Skipping Stones and Reunions Half-Way Around the World

I’m backtracking a little bit as I struggle through writing my blog posts on my phone/tablet until the charger for my laptop, that I conveniently forgot in the US, arrives *facepalm* It seems like it was ages ago instead of days, but here’s what went down on Day 2—though I guess Saturday was my first full day, though Friday was pretty busy—in Israel

After a crazy week of moving and finishing my last day of work and leaving the States for Israel, I was grateful for a bed and 8 glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep. Man, that felt good. Even though I slept most of the way to Israel, my body needed the rest. We were a slow moving bunch and finally left the boat around 2pm to explore Haifa, specifically the beach.

We headed to the beach with plans of making it a chill day and chill day it was. While the sun was hidden by clouds by the time we made it to the water, the temperature was perfect, the sand was soft and the company was lovely. Chad and Tyler taught me how to skip stones which kept me occupied while they wrestled with each other until one of them ended up with a gnarly bump on his forehead (I’ll let you guess who). After a delicious lunch of hummus and lamb and salad, we headed back to the boat where a reunion was waiting to take place.

A friend of mine, Zenobia, has been living in Israel, working on her final project for grad school, a documentary about a unique friendship between an Israeli and Palestinian in the West Bank. Her and I met years ago when I took part in a volunteer trip to Ecuador that she was leading. We had an incredible experience but didn’t hang out much since then for a lot of different reasons but I was looking forward to seeing her in her new home base. She brought an Israeli friend, Oded, with her as he was intrigued by our visit and wanted to learn more about this adventure we were embarking on. After an hour or so of being lost, they finally arrived to the boat where we spent the next few hours just catching up. Before we knew it, it was late and rather than driving back, we made up a cabin for our visitors and concocted a plan to head to Jerusalem early the next morning for a day of sightseeing. Given that the papers were MIA and the entire country was on holiday for Passover/Easter, we figured we would take advantage of being in the holy land during such a big holiday.

Before I get to the reunion, let me tell you about an interesting question Tyler posed to us over linner (it was 4/5pm before we had our first meal of the day), “If you could pick three words that you’d want other people to use to describe you, what would they be?” This lead into a discussion/thought session of sharing what came to mind and why and what words were similar enough that they could be grouped together and which ones were spot on and which were a far cry. Before I share my words, I’d be curious to hear how you would answer the question. And maybe how you would help me answer it. (P.S. I’ll share the words I picked–I have them written down in my journal, I’m just curious about your responses first.)