שביל הגולן The Golan Heights for 10 days!

Hike the Golan - I had no idea what I was getting into! Amazing!

So I've been planning this hike in the Golan since I heard there was such a hike in Israel. It's 120 km crossing the Golan Heights from north to south. At first I heard it takes only 4 days...but now I know better.
So Micah, my next door neighbor in Domeville, said he would go with me on this hike and so we started planning... Well I'm not the greatest at planning and evidently neither is he, lol. Thank G-d this is Israel and a small country so if you get stuck hiking in the mountains and have no water then the closest place for water isn't too far. Our planning consisted of (1) buying a map of the region of the trail (2) asking our Madrich where to go to start the trail (3)planning to bring the amount of food we thought we would need to carry (4) packing a hiking backpack with the usual camping gear.

Day 1 - Friday, Dec. 3
So, off we were to the north on Friday, Dec. 3. We leave the farm at about 8:30 in the morning and were on a bus to Kyirat Shmona by 10:30. Arrive by 2 pm. (Everything stops running early on Friday to get ready for Shabbat) So, we left our directions of how to get to the trail head back at the farm... oh well, we're in a small country so we take a bus heading east and to try to get to the Harmon Ski Resort, where the trail starts. Well we find a bus, the last bus of the day, and the bus driver takes us to Snir, about half way. By 3 we're hitch hiking. By 4 a car of hippies picks us up and tells us they aren't going to the Harmon but that we're welcome to come sleep in the woods on the mountains amongst some Syrian ruins. Ok, whatever it's getting late and we wouldn't be able to start any hiking so late in the day anyways.
These guys are serious hippies!! They have an entire hippie ville up there in the mountains. An outdoor kitchen with a mud built fire pit, instruments instruments instruments (they really took their music seriously... for almost the entire night and next day), tent ville (6 + ours), shit pits complete with ash to cover up the smells and water bottles for washing, all next to a mountain spring that you can drink from and heat the water to take a nice warm bucket shower.
Tent ville is just off an old Syrian road leading up to some ruins and deserted olive orchards.








Turns out the hippies are keeping Shabbat. So, we have no way of getting out of this place, that we don't really know where we are, up in the mountains. Although it's so relaxing and beautiful that we don't really want to leave. They sing Shabbat songs and baked their own bread in the fire and even lit the 3rd night Hanukkah candles.

Day 2 - Saturday, Dec. 4
We stay for Shabbat. We hiked up the mountain with the Syrian ruins overlooking the Hula valley and Kyirat Shmona off in the distance. At night they light the 4th night Hanukkah candles.




Day 3 - Sunday, Dec. 5
We get a ride out to the main road to start hitch hiking to the Harmon. Turns our the main road is only 1/2 km down and we feel pretty ridiculous having waited a day for this ride out, especially when we're about to start a 120 km hike.

Finally a Druz guy driving a huge truck picks us up and miraculously is going exactly where we need to go, about 40 km farther and up the Harmon mountain to the Ski resort.
After lunch we ask some people working there where the trail starts, since we can't find it. It starts about 2 km down the road.



YAY!! 1:30 pm we're finally starting our hike! Here's how happy we are at the trail head.

It's an amazing view hiking down Mount Harmon!


We make it 6 km on the trail, down Mount Harmon, to Majdal Shams and then find a place off the trail to set up camp.



Day 4 - Monday, Dec. 6

We wake up in the morning to pouring rain. So we wait until about 9, when the rain subsides, to get back on the trail. It's just above freezing, and raining on and off, and there's a fog that's keeping us from seeing any more than 10 feet ahead of us.

Only about an hour down the road we run into a bunch of Israelis just starting to pack up camp to brave the cold, rain, and ridiculous wind that picked up on the side of the mountain.



We pick up a couple of 18 year-old Israelis who are about to turn back because of the weather. Nadav and Matias decide to keep going on the trail another day with us. They just finished high school and are waiting to go into the army. They had a 3rd guy with them who had his dad come all the way from Arad, in the south, in the middle of the night to pick him up because he couldn't handle hiking with a backpack. And this was only after the first day.... And believe me it wasn't nearly that bad.

The rain stops in early afternoon and the sun starts to peek out of the clouds over a small moshav up here.

We hike 16 km today because of the late start and bad weather.




Day 5 - Tuesday, Dec. 7
We're out at around 8 am and on the trail. The guys decide to go home because their bags are too heavy since they brought too much food and all of their stuff is wet because they didn't have any rain gear. The trail is still a bit foggy but at least it's not raining.







The Golan Heights were won in the '67 war against Syria (The Six Day War). Israel needed these mountains for strategic and defense reasons against Syria. To this day, Syria still isn't peaceful with Israel because they want the Golan Heights back. There are no open borders between Israel and Syria and there is even a no man's land along the border of the Golan Heights. So there are signs everywhere in the Golan reminding you of the history of the area. We hiked past old broken down tanks, old bunkers on the tops of hills and mountains, through land mine zones and IDF firing ranges.

Hiking through some vineyards.
We got to Har Bental, an important bunker in the '67 war.









It was a pretty stupid trail they made us take down the mountain. It just went over the side of a cliff so we ended up sliding halfway down the mountain.


At the base of Bental we start hiking through cow pastures. Yeah the Golan has more cows than people. It feels like never ending cow pastures and trudging through cow shit.





One thing that's amazing everyday in the Golan is the sunsets.

It was an amazing day hiking. Starting in the fog and ending with this sunset after about 24 km. We meet up with a couple other Israelis, Zahavi and , and set up camp on the side of a cow pasture, next to Ein Zivan.

Day 6 - Wednesday, Dec. 8
We start early (we always want to leave by 7 am and we're getting closer) at 7:30 am. It's hard to pack everything and do breakfast when the sun only rises at 6 am and it's so cold in the morning. I'm so warm in my sleeping bag, PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME WAKE UP!

We start off at another bunker next to some wind turbines.

A part of the trail was a road leading up to an army base, and as we were hiking a big water truck was coming up behind us so we had to move off to the sides of the narrow road to make room. Micah was off the road to the passenger side and I was off the driver's side. We were stopped and waiting for the truck to pass but the truck stopped right in front of us and in the exact spot so that all the water that came sloshing out of the truck splashed on me and Micah on both sides, then all the exhaust that was coming out of the truck was blowing in Micah's face. So the truck just stopped in the middle of the road to do this to us and we just threw up our arms because we couldn't understand why the truck would stop there. Then he finally saw what he di and just drove off. So, for the rest of the day we were just laughing our asses off about why the truck did this stupid thing.

There's not too much stopping time for pictures and it's basically all cow pastures today anyways. It's pretty easy flat hiking so we figure to get to "Choshnyia" and set up camp. Zahavi keeps looking at his map and saying that we'll just get to Choshnyia and then stop. Well, we aren't too smart because we thought there would be a place to stop and get water along the way but there's NOTHING along the trail, just cows. Ok, so now we all only have 3 liters of water for 4 people, so we keep going because we must get to Choshniya so that we can be close to a town to get water. So we keep going...and going. Zahavi says we'll cross a road and then be 2 km from Choshnyia. OK... keep going. 2 more kilometers from Choshnyia!! 4 pm it starts getting dark and cold and we feel like we've been hiking a lot more than the 9 km we thought we had from our last tea break to get to Choshnyia.







We finally get to some ruins and say screw Choshnyia, we need to set up camp while there's still some light and we'll worry about getting water tomorrow morning. It turns out this was the most beautiful camp spot along the trail. We set up our tents under a grove of Eucalyptus trees next to some ruins. Even though we're worried about our water situation we still build a big fire and sit around laughing with each other for hours.

Day 7 - Thursday, Dec. 9

We decide to take the morning easy. We find out that we passed this "Choshnyia" about 10 km back and we had hiked almost 30 km in trying to get to Choshnyia and we're only 3 km from the next town, Yonatan. So "2 km to Choshnyia" becomes our joke since we never really got there or somehow passed it because were looking so hard for it.




The Dananir ruins are tombs in a stone building. I don't really know much about them but they looked pretty kewl.


We go into Yonatan and fill our water bottles and buy bread and hummus and sit on a lawn in the sun and take our time enjoying lunch.

We hike through more cow pastures in the afternoon.








An interesting pile of rocks in the middle of all the cows.












And a small stream that has the only green grass for miles around.
Turns out we've been hiking through a firing zone.





We camped in Daliyot next to a major highway. All through the night there were trucks taking tanks to the north non-stop. It felt a bit scary because why do they need so many tanks so far north.





Day 8 - Friday, Dec. 10
YAY! the first morning and only morning we actually started hiking at 7. WOW it was hard but rewarding.

A random tire.






We start hiking down into a canyon. We have no idea what it was the start of.













The stream running down inside the canyon is crystal clear and a small oasis there. We get to hike across it, through tangled vines and water thirsty fig trees.

6 hours after hiking down into the canyon we're on our way out. This is looking back at where we began our day through little paradise.






Now we're out of the canyon and we know the Kineret (the Sea of Galilee) is somewhere in front of us but we keep passing bends in the trail and still don't see it. So it starts getting dark and we think we might give up trying to find a nice place to camp over looking the sea. Then all of a sudden we take a turn and right before us is the Kineret and the sunset that we couldn't see until this point! It's all worth it!


But now we're on the side of the mountain with no flat ground for our tent and some nasty looking clouds are rolling in. The winds pick up like crazy as we're setting up our tent and then as it's almost dark it starts pouring and almost blowing us off the side of the mountain. But there was still a good view of Tiberias across the Kineret.


Day 9 - Saturday, Dec. 11










We walk into the next town about 6 km up ahead to get water. And we're ready for a break from the rain, cold and wind. Well since it's Shabbat nothing is open so we stop a car driving by to ask where we can get water. And the people in Ramat Hagolan are some of the nicest people on earth and tell us to go to their house across the street for water. When we go to their house the woman makes us come inside out of the rain and sit for coffee since they say the storm is too dangerous to hike in (and it's true because the area floods). So we sit for coffee and they were going to open the community center for us to sleep in for the night while the storm passes. But Idan, the guy who came to get us was our age and told us to come sleep at his house. He rents a house with the woman's son, Gal, who is also our age. So we go over there and they with the only other 4 young people in this moshav are all hanging out at their house. These guys are all so nice and funny. They're blasting metal out of their speakers and jumping all over the house, then they buy 2 bottles of vodka and pizza and all of us just to party all night to metal music. lol. Unforgettable!

Day 10 - Sunday, Dec. 12

We wake up late and we're not sure if we can continue hiking because the storm is so bad. But we decide we really want to try because we're only 16 km from the end. We've come so far. So we decide that if we leave our bags we can go faster and then hitch hike back. So we set off with one of the guys from the house. It's cold and the windiest day yet. We can't even talk at some points because no one can hear what you say. We also have to walk through so much mud because everything is soaked and there are now small rivers flowing through every low point.

We make it down into another smaller canyon with a now raging river that at some points is impossible to cross and we have to walk off the trail pretty far to find how to keep going. But we make it and just mostly muddy and a little wet after all the river crossings and sliding down the muddy trail into the canyon. Thank G-d we didn't have our big hiking backpacks this day!!

When we got out of the canyon we came to the road and were maybe 4 km from the end of the trail. They say it ends on a cliff overlooking the Kineret. Well at this point it started raining pretty hard again and if we continued any farther we wouldn't be along a road that we could find a road back. So, even though I wish we could have really finished the trail correctly I'm still happy with all we did. So we went back to the house and stayed another night because there weren't any buses out that night. It turns out that this was the worst storm in 20 years and that they had to close roads in the Golan because the land mines were being washed onto the roads. In hindsight it wasn't smart of us to hike that last day but we were lucky and even had some fun at the terrible conditions!

What a trip!

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly...
-Alice Walker author of The Color Purple

The joy of being in a small country is that it's easy to travel around

Each of the first 3 weekends here on the farm I went someplace. The first weekend was Yom Kippur so I took the opportunity to stay in Modi'in at a host family's house and attend services. It was nice just because it's Israel and I wanted to have a place to observe, or a least a little. The family was nice and I went with them to their conservative services with mostly olim, people who've made Aliyah. Like my family they're originally from Chicago.

The next weekend I went with Ryan, Max, Marissa, Becca, Josh and Hal to Haifa and was a bum all weekend. It ended up being so much fun. We arrived by train on Thursday night and bought some beer then found a cozy place to set up camp on the beach. Some of the others got a little crazy and went swimming in the middle of the night. We were on Hof HaCarmel :) and no body cared that we were there... except for some drunkard that came up to us in the middle of the night. That I could have done without.

Got up early in the morning and made our way up the mountain and found a nice park to bum around. It was such a nice park, gan in Hebrew, that we used it as our meeting place and next day's camping ground. They even had a free concert there that night...which made sleeping there pretty shady. Yet no body cared there either.



We went to the Bahai gardens. I still think they're beautiful even though they aren't very in tune with permaculture and I've been there before.




The next day, Saturday/Shabbat, we went the the Arab village Acko, right north of Haifa because we knew that more would be open there. On our way we met a really nice woman originally from Texas who invited us into her Sukkah and gave us cake and ice water. Her sukkah overlooked the bay of Haifa.




Acko is a very cute old city by the bay. We sat in a hookah cafe on the water's edge and chilled. We went through the arab market and ate hummus at what is supposed to be the best hummus in Acko. It ended up being just a very nice chill weekend bumming around and not spending much money.




The next weekend was a very different but just as great, if not better. It was Simchat Torah so we had a 4 day weekend. I went up to the north to Tzfat (the city of Kaballah and blue doors), a religious, but and all about Kaballah city to see how they celebrate Simchat Torah. It was very religious in a way because the city is up on top of the mountain, so no body was driving though the city and everyone was in the synagogues dancing around the torah and singing on erev simchat torah. Then the next night when the holiday was finishing there were 2 places in town where everyone went outside to dance together with the torah. And because the holiday was over they had a klezimer band playing live and blasting out of some huge speakers. Hundreds of locals and visitors, both religious and non-religious were there together dancing in the street. There was so much energy there that night! It was so spiritually rewarding and the first time I felt so good at a very religious place and time.

The next day we made our way down to Yehudiyya, a national park to go hiking. The first day we did a four hour hike down to a small stream and a few pretty waterfalls, the Zewitan. The park rangers told us the hike would be so long, hot and dangerous and that we needed good shoes and 3 liters of water....to us it just felt like a beautiful short hike and we even came out with most of our water.





The next day we did the 7 hour hike that the park is famous for, the Yehudiyya! Absolutely gorgeous. We hiked down into a small canyon then along the small river down there and crossed a bunch of cold, refreshing pools of water that we could swim in. At two places we even climbed down some 15 ft ladders into a pool of water with our bags and had to swim across the pool to continue with the hike. We knew we were going to be doing it so we didn't really care that all of our stuff got soaked. The cold water was refreshing in the heat and washed off all of our sweat!
I was with 2 guys from the farm. Hal, the shorter, is almost my age and from New York and was working as an engineer for a couple years. The other guy is Josh, and he's only 17 and just graduated from high school. He's here in Israel just before for goes off to university.




So after those really crazy, fun weekends I decided I needed some relaxation time with myself and stayed on the farm this weekend. It was also great. We got the first really hard rain and were still trying to put the plastic windows in our big dome when it started pouring. I also had to put some in my dome's windows when it was raining cats and dogs and I was also soaked in 1 min. It was fun though and only went on for 20 mins when the sun came out with beautiful blue skies and dried everything up. Then I helped everyone who was left here on the farm get ready for Shabbat by baking challah and cooking and putting our zoolah back together after the rain. It was just perfect that there were only a handful of us to just sit around cooking and preparing for dinner.
We have mud ovens here which are taking a while to get used to. We have one up in Domeville in our kitchen but the mud door is still broken. So this weekend a Amy and I were figuring out the mixture of sand and mud to make a new door. Hopefully by next Shabbat we'll be able to use our own mud oven. But for the mean time I'm using a lot bigger oven down the farm by the Shinshinim (the high school grad Israelis that are doing a year of community service here on the farm). So to start the oven we have to burn a really hot fire in the oven for 30 mins to 1 hour then let the hot embers sit in the oven for an hour to heat up the mud. Then we can start baking but it's hard because you never know exactly how hot the oven is. The first time I made Challah I put it in 2 hours after the fire was sitting and it burned in less than 20 mins. The next time I put it in the oven after an hour and had to reheat the oven after 30 mins because it was cooling down too much and then after an hour took it out and it was only mostly cooked. The last couple of times has been getting better but I'm still letting the oven cool too much and end up waiting more than an hour for the bread. Of well, I guess it's good everyone loves this bread because they're constantly getting me to make more and get used to the oven. I'm having so much fun here on the farm.

Hava v'adam

So I've been here in Israel on the farm for 3 weeks already. And even though the days feel really long, waking up at 5:30am and doing stuff all day until after dinner at 7pm, I already feel like the time is flying. We took a lot of time the first 2 weeks getting acquainted with how everything works on the farm. Everything here is about permaculture and sustainable living, which is so drastically different from what I came from in China. The only things that come into the farm is water and a little bit of food that we buy until our fields start producing enough for all of us to eat. And the only thing that leaves the farm is a very small amount of trash that can't be recycled and some recycling that is too much that we can't use it all here on the farm our selves. That means that everything else that we need to live is delt with here on the farm. All electricity is harnessed from the sun, we have some solarpanels and solar water heaters. Then all human/animal waste and kitchen waste is composted and used to fertilize the soil. All plastics, papers, glass and so on is recycled and used for art or building. For example; we stuff all of our small trash into plastic bottles then use them in the walls of our mud buildings for insulation, we recycle plastic bags by weaving them into shapes for bowls, plates or any other art, we recycle broken mugs by making mosaics in the mud walls or on the pathways in the garden. Everything here is natural and/or recycled. All the furniture was found around Israel, recycled and rebuild into useful stuff here on the farm not bought at the store. It takes some getting used to, like the Grey Water System filters the kitchen water through a straw filtration and then the water goes to some tropical plants here that need a lot of water.

This is where I live, Domeville! Our very cool semi-permanent tent domes. 2 people in each dome and very comfortable, or well for living outside that is. My 'dommie' Joy is from New York. There are 6 domes, but as Eco-Israel has grown over the years they added 2 new 'yherts' (you can see behind the domes). They're a bit bigger and cooler (literally) so 4 people are in each. Outside each dome we have our own gardens where we can grow anything we want except that there isn't too much space in them. I almost feel like I'm back in university or camp living so close to the people I'm working next to.

Next, since we basically live outside. This was just one place we had class one day under a fig tree. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, class, work almost all outside.






This is what we call our classroom, ketah in Hebrew. A 'yhert'! If only I had had a yhert in China to teach my students all sitting around in a circle.






Our outside dinning room was a bit too small for the 21 of us so we spent a week digging the ground and expanding it to fit all of us. And just in time for Sukkot! So we decorated it by making the 4 walls the 4 directions with their corresponding energies. East-wind for the spring and morning, south-fire for the summer and noon, west-earth for the fall and evening, and last south-water for the winter and night time. We call it our Zoolah, I have no idea how it got that name but already had the name when we got here.

And the best thing about all the work we put into it was that we got to have the first night celebration of Sukkot in our new Zoolah! Yumm, we spent a whole day cooking and getting ready. I baked challah and helped make goat cheese, barley and sweet potato stuffed peppers. Who knew a vegitarian farm could still have good food. And that's another great thing about life here is that we take turns cooking for everyone which usually means we have some pretty interesting meals. :)

Long time no see!

It's been a long time since I've been able to get on here. In the spring of 2009 after the Xin Jiang riots China blocked all non-Chinese websites that allow you to post freely, like blogs, social networking sites, and any other site the government doesn't want the Chinese people to see. So, I didn't really give up on my blog I just waited until I left China.

I left a week ago, after finishing my 3 semester teaching in No. 1 High School in Tongzi. I absolutely loved my students there and are missing them every day, I'm pretty sure I'll be back there in the near future. The school year ended in the beginning of July and since then I've traveled a bit in China and been preparing for leaving. I went up to Hebei for 2 weeks to see Elaine, Andrew's Chinese friend who stayed with us in Tongzi for a while. She's awesome (like all Chinese) but I guess since she doesn't have any real brothers or sisters she felt she needed to fight with me like a sister.
Here's Elaine.

Now I'm in Israel and beginning a 5 month program on an ecological farm in Modi'in. I got to Israel a few days before to program began, which just so happened to be Rosh HaShana. I didn't bother checking the calendar 3 months ago when I booked the flight to see why the ticket was so cheap. That makes sense, nobody wants to travel on Rosh HaShana.

So I stayed in Tel Aviv and hung out on the beach because everything was closed for the 2 days of Rosh HaShana and then Shabat. It was a really relaxing way to spend my transition from China to Israel. I stayed in the Florintine Hostel on the southern end of Tel Aviv and met some cool Israelis and backpackers to hang out with.

I didn't upload more pictures because the internet is so slow here. Maybe next time.

国庆节 Chinese National Day

For the Chinese National Day on October 1st we got an entire week off school because this is one of the biggest holidays in China. The week long holiday also coincided with the Chinese Independence day which was the 60th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party. Then for me it worked out really well because Yom Kippur was the weekend before so I left school early and flew to Shanghai for the long holiday. Then I met up with my friend, Katrine, who is teaching English in Wuxi (1.5 hrs from Shanghai) and we went travelling around the area for the holidays.

I flew to Shanghai so I got to ride the famous Maglev Train from the airport to Pudong. I guess I'm a sucker because I paid a whopping 40Yuan for a 7 minute ride on what's basically no more than a fast subway... Oh well, it's one really futuristic subway and it was REALLY KEWL!!!! And you can see on the ticker up above that it was going 301 km/hr when I took the picture.






First, the Chabad in Pudong, Shanghai is on of the best Chabads I've been to. The Rabbi is Israeli and his wife is from Michigan so the services were in English and Hebrew. And of course there weren't any Chinese people there!! So I was really glad I went all the way to Shanghai for the services even if it was Yom Kippur, lol. It's just too bad Shanghai is so far from Tongzi or I'd go more often.

After Yom Kippur I had a day to wander around Shanghai. Although the weather was terrible and rainy and I wasn't too motivated to see a big city, but I did go to the big shopping street, East Nanjing Rd, and to the old French area, XinTianDi, where you can buy overpriced western food. Then I went to the old street, Lao Jie.
Left: A square and fountain in XinTianDi

LaoJie






When I got to Wuxi a couple days later I got to see Katrine's adorable little first graders. She's got it so easy there in Wuxi, she's making bank teaching these 8 first graders in an International school where there's only 60 students total. Most of the students are from Korea or other Asian countries and they can speak English and Chinese fluently and of course their mother language. They're smart little kids, but also a little devilish.

Yay I got my blog back!

I just checked again today to see if the Chinese government unblocked my blog because I was about to give up and finally open a new blog on a different site, but what do ya know, I can get in now! Well let's see how long it lasts!