily's Bat Mitzvah! I was very sad I couldn't be there but I know she was amazing and everyone had a great time, and everyone looked gorgeous in the pictures I saw.
Love you all!
Kari
Friday, September 5, 2008
First Shabbos!
Shabbat Shalom! It's day four of my experience on Nativ 28 and I'm just overwhelmed with loving it. It's been very busy so far, thus the lack of posts, but although I'm keeping Shabbat by not using my cell phone, skyping, or iming, this is the perfect rest period for me to update all of you.
The flight was good, I slept the whole way. The first night in Jerusalem we weren't allowed to go out, so we all took the time to go to sleep early and get rid of our jet lag. On Wednesday we had ice breakers with our groups, as well as services, meals, and a tour of Jerusalem. The groups are based on what tracks you're doing (of which there are three choices) and my group is Yerucham, since that's where I'll be volunteering next semester. I really love all of the people in my group, and it's a good mix of friends I already had (like Ashley) and people I'd never met before. Wednesday night was our first night out, and I went to a bar and a dance club with some of my friends; it was an amazing time. On Thursday we had our Hebrew University orientation, during which we received our student IDs and our mini-mester schedules.
The mini-mester is strictly for Nativ students and goes from this Sunday to the end of September. It was designed to give Nativ students more transfer credit. My schedule is Ulpan, or Hebrew language, Sunday through Thursday from 9 AM to 1 PM, and then three days a week I also have a history of Jerusalem course that goes from 2 PM to 5 PM. For the mini-mester, Nativ provides buses to and from HebrewU since we all begin and end class at the same time, although not everyone takes the same classes. On Thursday we also took a tour of the campus, and HebrewU is much prettier than I expected. There are a lot of open lawn areas and gardens surrounded by buildings, and the entire campus sits on top of a mountain overlooking Jerusalem.
Last night we went out again, although I took a break from drinking, and I had another awesome time. Although I was in Israel last summer, we weren't even allowed to go to the supermarket across the street without a staff member, so being able to walk around by ourselves and do whatever we want is an amazing feeling. I also had my first frozen yogurt, shoko bisakeet (chocolate milk in a bag - delicious!) and falafel yesterday, all of which I had been looking forward to for some time.
As far as my dorm room goes, it's pretty small compared to others here, but still bigger than many that I've seen at colleges in America. My roommate is from Chicago and her name is Becky, and she's a great roommate - we both stay out late and sleep late, and we also agree on many other roommate issues, such as drinking and using the computer on Shabbos. We lofted our beds to give ourselves more room, so we both sleep on top bunks. We left one bottom bunk so we could sit and relax while using the computer and so we could have guests sleep over, and we hope to buy some plastic shelving units to go under the other lofted bed, since we have very limited closet/drawer space.
Today was our first Shabbat, something we have all really been looking forward to. It definitely lived up to our expectations. We walked to a random patio that overlooked the old city, and we prayed, sang, and danced as a group. We also then had a wonderful dinner on base and afterwards a lot of us hung out on the roof and played board games.
More than once during each day, I feel totally overwhelmed with happiness. And as much as I miss everyone at home and wish they were here, it doesn't make me sad because I'm just too busy being so completely happy. I know 100% that coming to Israel this year was the right choice for me and that everything else can wait til I come home. It feels like I've already been here for months. I'm excited to start classes on Sunday and continue meeting new people. I know that the next nine months are going to be some of the most amazing times of my life.
Love you all!
Kari
The flight was good, I slept the whole way. The first night in Jerusalem we weren't allowed to go out, so we all took the time to go to sleep early and get rid of our jet lag. On Wednesday we had ice breakers with our groups, as well as services, meals, and a tour of Jerusalem. The groups are based on what tracks you're doing (of which there are three choices) and my group is Yerucham, since that's where I'll be volunteering next semester. I really love all of the people in my group, and it's a good mix of friends I already had (like Ashley) and people I'd never met before. Wednesday night was our first night out, and I went to a bar and a dance club with some of my friends; it was an amazing time. On Thursday we had our Hebrew University orientation, during which we received our student IDs and our mini-mester schedules.
The mini-mester is strictly for Nativ students and goes from this Sunday to the end of September. It was designed to give Nativ students more transfer credit. My schedule is Ulpan, or Hebrew language, Sunday through Thursday from 9 AM to 1 PM, and then three days a week I also have a history of Jerusalem course that goes from 2 PM to 5 PM. For the mini-mester, Nativ provides buses to and from HebrewU since we all begin and end class at the same time, although not everyone takes the same classes. On Thursday we also took a tour of the campus, and HebrewU is much prettier than I expected. There are a lot of open lawn areas and gardens surrounded by buildings, and the entire campus sits on top of a mountain overlooking Jerusalem.
Last night we went out again, although I took a break from drinking, and I had another awesome time. Although I was in Israel last summer, we weren't even allowed to go to the supermarket across the street without a staff member, so being able to walk around by ourselves and do whatever we want is an amazing feeling. I also had my first frozen yogurt, shoko bisakeet (chocolate milk in a bag - delicious!) and falafel yesterday, all of which I had been looking forward to for some time.
As far as my dorm room goes, it's pretty small compared to others here, but still bigger than many that I've seen at colleges in America. My roommate is from Chicago and her name is Becky, and she's a great roommate - we both stay out late and sleep late, and we also agree on many other roommate issues, such as drinking and using the computer on Shabbos. We lofted our beds to give ourselves more room, so we both sleep on top bunks. We left one bottom bunk so we could sit and relax while using the computer and so we could have guests sleep over, and we hope to buy some plastic shelving units to go under the other lofted bed, since we have very limited closet/drawer space.
Today was our first Shabbat, something we have all really been looking forward to. It definitely lived up to our expectations. We walked to a random patio that overlooked the old city, and we prayed, sang, and danced as a group. We also then had a wonderful dinner on base and afterwards a lot of us hung out on the roof and played board games.
More than once during each day, I feel totally overwhelmed with happiness. And as much as I miss everyone at home and wish they were here, it doesn't make me sad because I'm just too busy being so completely happy. I know 100% that coming to Israel this year was the right choice for me and that everything else can wait til I come home. It feels like I've already been here for months. I'm excited to start classes on Sunday and continue meeting new people. I know that the next nine months are going to be some of the most amazing times of my life.
Love you all!
Kari
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