If you have nowhere to sleep, then don't sleep.

This weekend was quite the ADVENTURE! By the end I was amazed at what can happen when you put some crazy college students together in a foreign country (mom please don't freak out about this post, I skyped you once I was home safely and you said yourself I looked great!). It started with a goal to go to two places called Ein Gedi and Masada, and to swim in the Dead Sea. The original plan for the weekend involved a two day trip, with a night in a hostel near Masada, the main purpose being to wake up close to Masada so we could hike it and watch the sunrise from the top of it.

HOWEVER, when we called the hostel the day before the trip (another outcome of traveling with all college students), they were completely booked, as was every other hostel and hotel within a 100 mile radius. So we met up and tried to figure out a solution. I adore sunrises, and was determined to keep that in the works. Bridget and I also were completely willing to sleep in the car or to camp somewhere, but the other 8 people weren't so thrilled. And then I came up with a solution that reveals too well that I go to MIT (and that I've learned too much from my dad and his ability to forgo sleep to plow during those crazy snow storms) - if there is nowhere to sleep, lets just not sleep! We all stay up for p-sets, and I would say a sunrise hike > pset. I knew there was a solution to every problem…executing it was another issue, but we got everyone to agree to the plan, and at 7:30am the next morning, we were on our way.

Destination 1: Nahariya ---> Rosh Hanikra
Along with 5 other students staying at Ort Braude, I headed to Nahariya by bus, where we picked up two rental cars and groceries for Shabbat, when everything would be closed. We had to get rental cars because all public transportation shuts down on Shabbat, and  and it made getting to the Dead Sea way easier. We then headed to the most northwestern part of Israel - Rosh Hanikra. Rosh Hanikra is basically a cliff that you can go on top of to see a beautiful view of the Mediterranean. It then has "grottos", or little tunnels through the rock cut out by the water that you can walk through. It was absolutely beautiful, and walking out on the rocks and getting a little wetter than intentioned by a big wave was great!

"Above the sound of the surging water, and the mighty waves of the sea, the Lord sits enthroned in majesty." - Psalms 93:4

You can even see the Lebanon border (the fence in this picture) from where we were standing!

Destination 2: Nahariya ---> Tel Aviv
We headed back to Nahariya to grab some lunch, at a popular chain cafe in Israel called Aroma. Since I've been cooking on my own, and since kosher restaurants here either serve meat or dairy, I had had meat only 3 times since being in Israel. A chicken sandwich never tasted so good :)
We then drove about 2 hours to Tel Aviv. Driving down the coast as the sun set over it made it quite an enjoyable ride. As did the fact that I was driving a car at least 15 years newer than my car at home - with working blinkers, windows, doors, air conditioning, and brakes even! It was also pretty crazy to look down at my speedometer and see it say that I was driving over 100 kph. I now know that means I was going about 62 mph, but not knowing that made it seem way faster. Side-note: Even though we had to get the rental cars under two people who were 21, Kathleen and I were the only students who were willing to drive through a foreign country (I was actually very excited to). But rules in Israel were meant to be broken; it added to the adventure of it all. After some skillful parallel parking in Tel Aviv, we crashed at the hotel that the other MIT students were staying in. After getting dinner out (things actually stay open in Tel Aviv on Friday nights, even though the rest of Israel has shut down by this point). We then proceeded to have 10 people sleep for a few hours in 2 small hotel rooms. I fell asleep around 11 pm. When my alarm went off at 1:30 am, it was go-time. We all got up surprisingly quickly,  Kathleen and I inhaled some coffee/tea for caffeine, and we were off.

Destination 3: Masada
Driving to Masada was great - the roads were completely empty, I was completely awake, and the ease of navigating through Israel was much appreciated. At one point we hit the thickest fog I've ever driven through - couldn't really see anything but the tail lights of Kathleen in front of me as we inched slowly along. Luckily that didn't last too long, and the rest was smooth sailing. We passed lots of "camel crossing" signs along the way, although we didn't get to see any camels. And we didn't end up in the West Bank by accident! Once we got into the desert area, I felt like I was driving on Mars. We couldn't see much more than what our headlights were illuminating, but we could tell that there were huge mounds of orange dirt all around us. We passed a sign that said we were at sea level, and then the elevation quickly dropped. Like driving down a Colorado mountain pass, I didn't have to use the accelerator at all through the curvy roads headed towards the lowest place on earth. At 5:15 am, we successfully pulled into the Masada parking lot - even had time to take a 20 minute nap!

The stars at Masada were beautiful. We were literally in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Masada is a plateau in the desert, where King Herod decided to build palaces for himself around 31 BC. It was sieged by Romans around 70 AD.

We started hiking around 5:45 am, when it was still very dark out. The darkness made it actually feel like we were on Mars (not that I would mind that at all). We made it to the top around 6:30 am. I retreated off on my own to spend some time in prayer as I watched the sunrise.

"O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" - Psalms 8:4-5

Once the sun had come up, I spent some time walking around the ruins, marveling at the history of it all, and how much was still standing after 2,000 years. I proceeded to casually lie down in the warmth of the sun and wait for the others…and ended up sleeping for an hour.

Our group eventually hiked back down, enjoyed some nutella-banana sandwiches and a pomegranate for breakfast, and hopped back in the cars.

Destination 4: Ein Gedi
Ein Gedi is a national reserve and beach just slightly north of Masada. We dropped half of our group off at the beach, and then proceeded to the national reserve for another hike. As we hiked up the "wadi" ("Wadi is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley." -Wikipedia), we saw many waterfalls and springs, that we happily dipped our feet in. It was literally an oasis - one of the only places in the desert with water and vegetation. We even got to see the cave that David may have hid in when Saul was trying to find him and kill him. Came across this a few days before we left for Ein Gedi randomly as I was reading the Bible:
 "My beloved is like a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-Gedi"

 -Song of Solomon 1:14.

Destination 5: Dead Sea
Swimming in the Dead Sea was possibly one of the weirdest things I have done. I didn't believe Kathleen when she said it was so salty that you couldn't even go under in it or that you wouldn't want to spend a long time in it, but she was correct. The Sea is 33% solid matter, can't support any life, and though it looks like the ocean, its not. A lot of the rocks in the sea have this thick encrusting of white salt on them, and the water looks oily almost. Even your skin feels slimy when you are in it. You pretty much can't 'swim' in it - you have no other option but to float. It was difficult to make yourself vertical in the water! I thourougly enjoyed it, was laughing at the ridiculousness of it the whole time. I think it was the closest feeling to no gravity I will get to feel before I'm actually in space. :)

Destination 6: 'Home'
We left the Dead Sea late in the afternoon, and then proceeded to drive to Tel Aviv to drop off the students living there. Got some more tea in their hotel, and then headed off to Nahariya to drop off a rental car, and then finally back to Karmiel. 10 hours of driving across Israel in one day - absolutely worth it :)