Arid Around Arad

Welcome to the desert. Although it's a small country, the Negev (name of the wilderness) is endless. This weekend was one for hikes and hostels with my fellow int'l classmates. The trail was intense. I tried to capture the depth of the mountains, because at times, were going straight down, and there were no railings of any kind. Their were some ropes and ladders, but plenty of other opportunities presented themselves to let your imagination wander off to caves and camels, only to wake up to vertigo. I'm no geologist, but there was a variety of stones in the area where we hiked, including flint. Apparently, this desert is thirty degrees off the equator, and following that plot around the globe you find similar climates. I liked to pick up handfuls of stuff depending on where I was. Sometimes there were pebbles on the ground, other times there was very fine sand, and I wanted to take off my shoes and play hide and seek behind the boulders. Of course, that didn't happen.

After the hike, the group rolled on into Arad, a small settlement, filled with green. We spent Shabbat there, and Saturday morning walked around the city, armed only with copies of Google Maps of Arad. We had to find certain intersections of streets based on clues about street names. Then at each intersection, we discussed a war that took place in Israeli history. We had to know the Prime Minister, Chief of Staff, participants, etc. Unfortunately, we never knew all the details, so we found ourselves Jay Walking up to cars and random pedestrians to ask them "who was the Chief of Staff was during the 1948 War of Independence?" No one ever knew the answer! It was very embarrassing, especially after two girls asked this bald guy walking by with groceries, who turned out to be a woman. All in all, though, the weekend was very relaxing and a nice change of scenery.