End of the First Week

It's Thursday, the end of the week in Israel. We started off the day giving our first presentations. We got through three of them, and I was the third. The other two were very interesting. It was cool to see what some of the other participants have done and what their interests are. After the presentations we went on a little excursion, to Rosh Hanikra. We spent the rest of the day there, touring the cliffs and grottoes. It has been a while since I was there last, and it was nice to go back and see it again. I always enjoy going back to places more than once, even if I have visited it before. The experience is always a little different. The people are different, the information is different, sometimes you learn something different. Even if you go somewhere twice with the exact same people and all the information that you learn and see is exactly the same, the experience can still be different. There is a time difference, and maybe you have changed since the last time you were there. What you see could have different significance for you the second time. You could see a different meaning in the site than you did before. Whatever the experience is like for someone, it is always different, just as it was for me at Rosh Hanikra. Some things though do remain the same. I bought an ice cream at the little shop inside the train tunnel, just as I did eight years ago. The cheesy movie about the grottoes was the same. But that is part of the experience. Going with people that had never been there before was also interesting, since they didn't necessarily know what to expect. Whether it is explaining something from Hebrew into English or taking someone's picture, the experience is interesting.

After we left the grottoes we walked across the beach south to a swimming beach where we ate lunch. The shore was a moonscape of eroded holes and hills, littered with pieces of pottery that had been abandoned. We joked that we shouldn't have a competition for who could find the most impressive piece of broken pottery since I found several handle shards in short succession that were particularly interesting. We ate lunch on the beach and played hot seat, and then took the bus back to Akko. Dinner, which was schnitzel, was quite good!

Since I'm not traveling this weekend and probably not going to do anything exciting, I am going to delay my next post until Sunday, when the week begins again.

Have a good weekend everybody!