Hey y'all! What's up?

Hey All!

Life is fab here in ארץ ישרעל! (erets yisrael for those non Hebrew readers). Today at school I gave a presentation on my old school. I got to bring in a cake for afterward. It was the best homemade chocolate cake you have ever tasted. My mom, my sister and I made them frantically last night. So, back to the news. We are making plans to go to the Dead Sea next week, and float! Oh ya! Ah ha! Or in Hebrew סבב (sababa it means cool)! Isn't this the best blog post ever? I know it is cause I write the most interesting stuff (not true if you are אמה or עבה/ Mom or Dad), and My stuff always looks the coolest!Does right? You just have to admit it! I have tutoring tomorrow morning so I am going to go late to school. I hope it will be fun, I think it will be since the first one was, but ya never know! I miss you guys tons, but as i said, I mean it is pretty awesome here! Ya with me? doesn't this amazing post make you wanna come visit us? You'd be on our blog! I know you want to, I know you want to!

This is a picture of my most recent painting. I did it in a class, and today was actually my last day of that class. I got inspired to make it because of Wonderland Lake and the mountains, but it didn't really turn out looking like that. I wish you guys could see it in person!

Another time when you come!

Hangman

2/23/2011

(copieed from my school notebook)

Right now I am sitting in school. We are having a free period to play games, and my class chose to play hangman.You'd think that's fun right? Rong! Well it's all in hebrew. I can kind of read read it, but I can't understand anything anyone is shouting. Keep in mind this is an I sraeli class so people are yelling over eachother! That is why I chose to write this blog. So I will talk about more stuff than just hangman. My family is doing well exept for the cold we have been passing around to eahother. I hope that I you will be able to visit us! I miss you all!

2/27/2011

I am home right now, and I am having a great time! I am still not happy about the fact that I went to school today and it was Sunday. I hate one day weekends, but I'll get used to it. A lot has hapened so this will be a long story condenced into a short story so that I don't bore you by writing 200 pages on the events of a week. Here it comes!

On Thursday afternoon my family went to Be'er Sheva. We went on what we wanted to be a short trip turnes out to be a long trip. We got fabrick to make Purim costumes as I am being a cloud, and Miriam is a rainbow. We got the idea to make our own costumes, and i didn't want to give up the oportunity. We got every other thing you could want.

After that long event I had an overnight at my friends house on Saterday, and then today is Sunday. I am trying to learn hebrew and our tutor is realy nice!

I love it here, and i miss you all!

We Get Israeli Haircuts

The last time we got haircuts was a few weeks before Miriam's Bat Mitzvah. That was in early January. After being in Israel for a few weeks we started to get a bit shaggy. There's a storefront in the little town center here in which a hair salon operates one day a week. There's just one chair and one hair cutter, who is named Ari. Lynn and I dropped in after Hebrew class. Here is Lynn a bit earlier in the day still sporting her long locks.


Lynn is first in the chair. Ari, who doesn't speak much English, suggests short. Lynn agrees.

Ari is making progress.

Here's the final product. Doesn't she look Israeli?

Next in the chair is Jay. As you can see, I really need Ari's help.

Snip, snip, snip, and he's finished. Don't I look great? Well, at least a lot better than when I sat down in the chair.

Thanks, Ari.

Learning Hebrew with an Old Brain

I'm sure you've heard it's easier for kids to learn languages. It's certainly not completely easy for them, as you've noticed in Miriam and Rebekah's postings. But it's much harder for Jay and me. Most people here speak English quite fluently, so we don't even try to muddle through with amusing sign language and acting out. I kind of miss that, actually. Please and thank you are a good start, but I came knowing those. After almost 3 weeks here, I've learned at least 4 ways to say ok/good/great/wonderful (and none to say bad, how cool is that?) and I'm eager to know more.

Yesterday Jay and I went to check out a Hebrew class that's offered at the University here in town. The Ben Gurion University of the Negev has a small campus here, including the Desert Research Institute, which comprises the National Solar Energy Center, Man in the Desert (architecture) and four other departments. Students come from all over the world and classes are taught in English. We both wish we'd known about this when we were looking at grad schools!

The Hebrew class meets just 2 hours/week, and though I'll probably do ulpan--25 hours/week immersion--I wanted to check it out because it's right in our town. There were students from the Ukraine, Holland, China, and Columbia, as well as the US. Turned out that although it was billed as a beginning class, it was actually the second semester of a beginning class. Since we can already read, we decided to stay and try it. The teacher spent the first half of class getting the names of the new students. She was especially puzzled by a woman with a name that sounds Latin and Japanese but who is a Jewish American. That task behind us, the teacher passed out some phrases for us to learn. Unfortunately for me, they were written in script. It's like trying to read cursive if you've only learned block printing or typeface. Rebekah and Miriam had taught themselves and tried to teach me, but I hadn't made time to practice. (What's the one that looks like a 2, or a 3, or a backwards N?) I tried to fake it...until the teacher came over and turned the page right-side up! Busted! Very embarrassing.

That got me to thinking how this trip, for me, is so much about letting go: letting go of my work identity, figuring out who I am when I'm not playing that role. More generally, it's about leaving behind, temporarily, my life that is so full and rich and comfortable. Not always easy, certainly, due in large part to my propensity to take on too much and be too busy, but comfortable in that the patterns are familiar. This six months is about daring to try new things, things I'm not good at and may never be good at, and having that be ok. Once I silence that pesky inner critic, it's much more than ok. It's quite freeing to try things I've never done before, reveling in the newness, asking for help, not even expecting to be competent, let alone proficient.

Warning: Amateur Geologist at Work

I got interested in geology from my hikes in the Grand Canyon and so I’ve been working to identify the rocky layers here in the Negev Desert. More specifically, I’ve focused on the geology of the Gan Hapsalim and Ein Avdat National Parks, which are just adjacent to our home in the Ben Gurion Midreshet. Unlike the Grand Canyon, most of the rock layers here are not so distinct. Many consist of varieties of limestone which I am unable to distinguish between. Anyway, here are the major formations I’ve been able to identify. More knowledgeable geologists than I are invited to submit comments and corrections below.

Sand

Covering most of the ground here is a layer of sand, which in some places forms into dunes, as pictured below. The dunes here aren’t soft like the ones in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument back in our home state of Colorado. Instead, they’ve been windblown and sun baked into a nearly rock hard consistency.

Composite Rocks

Just below the top layer of sand comes a layer of composite rock (pictured below). It largely consists of chunks of the layers below cemented together with what looks to me like either compacted sand, crumbled limestone, or a combination of the two. The stones within the composite, for the most part, seem to be similar in wear and size with the loose rubble in the dry river beds below.

Limestone
Limestone is typically deposited when an area is covered by a shallow sea. It largely consists of the shells of tiny ancient sea creatures that fall to the bottom when the creatures die. Limestone is amongst the softest sedimentary rocks and erodes into complex patterns. Most caves, for instance, are found in limestone formations. Here are a few examples of limestone formations in the Negev.

It’s common to find limestone formed into layers that separate and crumble in complex ways.

This ring pattern is widespread in the limestone in this area. I don’t know what forms it.

I frequently observe holes or pores in limestone that has been eroded by moving water.

Chalk

Chalk is a form of limestone that is deposited in relatively deep waters. It consists of microscopic plates shed by ancient microorganisms. Chalk is white and forms steep cliffs. It’s not clear to me yet where the other forms of local limestone end and the chalk begins. An excellent example of chalk can be found in the cliffs around Ein Avdat, a local spring that still features running water.

Here the chalk formation has been turned up on end so that the layers are eroding into spikes that resemble hair.

In this picture, running water from an ancient and long since dried up stream carved complicated patterns into the chalk.

Also, chalk is often eroded by water into smooth surfaces resembling soft serve ice cream.

Flint

The only rock I’ve found which provides relief to the unending vistas of limestone and chalk is flint. No surprise there, given that wherever you have limestone and chalk, you’re likely to also find flint. Because flint is composed of quartz, where the rocks are broken open, they appear glassy. Sometimes they are black and grey in color. They may also be quite colorful, containing reds, browns, whites, and greens as seen in the pictures below.

Because flint is so much harder than the surrounding limestone and chalk, it’s the only mineral around here that will take on a desert varnish (as seen in the pictures below). The varnish comes from minerals such as clay, iron oxide, and manganese oxides that accumulate on the surface of the rocks and then bake in the sun. The limestone and chalk are too soft to have a surface stable enough for varnish to form.

Flint typically forms in thin layers and nodules in limestone and chalk. Here’s an example of a stairstep formation caused by alternating layers of chalk and flint nodules (see picture below). Because the chalk is softer than the flint, the chalk layers erode out from underneath the flint layers. Eventually, the flint protrudes out enough that it breaks off, as shown in the close-up of the same formation below.

I love orienteering!

Yesterday, my mom and I went to a special event in Nitzana. That is a little village right on the borderline of Egypt. We got there at about ten, and went orienteering. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's when you get a map with lines for trails but they aren't named. It also has little dots where the different places are. You have to find your way to those dots.

This is the map that we used. All of the red dots are the locations we needed to go.

This is the sign for the Nizana Forest where we were.

When we got to every location we had to punch the certain punch in a piece of paper. This was the first location and punch.

These were peace sculptures called path of peace. My dad wrote an earlier blog on them.

My mom and I found some old ruins. They were in very good shape. As we were told later they were originally an old fortress, but they were most recently a world war 1 hospital. The hill that they sit on was man made for a lookout.

Gorgeous views through the old window

Me in the cave.

Surprisingly enough when we were done orienteering we stumbled across a Denver Boulder house!

Miriam's blog post

THIS WILL BE THE BEST BLOG YOU WILL EVER READ!!! (WARNING: this blog may be very boring so just kidding about the previous sentence). Well, it might be the best blog ever just cuz it's the coolest looking and the coolest person ever wrote it! :) Now for the actual blog: In the first week I was here, everyone wanted to be my friend and invite me over to their houses. I was the new kid. everyone made an effort to include me and help me understand what the teacher was saying in Hebrew. Now, I'm not the new kid anymore. My friends have gone back to their normal lives, hanging out after school with their friends and always talking in hebrew. They forget that I am there, no one seems to include me in what they are doing. I know that it will be like this for a little while, but once I learn hebrew so I can participate, it will all be good. It's hard going and frustrating at times, however I am still having a great time here. The begging of this letter is pessimistic, I can't say it's been easy trying to get used to this and fit in, but I don't want you to think I'm miserable here, because I'm not! It's been a really fun experience seeing what it's like halfway across the world. In some ways, it is more similar to america than I could have ever imagined. In other ways, it is so different and foreign to me. I have been surprised, for example: everyone here wears the same clothes as you do in america! On the other hand it's tiny here! I mean like no stores tiny, you have to drive for 40 minutes just to get a par of socks. serious-leh. ikr, totally crazy! This means no 29th street mall! I like it, though, it makes everything really simple and I love being able to walk everywhere! There are others things like this that surprise me like the way school works here, totally NOT what I am used to!

Well, I will now wrap up my blog by letting you know I'm wrapping it up. I'll keep you all posted, but this is it for now! I miss all of you so much!!!

Sincerely,

Miriam

So, was this the most awesome blog?? You should comment that it is whether or not it is so that my post can be the first with comments!! yay!! cuz I'm the awesomest!! (if you were wondering, I do know that's not a word, but that doesn't stop me from using it)

:)

just to let you guys know: This blog was all in rainbow colors and I spent so long making everything perfect, and then when I published this it deleted it all!! :( I'm sorry

Jay's Journey up a Slot Canyon

Today, I went for a beautiful hike up a slot canyon. I actually discovered the slot canyon by accident. It isn't called out on the map we have. As you can see from the picture below, when I walked in the direction of these cliffs, there wasn't any way to know what laid ahead.

To enter the slot canyon, I first had to pass through a stone arch. The arch wasn't created by erosion like the arches in Arches National Park. It was created by a few large rocks that fell upon each other, leaving a gap between them. After I passed through the doorway, I turned around and took this picture:

Just beyond the arch, I came across this natural alcove in the canyon wall.

The walls of the slot canyon are composed of soft limestone.

Looming over the canyon walls were a variety of limestone pillars and spires.

I continued to walk up between the narrow walls.

At the end of the slot canyon was a dry waterfall. I could only imagine how refreshing it would have been to have stood underneath that waterfall on a hot day when it was still running.

Standing by the dry waterfall I looked back and took this picture of the surrounding cliffs, eroded out of soft limestone and sand.

Here's a detail from the cliff to the side of the waterfall. Here the rock layers are thin, turned vertical, and warped by tectonic activity. They looked to me like blades of grass.

After a little sightseeing, it was time to go back down the canyon.

Here are some heavily eroded features from the canyon walls.

Here's a rock tower, looming over the slot canyon.

Here's a picture looking up above the slot canyon walls.

Time to pass through the arch again and head back home.

Just past the arch, while heading back, I came across this colony of animal nests in the pores in the rock in the side of the cliff. I don't know to which animal this abandoned colony belongs or whether the eggs were laid in pores in the rock, or the rock formed around nests made in the sand.

Thanks for joining me for this adventure. I look forward to our next one together.