Day 59-64: Saturday to a wonderful Thursday in Haifa!

Feb 12-17, 2011 Sat-Thurs

Not that my past days were insignificant but my visit to Haifa this past Thursday beats them all. That day I visited Ido Portal in his training studio, Hacasa, located at his parent's lower floor at a beautiful road overlooking the Mediterranean. I obviously went there to train with him. Halim gave me a ride to Modi'in train station around 5:40pm, after work. The ride would be almost 2 hours. The train ride was quite pleasant, no problems. The riders were mostly young IDF soldiers. One of them, sitting across from me was listening to music on his ipod. I could hear the song: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. "Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky..." said the song. The scene was painfully poetic as the soldier looked lost in thoughts, his hand supporting his jaw. Oh well.

I thought I planned everything but apparently I neglected to consider not to trust the public transportation system. The train was late and that's why I missed my bus. It was the last one of the day, and there were no other alternative buses to take me anywhere closer to Hacasa in time. So I did what I had to do, took a cab. Thankfully I came across a really nice driver, a Christian Palestinian who loves Haifa and have a daughter doing her PhD in some kind of engineering. I got to Ido's place 15 minutes earlier but this place is a residential area, meaning there's no where to hang out, so I walked down the stairs to get to the garden where I could see the entrance to Hacasa. I recognized the Hacasa sign. Made me happy. Behind the door was the studio I know from several videos. The door was a thick, frosted glass, so I could merely see the silhouettes of bodies moving behind it. I knocked on the door. A thick man's voice from inside responded. "Maze!" It was Ido. Didn't know how to respond or what to do, but I guessed it was something like "We're busy, go away, come 15 mins later." So I backed off. Then he yelled again, "Maze!" This time I interpreted it as, "I said come on in!" So I grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. Ido yelled, more intensely than before, as soon as I pushed it down, "MAZE!!!"(By the way, I'm not sure if this is the right pronunciation.)  Jeez! That's when I said, "I don't know what maze means!" Ido opened the door chuckling. It became the story of the night. It was Ido and Odelia only. Odelia is his assistant, a very good athlete indeed.

I liked Ido very much, and Odelia. They're both very kind, playful and fun to train with for sure. It was a very small group of 5 people, including me. The group included Ido's mom whom I called the super-mom, super-mom's friend (Ido convinced him to stay and train with us), and two other people who regularly train with them there. Lovely group indeed. Ido's mom was very impressive, you should have seen her doing chin-ups. And she thought I have a very nice and athletic body :)

It was quite a challenging session for about 2 and a half hours. Not that the exercises were hard but the number of repetitions and sets were actually very demanding. I did everything, didn't listen to the soreness I had already started feeling towards the end. No pain, though. That encouraged me. Shoulder injury is indeed healing. I don't want to give details of the session here but it was completely based on upper body strength and conditioning, lots of weight lifting, I did dead-lift for the first time and did good.
Odelia was my 'coach" and she was very helpful. Maybe it's because I've trained with a coach for the first time (actually I consider Sean as my coach as well but this was someone I just met and who's probably getting paid for that) but the level of discipline and care was very good. I was already taking notes on both the session and my own performance but Ido and Odelia specifically reminded me to do so anyway, each person was provided with a stopwatch and you are expected to use it, and Ido, even though he was not coaching me specifically, made sure that I know he is watching me as well with his supportive words indicating his eyes are indeed following me as well. It's definitely worth the trip. When we're done, it was already after 10:20pm so there was no way I was  going to make it to the hostel on time to get the key to the room I booked. (No, I haven't paid for it. Instead I gave that money to the cab ride.) Ido was so kind to offer me the bedroom in Hacasa. He brought clean sheets, a towel so that I can take a shower, and a bar of soap. I even got the permission to go through his books. He's leaving to Europe next week so I won't be seeing him in Israel again, this time, but hopefully we will meet again in the States.

After a quick shower (because I stank, I had to), I checked out some of Ido's books on training, took some notes; but my arms were not quite functioning and I definitely needed some rest. Woke up as early as 7:30, cleaned up after myself and wrote a thank you note to Ido, then left. It's going to be shabat today, so I don't want to disturb the family upstairs, and plus I HAD TO FIND THE WATER! Meaning the sea. I walked around the Karmel neighborhood, it's a high point in the city, overlooking the sea and the lower city. Gorgeous scenery. Gorgeous city. The cleanest I've seen in Israel so far. People are nicer too. Less rudeness, I like. I know it now though. There is NO way I can ever live somewhere (a city) longer than a couple of months without seeing the ocean or the sea or even just a lake. No way. After walking for some hours, my body just gave in to the soreness that already took over my whole muscle system the night before. I had to sit down, eat, and enjoy the sun. Did I mention it was as warm and sunny as it naturally is in the summer on this part of the world? So I took couple of random buses first, just to see where they're going to take me and get off if I feel like it. [You can use the same ticket for a while :)] Then I went to the train station next to the beach, got my ticket, walked to the beach, found a great cafe right by the sea, had terrible coffee but great great omelet with an amazing salad, while reading my book and enjoying the sun on my back. Well, after that I had 3 hours until my train back to Modi'in so I grabbed a chair, dipped my bare feet in the sea, and took a nice cozy nap under the sun. There were people like me sunbathing, in their swim suits though (I wish I had mine too, next time -which will be in the first week of March- I'll definitely swim!), or having some drinks or snacks on the sand, enjoying the sound of the waves. Just marvelous. Haifa is a combination of two cities I love: Istanbul and Miami. I would indeed one day have a house here.

Train ride was good, read my book, watched the planted fields along the way, so many banana trees. I couldn't reach anyone to pick me up from the train station but I thought, well, there was a bus going to the city center. Then maybe someone can pick me up from there. It didn't work out the way I thought it would be. Paid another 50 shekels to a Georgian-Jewish taxi driver. On the way, I called Howard again, and finally got a hold of him. He met me at the Latrun junction and took me back to the village. Success!
Total exhaustion, wonderful trip. Haifa is by far my favorite in this country. I'll go back there to train with Odelia again.

Day 57-58: Tel-Aviv with surprises, Friday with workshops

As always, I couldn't sleep well because, I don't know why, knowing I was going to wake up earlier than usual and that I really did not want to be late gives me an uneasy sleep. This has always been like that, just like my mom, if the next day requires specifically not being late to something and I'm not exhausted enough, I simply don't sleep.

So let's make it quick. Woke up mad early to meet Doran by the entrance to the village. Made it to Tel Aviv around 7:30, an hour early to my meeting with Gidon Bromberg. And I though, oh well, I like Tel-Aviv and morning walks so let's walk to the meeting point with a cup of coffee in my hand. I haven't had a decent, brewed coffee in Israel ever since I came here and clearly this was not going to be exceptional for that matter. It started drizzling but no big deal, I liked it. Then I thought I came to where we were supposed to meet and called Bromberg at 8:20 sharp. I still had 10 minutes. His voice was anxious, said they're already there waiting for me and that they're blocking traffic, a very uncomfortable situation, and that I was at a wrong place. They couldn't wait for me to take a cab and get to the right spot which was probably 5 minutes away from where I was. I couldn't believe those words came out of my mouth but I told them to leave without me. So they did. And not that they would have waited if I asked them to. I started walking back to the Dizengoff Center, thought I could at least have a decent breakfast somewhere. Dizengoff Center reminded me of some stuff that I needed to buy anyway so I went in, had coffee and eggs at a nice bookstore/cafe. Now that I remember, the coffee was not bad at all. I read my book and waited until the stores were open.

After shopping, I decided to walk around more but then it started raining like crazy! Having sneakers and no umbrella, I had to wait under a building for almost an hour but the rain was still intense so I said, "Screw it, I'm walking to Rothchild." So I did, found another cafe, changed my wet clothes and had lunch. In the mean time I called Doran and asked if I could catch a ride with him back to NSWAS. He said, of course. And so I did. This site visit should happen again and I intend to go this time. I should have taken a cab.

Friday was nothing special, lots of workshops, one for journalists, one for high school students. Moving on!

Days 51-56: Let's FF till Saturday and sleep until it's Wednesday

Feb 3-6 Thursday-Sunday

Not much has happened Thursday or Friday. I've been following the news, excitedly, on Egypt and all around the Middle East. The fate of the region is still uncertain, things can lead to several different avenues.  But there's certainly mobility in the ME for sure. I neglected the blog for a while and I'm not happy about that. There's still a wonderful road trip to write about. It came as a surprise to me. I was minding my own business at school when Timo called me with good news. We were to get the village car the next day, that was Saturday, to take Julia to the airport. She's leaving to Germany so we were going to take her to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel-Aviv. Driving is exciting but what's different this time was that the village was giving the car with a full depo to go wherever we want after the airport. I wasn't expecting a full depo. Anyway. This is a small country so it's not such a big deal to drive from one end to the other. But there's a lot to see none the less. Dead Sea was the first that came to our minds but then it would have been the opposite direction from Tel-Aviv. Due to our priorities, we decided to go north. Say, Golan Heights and Tiberias and wherever the road takes us. :p

The next morning I prepared a light sandwich for lunch, got apples and bananas with me for the road, determined to save some money. It was a fun ride to the airport, it's rainy and chilly in Tel Aviv but we didn't care. I felt sad that Julia had to leave, it would have been so nice to have her with us on the road. It was me, Leah, Timo and Leila. Three Germans and a Turk. We had a map in the car but it was completely in Hebrew, The only reason we know it is a map is because it looked like one. ;p But as the wise would say, god bless the I-phone and its gps feature. Also Leila. She's been in Israel for the last 5 months and she has traveled pretty much all around. Even though it was an automatic car, I really enjoyed driving. Tried a lot of radio stations, including the Arabic ones, lots of giggles, fruits and jokes. It took as a little more than an hour to get to Tiberias, a very old resort town by the beautiful and serene Sea of Galilee (Kineret) where Jesus was said to have walked its water. It's 300 m below sea level, apparently one of the lowest-lying town in the world. Maybe that's why it was surprisingly hot? Named in honor of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, it's one of the holy cites in Judaism. Ruled my Romans, the Crusaders, Ottomans, the British Mandate and finally the State of Israel. Unfortunately due to several earthquakes, floods and plunder, there isn't much left of its magnificent history. During the Ottoman rulership, the Jewish population seems to be the majority. According to our friend "wiki", the Jewish-Arab relationships were mostly good until the end of 1930s, ended with the British mandate evacuating the Arab population (almost half of the population at the time)  even surprising the Jewish forces. While the Haganah (the Jewish armed force) and the Jewish police tried to suppress the Jewish looters and prevent them from ravaging the Arab properties, most of the houses that belong to the Arab and Jewish families were demolished around 1949. I recently saw a documentary about Tiberias, but I need to see it again and update this post. 

Anyway, in my eyes the water makes it all perfect, and the Galilee is perfect. Despite the serious environmental issues that are putting this beauty at risk now. Wiki says "increasing water demand and dry winters have resulted in stress on the lake and a decreasing water line, at times to dangerously low levels. The Sea of Galilee is at risk of becoming irreversibly salinized by the salt water springs under the lake that are limited by the weight of the freshwater on top of them." Just like Gidon Bromberg told me, small countries, scarce resources, not enough cooperation between countries and communities. Nature pays the bill for us. 

Because it was shabat most of the stores were closed, the town was quite, and I have no objections to that as long as I have the means of transportation. We didn't spend a lot of time in Tiberias, it was around 2 when we started driving up towards the Golan Heights, to take a panoramic look at the Kineret. It took us a while to find the Gamla Nature Reserve and when we did it was too late to enter. But we stopped by anyway, hung out and took some pictures by the gate. It was very much windy. We didn't make any plans for after Gamla so I just drove around until we spotted an "official" scenic view point of the Golan Heights. It was impressive, the sea is enchanting, lovely. It makes you want to cry, the overwhelming kindness of the sun light over the water. 

The wind and walking around becomes exhausting after a while, and we have a long ride back home. It wasn't really on purpose but we ended up driving on the spiraling road down to the Jordanian border. So many curves, along the edge of a cliff, it was a fascinating ride. Timo was super excited to find the sign for the mines. We did. We're still in one piece, meaning we didn't pass the fence. Borders have this weird affect on me, a sensation, or perhaps the lack there of. Borders to keep bad people away from your land, sometimes to keep bad people in if it's the fence that separates the prison from the rest of the society, to emphasize the rules, the ownership of land, respect others right to have land?, a right?, Anyway, I was the only one who had lunch (remember the sandwich? My roommates were planning to eat on the road) so on the way we stopped at the Bet Gabriel Center. It's a theater, art gallery, and a restaurant.. Next to it there's a Lebanese falafel place where my friends had some, well, falafels. On the way back, which was half of that 500K we made, I found good radio stations to accompany me. We were home around 7pm and although it sounds too early, but we certainly had a good day. It took me a while to put this post here and now it's already Wednesday. Tomorrow, I'm going to meet Gidon Bromberg at 8:30 am in the morning, in Tel-Aviv, somewhere close to the Halacha exit on the Ayalon Highway. Two problems. I have to take the train from Lod around 7:20 and have no ride from the village to Lod yet. Second is, I have no idea how to get to the exit. I guess I see a cab ride unless it's a walk-friendly road. I may try another gaga class which I already paid for but we'll see. Always a torture coming back home from Tel-Aviv after dark.

Day 48-50: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Egypt, Green Frog, and the Black Bug

Nothing about Monday, except for my tiredness, a good one though. Tuesday I worked mostly on finishing  up the interim report for the EU. I guess we're finally done. Also got the day off for Feb 10 to join Gidon Bromberg for the Good Water Neighbor project in Jerusalem. Very excited about it.

It's been raining since Friday and that made our volunteer house the perfect refuge for the creatures of wild life around us. Monday we had a green frog, little cute, tree frog. Hid under the table until Tuesday, until my grand rescue operation. Rescue from the house, rescue from the cats eagerly waiting for another toy to chew on. The frog is safe. Then the black bug. It's safe, back in the wild, with other big black bug friends who should stay away from my house.

Then there's protests in Egypt. People want the decades old autocracy to end, an uprising that is welcomed by the most of the world despite some serious concerns about what it might bring about. Mubarek, at the age of 83 -I suppose- is finally trying to negotiate with the people he didn't necessarily treated nicely over the years. Good neighbors are afraid of their own wellbeing; the ambiguity, for the time being, about Egypt's future is a potential threat to them. The U.S. is also recalculating its relations with a new Egypt in the horizon. Although I'm very curious and worried about a Muslim Brotherhood intervention as  they already declared their support for the protests and ElBaradei. Another development of today (Wednesday) is the pro-Mubarek protesters viciously attacking the anti government people in front of the eyes of the soldiers who merely stand by. I guess that's because they had already stated their stance in the fight. The talks between ElBaradei and the U.S. and of course Baradei's relations with MB have critical importance now. And it seems like the crowd on the street seem to be supporting a new national front which includes all the opposition (MB as one of them) and the army. Mubarek, as Obaba calls on to him, might have to work his way through to create an interim government until the new elections and step aside.


This hardly looks like revolution. But it is the Egyptians' way of asking for several prominent changes in a system that did not allow another, "efficient" democratic apparatus for its citizens to express the needs, demands. Civil society, in that sense, is a very important component of democratic participation, not just voting. Now at this point, something quite unique comes up when you look at the allegedly non-governmental organizations, their nature, actions and their relations with the government, and finally their potential hand in a future democracy in Egypt.

http://www.icnl.org/knowledge/ijnl/vol10iss4/special_2.htm

So as far as I can see, this is more of a spontaneus development than an organized, planned political movement that may or may not bring in a revolution / or a counter revolution. IF Mubarek hears them and wins them back by negotiating and actually making that transition happen, then that's an option. The transition, however, cannot involve him as the president anymore. Transition is an interim government that he may propose for a "graceful" retirement. Mubarek may use this as an opportunity to prepare the regime for a comprehensive revision, that will turn into a transition, and finally a democracy. This requires a change in the form of the state, which clearly defines the state politics. So you cannot influence the government practices unless you demand a change in the form of your state. In Egypt, it's a dictatorship, one party monopoly for decades. To reduce the pressure, Mubarek provided them with certain rights, but very limited ones, and now they're not enough either. NGOs are hardly effective because of the deficiencies and the limitations they suffer from. And I still think it's too early to say Egypt will be the twin brother of Iran.

Also related to the topic, Yemen's forever-president Ali Abdullah Saleh played it safe and said "he will not seek to extend his presidency in a move that would end his three-decade rule when his current term expires in 2013." 
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/yemeni-president-vows-to-step-down-after-term-as-protests-spark-changes-across-arab-world-1.340792?localLinksEnabled=false

Yemeni people deserve a change too.