eilat - city of hotels and talmudei torah

talmudei torah = students of Torah

well, we were there anyway:)

Here are some pics from my tiyul a few weeks ago to eilat - in the southern tip of Israel. You can see Aqaba from Eilat - it is the only port of Jordan. Eilat is on the Red Sea, and you bet your ass I went in. Cold, but it was delicious.





A sign up outside of the date palm field at Kibbutz Ketorah where we stayed - notice the sign is in english, hebrew and thai. Welcome to one of the many signs of the end of idealistic zionism - even on kibbutzim.








a photo of the date palms. they pick them with a fleet of lifts.







one of my fellow students and mechina year buddies.







two of my closest friends at pardes - one is adorable canadian and one is just adorable...none of us is perfect:)







another one of my good friends. the rocks were pretty. we wanted a picture of us too. we decided to take a picture of both at the same time...cute, no?!




this was julie and i doing adopt-a-family:) this is a family that brought their whole clan over for the year to live in israel/study at pardes for a year.








a picture of the sandstone - one of the common stones to find in the eilat mountains. it is very maleable and soft and so it gets into wild shapes from the windy and rough terraine.










this was very high up on a mountainface - it is a Nabataean door carved by the same people as created Petra, the ancient city in Jordan. It is claimed to represent a door to the next world. Anyone up for a ride?:)


that was my tiyul, for the most part - aside from a few late night activities like a campfire, climbing the only sand dunes in israel as the sun set (which i also did when i was 16 and came with NFTY:), and spending the last day sleeping on the bus cause i got sick:( But it was a nice time and it was amazing to be out and about in the holy land and take a break from 12 hours days learnin the toirah!

Hugs, kisses and the like.