vacation tiyul

Its been a long day - I go on a little vacation and return and the whole place is shot to pieces. At least I had a nice vacation. My parents were in to meet my sister's fiance, so Thursday we had an engagement party. I heard from a number of people that I seemed to be in a bad mood, but it was after a long day of work and a 3 hour drive and I wasn't in a bad mood for any particular reason, so I have excused myself. We planned on sleeping in Jerusalem Thursday night , so after the party we left the kids sleeping under the watchful eyes of my parents and went to the kotel to pray. My sister-in-law (on the other side) has breast cancer and it is right before the new year (rosh hashana) so we thought it was a good time to pray. Prayers at the wall are always enjoyable and have some form of extra oomph or feeling brought about by the special location.
We returned to where we were staying and I couldn't fall asleep, probably because I had an ice tea on our way back from the wall and I'm not used to drinking caffeine at night. I fell asleep at 3ish and woke up at 10 to 6, which is when I normally wake up. I waited an hour for my dad to wake up and we went to the wall for morning prayers. (Two times at the wall and I am ready for the new year). We went with my mom to downtown Jerusalem to go shopping. It was a very successful trip, the girls got new skirts and I loaded up on meat from Matam Chafetz Chaim. They have great American corned beef and pastrami, which we don't get up north, and I also got some garlic pickles and a salami to hang, among other things. When we returned to the car I found a 250 shekel parking ticket tucked into the windshield wipers. As they say in Jewish, this too is for the best and I didn't let it get me down.
We drove 3 hours home after a pizza lunch and I got to have a nice long catch-up chat on the drive home with my little sister who I hadn't spoken to in a very long time. Now we're all bonded or something.
We got home a couple hours before shabbos and I got a call from a friend that his car broke down outside of Or Haganuz, a Breslover moshav, near Meron. I went out to pick him up (25 minute drive) and he wanted to (understandably) wait with his car until the tow truck guy got there. He figured the tow truck guy would give him a lift home on his way to Karmiel. An hour later he found out that the tow truck had a faster route to Karmiel that didn't take him by our village, so he was stuck again, so I went out to get him. He didn't get hit too badly, it was his exhaust that went. I had thought it was the transmission from the way he described it.
We discussed it on the way home and my theory is that right before rosh hashana God collects from everyone who owed him throughout the year. There is a great mishna in pirkei avot (towards the end of the 3rd chapter): (In the name of Rabbi Akiva) "The store is open and the storekeeper is around, the notebook is open and the hand is writing. Anyone who wants a loan can come and borrow. The loan officers are constantly taking payments, with and without your knowledge...." In other words, the collectors were in my neighborhood this week.

Shabbos was very nice, my brother and his wife came up with baby boy blue and we had a very nice time with them as well.

I took vacation Sunday and Monday so we could all have some fun. It is the last week of summer vacation for the kids, so it was good all around. I wanted to show my parents an old Syrian village which was Jewish in the times of the Mishna, so we went on a hike of Nachal Jalabon. This is a great hike and I recommend it to everyone. It is a little hard to find if you don't know what you are looking for. We had 2 cars, so we parked one on each side of the tiyul and started off. First we walked down the side of the mountain on a rocky descent. We crossed the stream and walked up to the overlook where you can see the first waterfall "Devora's waterfall" Above the lookout is the village of Devora (Dabura in Arabic) I looked all around for references of the prophetess Devora, but she was in the Shomron the whole time and never made it up to the Golan, as far as I could find, so it was probably not named after her.
After we wandered through the village and heard a story about the place from my dad, we headed down to the water. My wife and mother waited with the small children by the small pools of water while I took the older ones, my sister and my dad to the waterfall. We made it all the way to the pool by the waterfall, but the waterfall itself was hidden from view by the mountainside. It was rough going and the children couldn't have made it all the way over to the pool so we turned around and headed back to the small pools where the kids played in the water for a bit before we continued on our way. We went up and down across rocky paths until we found the second waterfall with a big pool of water. It was a bit of a climb to get to the pool, but we made it and jumped in the water. A refreshing swim and sitting under a waterfall after a long hike is all that. After the swim we hiked the rest of the way out including a killer uphill climb to reach the top. But we all made it. All in all the hike took us about 4 hours and is highly recommended. (Though my dad thought we were trying to kill him).
On Monday, on my oldest daughter's request, we went to an animal sanctuary called "Owl, all life" (my daughter yells that it doesn't mean that, but it does). The group goes to all the school's with various animals like snakes and iguana's and interesting lizards and stuff and they have a campus that you can go visit where they give you a guided tour and explanation of all the animals there. They also make pita, but the corn oil didn't have a kosher symbol on it. (It only had arabic writing). They offered to make us our own dough without any oil, but I didn't want to cook it on the same whateveritiscalled as the other ones were cooked on so we turned them down. I don't know what could be problematic about oil, but oil is processed, (except for virgin olive oil) so you really don't know. After the animal farm, we went for lunch in Tiverya (Tiberias) and had Shwarma and felafal. We said good by to my parents and sister who headed back to Jerusalem and found a nice quasi-private (very rocky) beach on the Kinneret to play in for an hour before heading home. It was a full and exhausting couple days.

summer weekends

One day my oldest daughter came home from school and was very upset. A girl in her class called her retarted. I asked her if she was retarted and she said no. I asked her if she would get upset if someone started yelling at her that her nose was upside down and green? She thought that was silly. I explained to her that when you know something is not true it might make you sad that someone is not being nice to you, but she shouldn't get upset at what was actually said because it was said by someone who obviously didn't know her very well. I think that is good random advice for everyone. It isn't always true, but it is a nice workable starting position.

We had a lot of company this weekend.

On Friday an old seminary friend of my wife's came up with with her husband and baby for a tiyul. They were staying with someone who I work with and that family came up as well. The friend's family lives in Montreal and is planning on making aliyah eventually, so they are checking out the countryside. They probably won't make aliyah until he finishes his MBA, (which he is doing part time so it will take a few years) and I think that is an excellent decision. The better prepared you are the easier the absorption process will be. We went to nachal kziv - the water was flowing and we had a very enjoyable afternoon.

For shabbos my sister came with her chosson. We had met him before, but this was the first time we got to spend quality time with him. I reckon it's nerve-wracking going to your fiance's brother's house for shabbos. We were nice and he did mostly fine. However, this was only practice. They have to go to America to meet the state-side friends and family before the wedding. One thing that people who get married learn is that there are certain things that they shouldn't share with their spouse. For example, when we were engaged we got together with a female friend of mine and I mentioned to my fiance when she asked about her, that I once asked her out and she turned me down. My fiance took that in the way that girls take those kinds of things to mean that I was still interested in her and put her down on the hate list.
I think (hope) my sister learned that there are certain things you just shouldn't communicate.

camping

We had a very nice vacation. We didn't go fishing. Thursday we headed up to Nimrod's castle. It has nothing to do with the legendary Nimrod and was built by the Muslims in 1237 or something like that. The place was enormous and a long time ago it would have been gorgeous. They really put in a massive effort to make it look nice. We spent about 2.5 hours at the castle and then tried to find a place that the kids could jump in the water. We're members of the national parks association, so we thought we wouldn't have a problem, but the first place we went to, Charoshet Tal, said they give a 50% discount to members and they were only open for another hour. The second place we went to, Nachal Senir (Chitzbani), had just closed. So we decided to go to the campground at Kibbutz Dafna and let the kids play in the river there. The river running through the campground was about 2 inches deep. so it was perfect for getting your feet wet and somehow or other the children got soaked, but it wasn't much to speak about.
We met 3 other families there and had a nice bbq in the evening. The fathers took the walkable children on a flashlight hike through the kibbutz, though my littlest walker stopped walking int he middle then when he couldn't even stay on my shoulders any more threw up on me as I carried him. It was just a bit too late for him.
Friday morning, after a failed attempt to get a minyan going, we headed over to nachal hermon (lower banias) and hiked between kibbutz senir and moshav shar yashuv. The water was freezing cold and moving fast. It was a bit of a difficult hike for all the children, but everyone enjoyed themselves (especially jumping into the freezing cold water.) The hike was about 4 hours long and the kids got popsicles when we finished.