I skied the big mountain!

Wow, I haven't posted a blog in quite some time. I was so much better about this last year! I guess it just makes them more valuable now, right?

Well, February was mostly uneventful. The Superbowl came & went & I sacrificed sleep for hopefully the last time for football. Even though I won't be home for the first month of Longhorn football next season, I'll be able to sleep in the day after!

National elections were held here for a new prime minister and so I had a day off of school. The kids are so loud & chaotic during the day that instead of trying to control them, they just cancel school. In fact, I just heard that one of our professors told some of our class that after you get your certification here, you have to go to vocal training/testing to make sure you can speak loud enough to command and control your class. But that's another issue...and one tied to one of the main reasons I'm not staying here!

We had a Tu B'Shvat seder with our program. Nothing big. Kind of like Earth Day where you celebrate the trees & such. There are 4 types of fruit or nuts to eat & 4 glasses of wine, of different colors. Good holiday.

We had the university semester break during the month of February, which is less of a break & more of a paper writing time, since everything is due after the break. I don't know where this logic comes from. It burns people out so fast. For regular university students, they have exam time, but there are 2 rounds. If you want any kind of break, you had better do well on the first round! How does that make sense? You, who failed, are frustrated & need a break the most- too bad. Study more!

And the big February event: Ted came to visit!!! He was here for 10 days and it was wonderful! We even rented a cabin and had a romantic getaway in the north, near the Kinneret, even though it rained all weekend, we didn't see the lake & his whole trip was like a romantic getaway because we got so much time together...

March started with weather warm enough for the beach and we all dusted our bathing suits off & got excited, but it didn't last past that weekend. Hopefully soon. I'm tired of the cold...or cool.

University started again and we only have 2 classes this semester- only on Sundays, which means Wednesday is a free day! I'm still trying to get an idea of if I like the classes/professors or not. The first week, I did. The 2nd, I didn't. Technology in Language Teaching and Multilingual Literacies. Should be interesting. Let's see if the profs make them as such.

We also had another holiday: Purim! It's like Halloween, except not paganistic. There are actual religious writings commanding us to dress up and get drunk to celebrate the holiday. Who else wants to be Jewish? (On a side note, one of my students expressed a desire to be American after St. Patrick's Day. "They're so cool. There's a holiday where you wear green. There's holiday where you dress up AND get candy. We get a long break for Passover, but it's still Passover." I asked about Hanukka w/ the jelly doughnuts and week off of school & just got an "eh...") Anyway, we had a 3 day break. One night, after pre-partying at my old apartment with friends, we met up with other friends on the bus (it was a little ridiculous--there was a classroom-full of us) & headed down near my neighborhood to a long street called Floretin. There is always a HUGE street party. Lots of music, and way too many people. There's no way keep up with all your friends. Our group splintered apart, and we were left with about 7 of us. Still, we occasionally lost people. One for an hour. oops. Now that I think about it, why is this fun?
The next night, I went with my friend Amos to Jerusalem to go to a few parties with our mutual friend, Meir. They were fun, but we only stayed a few hours because we were going skiing for Amos' birthday the next day. We left J'lem around 1:15, picked up some of his friends in Herzliya (north of TA) a few hours later and drove up to Mount Hermon, in the Golan Heights. It's a 3 hour drive, which is far for a country that you can drive across (N -> S) in 8.

Now this skiing trip was totally spontaneous. Amos asked me to go less than 24 hours before I was strapped in and on the slopes. I surprised myself when I said yes, because I hadn't been skiing in 14 years and that was the first time! So, he helped me out on the practice slope a bit, reminding me how to turn & stop and then he left to go to the big slopes w/ his friend Gil. The other 2 girls were on snowboards & ended up "hurting" themselves early on. They were lame anyway. There are really just 2 main slopes/ 2 ski lifts, even though there are multiple routes down each slope. I practiced a few more times and then I went on the smaller one. I started out fine, then went around a turn, picked up speed & crashed. I spent forever trying to put my ski back on before enlisting help. I needed a break. Luckily everyone else was taking one, too. I sat on the deck, looking at the slope, trying to map out the best way to go. I hit the slopes again with a new confidence, going down the easiest way. I made it down w/o falling! I tried a few more times, trying a way that was a little steeper at the end. Each time, I got farther down w/o falling, but I never stopped under my terms. On our next break, Amos somehow convinced me to try the big mountain with him and Gil. "I'll stay with you the whole time, guide you down, blah, blah, blah"
That slope was REALLY high. It was gorgeous being "on top of the world" like that. But then we had to go down. Ack! Amos went first & I followed him and copied what he did. I did such a great job, if I do say so myself...until we got to the really steep part. We turned & snowplowed the whole way down to make it "less steep." But really, I turned a few times, fell & repeated. It was really frustrating, but Amos was patient and did stay with me. We finally merged with the part of the mountain that I'd skied before, so I confidently went down, only fell when someone skied in front of me and slowed to a stop on my own at the end! It was amazing! I don't think I'll ever ski a mountain that big again, but I'm glad I did it once!

Check out the pictures: Feb & Mar 09 activities