The End

I am sitting in my Tel Aviv apartment, bags packed and room cleaned.  I leave tomorrow morning at 4am for the airport for my flight back to The States.  It will be my first time in the US in over 9 weeks, and after a short train ride from NY to DC, my first time home in eight months. Whew!

The program ended just as quickly as it began.  We had a big group discussion with Ohad at the end of the last day and someone asked if Gaga is something that can be practiced alone.  Ohad's response was that yes, it could be, and actually should be because the discoveries that Gaga initiates in a dancer should keep occurring much after the finish of the class.  That resonated with me because I think that as I take my new found knowledge of my body into ballet and modern classes, I will realize that my discoveries have just begun.  This is an exciting prospect!

I have spent my last two days in Tel Aviv by the beach with pals at my side.  They have left one by one, leaving only Ingrid and myself behind.  She will leave tomorrow afternoon, saying her goodbyes to our teeny loft bed and itty balcony just a few hours after me.

There isn't much meat to this post, but I have to say that I have had an amazing time on this adventure filled trip.  Thanks for coming with me via the wonders of the internet!

A Hair Past Halfway

Yesterday I had my first day of evening classes.  My schedule will stay this way until Friday, when the whole program has class at the same time.  This is what is enabling me to write to you at 9:22am, because I have the morning off!

Last Thursday night one of the students organized a party for all intensive participants.  Everyone brought their own food and drink to a beach dear the Suzanne Dellal Center.  We even stipped down to our skivvies and jumped around in the waves with the starry Israel sky above.  Ingrid and I slipped out around 2am, but things were still a'popping.

Friday we only had one class, and then in the afternoon Yossi Chaikin, an old classmate, came to visit from Haifa.  Yossi was part of our class for two and a half years.  When he went home for winter break this past year, he didn't come back due to some injuries, so we hadn't seen him in ages!  He brought a friend, also named Yossi, and we all went out for dinner and dancing.  It was great to have so many members of 2013 packed into a tiny bit of dance floor on the opposite side of the world from where we are used to dancing together.  Yossi will return to Juilliard with the class below in January to finish his edumacation.

Saturday Ingrid and Scott slept in until 1!  How they do it, I will never know.  I, of course, was up, bright eyed and bouncing around, at 9:30.  After a leisurely morning of reading, Scott and Lindsay joined Ingrid and myself for a makeshift lunch before heading to the beach.  It was our one full day off throughout the whole of the program, so we made sure to do absolutely nothing more than we had to.

Sunday morning it was back to class.  As I walked in the door I realized that here I wasn't surrounded by the usual dance intensive suspects with neatly arranged buns and overloaded dance bags.  This program is filled with the young and old, gaga-experienced, and gaga-inexperienced, dancers looking to discover, and dancers looking for a job.  The program participants are all here from such different backgrounds, and are probably taking totally different things away from this program than I am.  Some of the people don't even do the rep part of the day.  The sit quietly with a notebook, jotting down ideas, squeezing everything they can from the experience.  Mom, do I see a trip to Israel about this time next year in your future?

I am still enjoying my classes tons, and at the moment hear them calling my name.  Actually, that may be the beach.  Thanks for reading!

Gaga Beginnings

I just got home from my fourth day at the Gaga intensive.  I should probably shower, but I'm too tired to stand, so I figured I would do this first.

Saturday morning the Juilliard gang met at 11am for a tour of the Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv.  While the tour focused on this architecture style that has given Tel Aviv the nickname of "The White City," we learned a whole lot more than just about the buildings.
Yafo is a city nestled in the southwestern corner of Tel Aviv.  Turns out, Tel aviv was built around it.  Originally white sand dunes, 66 families decided to build a city outside of the cholera infested Yafo to have a nice place to live.  Their goal was to build a garden city with plenty of room to grow food and raise a family, and to go to Yafo only to work.  The plan was to have Tel Aviv be a residential area only.  From those 66 families Tel Aviv has grown into its current population of 7.8 million.  In the planning of Tel Aviv a German architect was brought in, and with him came his Bauhaus style.  Bauhaus buildings are three stories tall so that all floors are easily accessable without the expensive installation of an elevator.  Residents in all three floors have rooftop access to create community within the building and to give the people room to entertain.  The apartments themselves are very small.  The buildings must have twelve meters from the next building to provide room for growing a garden.  The exterior of the buildings are usually white and very simple.  They sometimes have curved corners and usually have plain balconies.  There are not banisters or railings because these things are deemed unnecessary.  A lot of time the balconies are built one right over another to provide shade to the apartments below.  In Tel Aviv alone there are 5,000 Bauhaus buildings, which is why Tel Aviv has been awarded the title of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Currently, out of those 5,000 building, only about 1,200 are salvagable because of the poor care that was taken of them before UNESCO acknowledged them.  On Rothchild, a big street running through lower Tel Aviv with a bike and walking path through the middle, you can see Bauhaus after Bauhaus, some in great condition, others not.  Our tour guide was great and her love for Tel Aviv really rubbed off on everyone that went on the tour.

Sunday was Day 1 of the intensive.  The 200 attendants are divided into 6 groups and those groups rotate between working from 9am to 3:15pm, and working from 3:45pm to 9:45pm.  They have a little system worked out so that there are no more than 60 people in a room at one time.  For the majority of the time, there are only 35.  Out of three rotations, I am in the morning for the first two, so I have had a pretty regular schedule thus far.  I was also pretty excited to be placed in a group without any other Juilliard students.  It has given me an opportunity to meet new people, but also has given me some mental space to explore all of the concepts we have been given without influence from my usual peers.
Our day consists of an hour and a half gaga class, a two hour session of learning rep, finished by another hour and a half class called "Methodics."  For those of you that do not know anything about Gaga, it is a technique developed by Ohad Naharin that is completely improved based.  The teachers, both current and ex-Batsheva dancers, give the class concepts that we incorporate into our movement layer upon layer.  We are not allowed to stop moving for the duration of the class and the teacher takes us through some tendus, jumps, and floor work.  So far there doesn't seem to be a strict structure about what we cover, and I think that the teacher really takes the class moment by moment, trying to feel what we need next.
In the rep part of the day we learn different solos from Batsheva's rep.  Some of the things are high energy, some are low, but everything is very sensation based.  After a Gaga class and a break, it is important to keep the sensations experienced during Gaga in your body as the material that is being taught is incorporated into your body.
Methodics goes deeper into the concepts covered in Gaga.  The teacher will even stop and start the movement in the class to make sure that we understand certain points and sensations.

Every moment I feel like I am making small discoveries.  I am finding my own movement patterns and trying to find new pathways throughout my body.  One of the ideas really emphasized is to find concepts through the use of movement.  If the task is to feel thick in your right arm, you have to find it through the use of movement.  Another idea talking about hugely is being available.  If my arm is to the side, my shoulder has to be available to move forward or back.  This doesn't mean that it should go forward or back, it just has to be available to.  The teachers are careful to use very specific vocabulary so as to create a certain sensation in the bodies in the room.
One of the biggest things I have gained in the program thus far is mobility in my lower back.  In my second year at Juilliard I did not dance for my Fall semester because of a lower back spasm.  Since then, with the help of  Pilates and massage therapy, I have gotten to a place where my back can spasm and I can continue dancing, rather than sit out of classes for two weeks.  Also, because I have a better grip on how to handle my back, it rarely spasms anymore.  Although things are much better, I still regularly feel a thickness in the spasmed area.  With the use of imagery and sensation, however, I have been able to find moments where my spasm feels like liquid and can move freely.

I think I am just beginning to physicalize my mini-discoveries, so trying to articulate them with words is proving to be much harder than I expected.  Maybe once I have a firmer grip on the details of what I am learning, I will be able to describe things better.

Having come from almost two months of no dancing, day two was definitely a struggle with regard to soreness.  So was day three, and day four, for that matter.  Each morning I wake up and climb out of my loft bed to feel a new part of my body aching.  It feels great to be working in such a physical way.  The studios are not air conditioned, but have huge windows that let in a great breeze from the sea.  This doesn't take away the the heat, though!  I have learned that I need to bring a different shirt to every section of the day because at the end of each one, my clothing is soaking through with sweat.  It may be the heat, or the constant motion, but it is pretty gross.

I think it is time I shower.  Thanks for reading!

I forget what I did for the rest of Saturday, so it must not have been to exciting.

Sunday was day one of the Gaga Intensive.

A Date with the Dead Sea

Tuesday morning Ingrid arrived bright and early.  I met her at the train station, which is in a terrible part of town, and we took a cab back to our apartment.  Scott, Ellie, another Juilliard student, and I gave Ingrid no time to settle in and dragged her to the Shuk HaCarmel.  I had been before, but it is a great place to get groceries.  After walking down the shuk we made out way to the beach, which was more like a big, salty, warm bath.  Not the slightest bit refreshing considering it might have been hotter than the air.
Wednesday we decided as a group to tackle Old Jaffa.  It is a little town that is nestled in with Tel Aviv to the south.  It is made of stone and there are tons of little walkways and tunnels leading from one building to the next.  Almost all of the rooms are filled with stores and there is very little residential area, but it was cool to see these old buildings still in use.  While there we spent quite a bit of time in a visitor's center planning our at next day....
On Thursday we woke up at 5:15 to catch a bus to Massada and the Dead Sea.  The bus made a couple stops throughout Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which is right on the way, and we were at Massada within two and a half hours.  Along the way you get a great view of the Israeli desserts.  There are mountains that are so clearly shaped by the water that flows through them in the yearly flash floods.  Also, the Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth so at one point we passed a sign marking sea level and then proceeded down way further into a huge hole where the sea lies.  As we descended our ears began to pop, and we couldn't stop yawning because we were not used to so much oxygen in the air.  Once down near the sea, which looks like any other sea, the ground was pretty flat, but we seemed to be surrounded by mountains in every direction.
Massada was a city made by indigenous Jews on top of one of those mountains.  The mountain of Massada is separate from those around it and has a flat top.  My story may not be perfect, but King Harod had this city built on top of this mountain so that no one could attack it.  He had 20 foot walls built around the perimeter, and worked out a drainage system that funneled rain water from the surrounding mountains into wells throughout the city.  They were able to grow food, raise livestock, and run a completely self-sufficient life on top of this mountain in the desert.  The story is that the Romans decided they wanted to conquer Harod's city, and so they set up camps all around the mountain.  After months of work they finally stacked enough rocks on top of  each other to create a path that led from the the ground to the top of the mountain.  One day it became clear to Harod that Massada would be conquered on the following day so he ordered the everyone in the city to kill themselves before being killed or enslaved by the Romans.  If they were enslaved by the Romans then they would betray their God by being forced to practice another religion.  The men of the city basically drew straws, and the ten men with the shortest had to kill everyone else.  Then, from those ten one more man was chosen to kill the other men and himself.  The indigenous people also made sure so burn anything valuable so that when the Romans made their way in there was nothing left for them.  Today visitors rise up to the mountain in a cable car and walk throughout the ruins of the city.  Some of the buildings have been rebuilt, but a lot of the city still lays in ruin.  As the sun was beating down on us in the 100+ degree heat, it was amazing to imagine a whole civilization thriving on the top of this mountain.
From Massada we drove about 5 minutes to Ein Gedi, a spa owned by a local Kibbutz, on the edge of the Dead Sea.  Well, actually, it used to be on the edge of the Dead Sea, but the sea's edge has receded significantly in the past hundred years and now you need to take a short shuttle ride to get to the actual edge of the sea.  The Dead Sea is filled with salt water that runs into it from mountains in Jordan and surrounding countries.  From the sea the water had no where to go, and so it stays there.  Because the heat is so extreme, the only way for water to escape the sea is to evaporate, leaving behind the heavy salt.  This means that with each year the sea gets saltier and saltier.  It seems to only make sense that the water's edge is receding because temperatures are rising, constantly leaving less water behind.
Once we arrived at Ein Gedi we had a quick lunch and changed into our bathing suits.  Inside the building is a sulfur bath, which was our first stop.  Of course, it smelled like rotten eggs, but we went in anyway.  The sulfur water is from local springs and very hot.  Visitors can only spend 15 minutes in the pool.  Frankly, given the smell, you wouldn't want to spend much more than that in the pool.  From there we went outside to a regular, chlorine pool, to cool off.  After a quick pit-stop there, we went straight for the mud.  They have bin, after bin, of mud for the visitors.  Ingrid and I took turns covering each other.  It has crystalized salt in it, so it is a little rough, but it feels good.  We put it on our face, in our hair, down our bathing suits, and then sat in the shade for it to dry.  We didn't sit until we had an entire photo shoot, of course.  After letting it dry, which it didn't really do because we were sweating too much, we did a sulfur rinse, followed by a regular water rinse.  We had decided to wait to put on sun screen until after the mud so it would stay on, and when we put it on it almost felt like were were not touching our own skin because it was so soft.  Scott and Ellie even bottled some mud for the occasional at-home facial.  After our mud bath, we took the tractor driven trolly to the sea's edge.  The first step in the sea almost feels freezing, until your body realizes that what you are feeling is extreme heat, not refreshing cool.  The sea was literally like a hot tub.  We slowly made our way, feet scrapping against the crystalized salt that makes up the sea's floor.  Once deep enough we simultaneously made the plunge, which made us pop right back up to the surface.  It is really an awesome feeling.  Of course, this was our second opportunity of the day, to have an extravagant photo shoot.  We took turns trying to make the best pose on top of the water, like the splits or Martha Graham's pleading.  After being in the water for a while, we all had to get out and rest in the shade.  Our hearts were beating so fast just because of the heat.  It was almost scary how overwhelmed we were.  Finally we got back on the trolly and walked into the Ein Gedi building at 4:16 for our bus that was leaving at 4:15!  Oops!  We quickly changed into our regular clothes, still covered in salt, and hopped on the bus before it left.  We all slept the entire bus ride home, then went our separate ways for showers and a bit of rest.  What a day!
Yesterday we were still really exhausted from the day before so we took it easy.  We rode our bikes to a local vintage market, then Ingrid and I came home to watch a movie in the air conditioning.  At some point in the day two more Juilliard people arrived, so they joined us for dinner at night.
At the end of each day we have started cooking dinner as a big group.  We plan the meal early in the day, and each person is reaponsible for picking up a couple ingredients.  Yesterday we had a big pasta, salmon, asparagus dinner.  On other nights we have had mango, avocado, cucumber, peach, walnut salad, or quinoa with peppers, onions, and cilantro.  It is fun to use the brilliantly fresh ingredients here to make exotic combinations.  We have had a lot of fun in the kitchen, and it is nice to eat at a big group.  We have also discovered an amazing hummus place, and the glory of dates.  Why had I never had them before?!
It is time to wake Ingrid up because we are going on a walking tour this morning.
Thanks for reading!

Tel Aviv Explorations

Sorry again for the amount of time between blogs.  I didn't bring my computer with me on this trip, so I have been relying on other people to write.  I have been on my own for the past week, so writing was not possible. Hmmmm, let's go back a week...

After my last blog I went with my friend, Talia, to a crater in Southern Israel called Mitzpe Ramon.  It is HUGE!  We started off at one end of the crater, looking down on it from a cliff.  By car we slowly entered the crater and stopped at several sites along the way.  Our first stop was at a small hill called the carpenter hill that seemed normal to me.  Once we got closer and began walking up the wooden pathway that wound up the hill I began to see what looked like bricks stacked on top of each other.  These bricks are naturally occurring rocks that are a dark gray color.  They start off as tall columns and break off into 8in. blocks. The entire hill was made up of these columns.  It literally looked like the left overs from a construction site, hence the name of the hill.  From my understanding, there is no other place in the crater where this rock formation occurs.
Our second stop was to collect sand.  Hmm, collecting sand in a desert?  This sand was special.  All throughout the crater there are patches of sand that are all different colors.  There is pink, blue, green, white, black, light brown, and dark brown sand.  We brought containers and collected different colors to take home.  Once back home we took glass jars and layered the sand with the different colors.  For those of you that knew her, I remember doing this with neon colored sand in Linda's basement as a kid.  They were hideous, but special none the less.  This version, however, is obviously more neutral in color and has a different special meaning to me.

Sunday morning, which is Monday to Israelis, Talia's father dropped me off in Be'er Sheva, the nearest town, to take a train into Tel Aviv.  Now that I have safely made it to Tel Aviv, I will tell you a little more about Nir Akiva, the town where Talia lives.  In the news you may have heard of a town called Sderot.  It is just on the Israel side of the Israeli/Gaza Strip boarder.  Nir Akiva is just southwest of Sderot.  Several times, mostly in the early morning, Talia's parents would come into my room and wake me to tell me to get into Talia's room.  Talia's room is the safe room in the house.  From the time an alarm went off, we all had 10 seconds to get into the safe room before a bomb would hit.  A lot of times these alarms are false alarms, or are meant for the next town over, but the experience was scary regardless.  Had her parents not woken me up, I would have slept right through the alarms because they were so quiet.  Each time we would all sit on Talia's bed listening for about a minute.  After nothing happened, we would go back to whatever we were doing before.  Throughout my stay I only heard bombs hit way off in the distance, and never had any close calls.  Talia told me that Nir Akiva has actually never been hit because their population is so low that they are not a big target.  This was comforting, but I have to admit that I am happy to be further North and away from any threats.

Once in Tel Aviv I snagged a taxi and headed straight for my apartment.  After fumbling with the key, sweat dripping down my face, I managed to open the door to the freshly air conditioned apartment.  What a relief!  Over the next couple days I explored the city, being sure to stay inside from noon to 4pm, as it was too hot to be outdoors then.  I made my way to the Shuk HaCarmel, a big market filled with stands of fruit and vegetables.  Each vendor would yell louder than his neighbor about how his prices and produce were better.  The next alley over was an art market with lots of locally made pieces of art from clocks, to statues, to jewelry.  After wandering I met my friend, Bret, for lunch.  Bret graduated from Juilliard two years ago and has been dancing with Batsheva since.  He got me a ticket to his show that evening, so after we parted ways I made my way home for dinner.  The show was wonderful.  The ensemble (second company) did Tabula Rasa, a piece by Ohad Naharin, and Lost Cause, a piece by Sharon Eyal.  Both were exciting, and it was great to see Bret and other recent Juilliard alum up on the stage.  At the performance I even ran into one of my students from International School Moshi's Arusha Campus.  She had been intrigued by the dance part of our performance in Tanzania, and since she has family in Tel Aviv, decided to see a show while in town.  It was great to see her and meet her parents.
Other that than I have been making my way around the city on a rented bike.  Tel Aviv isn't too big, but it is crammed with little boutiques and coffee shops.  I even found a small studio, Studio B, that has open classes, so I sucked it up and took my first ballet class in a month in a half.  It could have been worse.  Since I discovered the studio I have taken class almost everyday.  In addition to my visits to Studio B, I have become a regular at the beach.  The sand is soft, the water is calm, and the sun is hot hot hot.  At about 11:45 it is too hot to be out there, so I have to gather up my things and run over the hot sand back to the boardwalk.  This week the jellyfish have arrived, and these aren't small Virginia Beach jellyfish, these are monsters.  Dotted along the beach are washed up jellyfish about the size of basketballs.  Because they are so big they are pretty easy to spot in the water, but I have been stung by a sneaky one or two.

Earlier today my friend Scott arrived from Toronto.  He is my classmate at Juilliard and will be doing the Batsheva summer program with me.  It is from his computer that I am currently typing.  Ingrid, my classmate and roommate for the next month, arrives early tomorrow morning.  I'm sure that the three of up will try to make our way to the Dead Sea, and spend plenty of time at the beach.

It is almost dinner time here, so I will say goodbye.  Until next time!!!

Has it really been two weeks?!

My last bit of time in Tanzania was a blur.  My last full week in Arusha was cut short due to some visa issues.  Turns out that because of an internal problem in the Tanzanian Government, the visas that the AAI were issued were fake.  Someone along the line was pocketing our visa money($450/person!) and distributing fake visas.  The Tanzanian Gov was aware of the problem but could not address it from Arusha, so to Dar Es Salaam we went!  Molly and I left Arusha three days early on a 12 hour (!!!) bus ride to Dar with 9 passports in hand to take care of the situation.  Luckily we had the owner of our hostel with us and he helped us get everything solved.  We quickly got all 9 passports stamped with a proper stamp and were free to leave the country.

It was Wednesday when we left and since we were planning to take the bus to Dar on Friday we just stayed in Dar and waited for the rest of the group to get there.  Thursday we got our visas taken care of and had a celebratory drink by the sea.

Enough with the boring, let's get to the good stuff. 

Serena Hotels, a luxury hotel chain with locations throughout East Africa, offered AAI three nights in any of their hotels in exchange for a performance.  It was their way of thanking us for our work in East Africa, and it provided their guests with entertainment for a night.  This exchange is what brought us to Dar at the end of our trip.  We spent two lovely nights in their Dar hotel.  Molly and I arrived at the hotel before the rest of the group, as they were still on the bus from Arusha, and spent the afternoon sipping mojitos by the pool.  We then went our seperate ways to our own rooms and spent our first few hours alone in five weeks.  I might have taken a bubble bath that ended with bubbles on my head in the shape of hair, singing alone to Micheal Jackson....
The rest of the group arrived Friday night and we had a big dinner with everyone.
Saturday we spent the day by the pool, mojito-less this time, and performed at night.  While our audience wasn't big, it was enthusiastic.

Sunday morning we left the Dar hotel early and caught the 9:30 ferry to Zanzibar.   After going through immigration in Zanzibar and doing quite a bit of explaining about all of the writing in our passports, the Serena Hotel in Zanzibar car pulled up and carried us away.  We were greeted with ice cold towels and fresh juice upon our arrival to the hotel.  We got paired up in our rooms and spent the rest of the day by the pool, which was on the beach.  That night we performed, for a slightly bigger, yet less enthusiastic bunch.  A lot of AAI people were heading home early the next day so it was an early night for everyone.

My friend, Marcus, and I arranged to stay in Zanzibar for an extra night, so we were able to spend a lot of Monday at the pool.  It was actually Marcus' birthday, so in the afternoon we went on a walking tour of Zanzibar.  Our guide couldn't say much in English besides his memorized speach, but he was sweet and tried to answer our questions.  After that we went to our other hotel, the Flamingo Guest House, and then made our way to the Sunset Bar for birthday drinks.

Zanzibar is a really amazing place.  We stayed in Stonetown, which is rich in history.  It is populated with a lot of Indians and Arabians who moved there long ago to ship spices to Eastern Asia.  Stonetown is a historial site so no one can build new buildings or change the buildings that are already there.  Restoration can take place, but if a building was yellow, it has to stay the same color yellow.  Because of the strict rules, all of the buildings are very distinctive.  There is also a lot of culture behind the different types of arcitecture in the city.  Arabian buildings can be identified by their square door frames with very decorative borders.  Indian buildings, however, have arched doors with big brass horns poking out.  These horns were used in India to keep the elephants away and the style was kept when making doors in Stonetown. 
Religion is another big part of Stonetown's history.  They are very proud of the peace that exists between different religions.  There are masques built right next to churches, and there is no conflict about this.
The most interesting part of our tour was about the slave trade.  Because the Arabians had their spice trade set up very well, it was a very good business for them to trade slaves as well.  People from Central and Eastern Africa would take Africans to Stonetown to be sold as slaves throughout Easern Asia.  There was a famous tree where the bidding took place for the slaves.  They would first be whipped to show their strength and then auctioned off.  Before being sold they were packed into tiny underground rooms with little air to wait for their auction.  Many people died before even getting auctioned off due to suffocation and rampant disease.  When the Africans were brought up to street level they were chained in groups with people from other tribes so that they could not communicate and try to escape.  When the slave market was closed in 1873 the whipping tree was cut down and a church was built in its place.

Our stay in Zanzibar was filled with culture, but not necessarily Tanzanian culture.  It was cool to see Indians, Tanzanians, and Arabians all speaking Swahili, but running very different lives in such a small place.

Tuesday morning Marcus and I spent the morning taking a last stroll along the beach.  We then caught the afternoon ferry back to Dar to head to the airport.  We got the airport at 1am for my 3:45am flight, but of course the airport was closed.  When they finally opened, just an hour before my flight, I was issued a ticket for seat 28a.  Were there 28 rows on the plane? Nope.  This is the perfect time to bring up a little phrase that we used many times on our trip: TIT, or This Is Tanzania.  There are somethings that could happen no other place than Tanzania, and getting on a plane just before it takes off, with a ticket for a seat that doesn't exist, is the a great example of when one would say TIT.  The wonderful Turkish Airlines flight attendents worked everything out and I even had a row to myself in the end.

I had a quick layover in Istabul and boarded my plane to Isreal in hopes that my friend, Talia, whom I had not spoken to for over a week, was still planning to pick me up from the airport.  After getting off the place, going through immigration, and gathering my luggage, I exited the lobby and entered Talia's warm embrace.  Talia is a first year bassist at Juilliard, and when she heard I was coming to Israel she made plans to have me over.  Her father took my luggage and we drove all the to her house that is just over an hour outside of Tel Aviv.  It is from her computer that I am currently typing.

Yesterday Talia and I woke up at 5:30 to head into town with her father.  From there we hopped on a bus to Jerusalem.  We spent the day at the Shuk and in the old part of Jerusalem.  We went to the Western Wall and several of the churches in the Christian quarter.  The old town is a magical place with a very lively, distinctive energy.

Today the whole family was home and prepping for tonight's dinner.  We took a long trip the grocery store to get food, and then came home to setting tables, chopping vegetables, and whipping up sauces.  Once the rest of the extended family arrived I was surrounded by laughs and loud conversations in Hebrew.  It is actually amazing how easily I was able to keep up with the conversation due to body language and intonation.  Most of her family speaks English, but they prefer to speak in Hebrew.  Her grandmother speaks no English, but speaks Spanish fluently, so I sifted through the jumble of Swahili and Hebrew in my head to find a couple Spanish words that were burried deeply.

Speaking of speaking, Swahili keeps slipping out of my mouth.  Talia also keeps making fun of me because my English isn't the best.  My brain is so confused from going from one language to another that all of them are swirling together.  It is great to be to immersed in a culture, however, because I think I am beginning to learn Hebrew pretty quickly.  We will see if I still say that when I am on my own in Tel Aviv trying to buy food.

Tomorrow we are waking up early again to go to a crater in the south of Israel.  I will hopefully have better access to internet here in Israel, so it won't be another two weeks before I write.
Goodnight!

I currently have cornrows....

Sorry for not writing with more regularity!  Things have been a little crazy.

For the past two weeks we have been hosting our arts workshop at the Umoja Youth Empowerment Center.  This center is the first facility that AAI worked with.  It started off as a one-week project, but now we have an entire two weeks with the students.  They are all very eager and willing to take huge risks.  It is exciting to work with students that are so comfortable with each other that they hold nothing back.

Last Wednesday night Elsie, one of the teachers from ISM, has us over to her house for dinner.  Her two sons were our students at ISM.  They had their driver pick us up from the center of town and drive us to their home.  We bumped around in the back seat of a truck up to the tippytop of a hill where her house lies.  On our way up we made a sharp right turn and encountered an entire heard of goats and cows that a local Masaai boy was moving around.  The driver must have been used to this because he just drove straight on through, knowing that the animals would part for the car.  Once at Elsie's she had a beautiful meal for us.  She is Scottish, as is one of our team mates, so she had some traditional Scottish foods.  We ended the night with watching a video of the ISM Student Dance from their performance the previous Friday.  It was great to get to see her again.  Her home was beautiful!  It was a once story house with really high ceilings and tons of windows.  She pays 200,000tsh per month for renting her house and the acre of land that it sits on.  That is about $175.

Thursday night several of us from the hostel went to ViaVia to hang out.  People here only go out on Thursday and Saturdays, so Thursday it was!  After a couple drinks I fear that we ended up being the entertainment, rather than the live band playing, but it was fun anyway!  It was a terrible reggae band, so we spiced things up.  We were snuggled into our beds by 11:30 since we had to teach the next day.

Friday wasn’t very eventful, so let’s move on to Saturday!

Four AAI teammates, including me, woke up at 5am on Saturday morning to head to ISM.  Eanna, the principal of ISM, met us there with a thermos of hot coffee and his big jeep.  We piled in and tumbled around the back of his truck for the two hours it took us to drive to the Tarengire National Park.  We had mentioned to Eanna that we wanted to do a cheap one-day safari to a nearby national park.  Eanna offered that since his family is out of town and he has a jeep, he would love to take us around the Tarengire Park.  We spent all morning driving around the park stopping to watch animals that would walk right up the road.  Throughout the day we saw zebras, two warthogs, two dikdiks, vervat monkeys, elephants, waterbucks, impala, giraffes, wildebeest, a grey headed king fisher, a barbat bird, a long crested eagle, a yellow neck spur fowl, a southern ground-hornbill, a von der ficken’s hornbill,  a lilac crested roller,  secretary birds, a monitor lizard, a pie king fisher, love birds, mongoose(mongeese?), and gazelles.  Eanna is a bird watcher, so he could spot birds far in the distance and identify them using this huge, foot-long camera lens.  I have two favorite moments from our safari (which is the Kiwsahili word for journey).  As we were driving we passed a small body of water.  No animals were there, so we kept on driving.  We then encountered a slow moving jeep, and decided to turn around and take a different route.  Thank goodness we did!  Just as we were approaching the waterhole agin, a group of about 25 zebras were walking up to it.  Some just drank, but others indulged in a full-blown bath.  We switched off our engine and listened to them lap up the water and splash all around.  When they were finished they all headed off as a group in the direction that they came from.  We turned on our car and kept heading down the road.  Just up the road the spotted a lone elephant bull. He was walking in our general direction and we shortly realized he was headed for the waterhole as well.  We did a quick 27-point turn on the tiny dirt road and settled in a quiet spot behind a tree to watch the elephant.  The approached the water delicately and took his time drinking through his trunk.  I swear he must have only gotten a drop each time he brought his trunk to his mouth because the moment he took his trunk out of his mouth tons of water would splash back to the ground.  Didn’t seem like this method of drinking was efficient to me, but then again he seemed to be in hurry.  After his drink he walked around the waterhole and made way to us.  Eanna was very careful to quickly turn on the engine and start off in the other directly.  Mr. Elephant took our hint and decided to use the tree we had been hiding behind as his scratching post.  We listened as he shook the tree with each itch.  Then, to top it off, we sat and watched as he pood, peed, and went on his way.  It was really an experience!

For lunch Eanna arranged for us to go to a safari lodge that is within the National Park.  A friend of a friend owns the lodge, and made us feel very welcome.  The dining area sat at the top of a cliff, so we ate our sandwiches and looked out into a real life version of scene you would see in The Lion King.  We took turns with Eanna’s binoculars spotting elephants, giraffes, and zebras splash around in the almost-dry river that ran through the park.

My second favorite moment came towards the end of the day.  Rainy season just ended, so the park was full of fresh, green life.  With this life comes migration!  As we were driving on one of the winding roads we came face to face with some zebras that were crossing the road.  As we stopped to let them pass, we realized that these guys were not alone.  There was a line in front of them and line behind them that stretched far beyond what we would see.  These zebras were migrating and we happened to catch them enroute.  As we continued on the road we followed the line of zebras.  Sometimes they traveled in large clumps with spaces in between, and sometimes they formed a clean single-file line.  The moment they heard our engine fire up again they would scurry away and stare back at us waiting for us to drive off.   I would say that we saw a total of 400-600 zebras on our little adventure.

Needless to say, we all passed out on Saturday around 9pm with tired eyes from searching the horizon all day.

Sunday was uneventful, and Monday we went back to Umoja.  We spent all week teaching classes and prepping for our performance that we are having tonight. 

Thursday night the four dancers of the group arranged to have a “teaser” performance at ViaVia, our venue for our performance with Umoja,  Like I said, Thursday night is a hot night at ViaVia and the place is filled with mzungus.  We scheduled to have a three minutes performance at about 12:05 on the big stage at ViaVia.  We prepped a short piece an hour before and headed to ViaVia around 11:30.  There is a little something they have here that they call TT, or Tanzania Time.  We didn’t end up going on stage until 1:45!  They managed to entice a huge crowd of people to watch our mini-performance and we ended up staying until 3 trying to spread news about our show and sell tickets.  We will see if our “teaser” was interesting enough to get people to come tonight.

Yesterday we took all 42 kids to ViaVia for a rehearsal in the space.  A lot of the old Umoja students came to watch our rehearsal because they can’t come to the show tonight.  We also had several translators and Umoja administrators there with us to help communicate with the kids.  At the end of our rehearsal they performed two thank-you/goodbye songs they had prepared for us.  There were, of course, tears involved and it will be really hard to say goodbye to these greats kids, some of which are older than us, after the show tonight.

One day this week, I honestly can’t remember when, Molly and I stayed after school because the girls wanted to play with our hair.  We somhow managed to leave Umoja with four cornrows.  Molly’s are on the left side of her head, and mine are on the right.  I have to admit, we both look gangsta.  We have taken copious pictures showing them off.

I just got a little preview of a video that will be posted on AAI’s website later today.  If you have time, take a look!  You will get to see my lovely cornrows, and I almost bite the dust right at the beginning.

Thanks for reading!