Eilat (Nov. 3-4)

Day One in Eilat:
The Madrichot woke us up at 5:30am to load the buses. The first activity we did upon arivval 4 hours later was a hike thourhg Tamar Canyon. We actually missed the group hike so the bus took us to the end of the hike and we worked our way backward. We didn't get to do the whole thing but the part we did do was really cool. It basically entailed scaling the mountain side on these iron ladders that were bolted into the rocks.
Afterward we had lunch on the docks followed by Pancaking. I have never seen anything quite like it in America but its basically like tubing (riding a tube pulled by a speed boat) except the tubes were like giant blow up matresses (hence the name- pancaking) There were two on the back of each speed boat and each one fit 5 people. The pancakes had 2 handles per person and we basically just had to hang on. :) I rode the middle of mine and nobody on it fell off... Unlike on the other pancake which lost two girls during the ride. Everybody agreed that it was wicked fun!! We also jumped off when we were close to the dock so we all ended up drenched. :D
Directly following that we did a 40 minute hike through who knows where. All I remember from that was it was hot, very dessert like, and hard.
When we loaded the buses again we were all really tired. Which is why half the school stayed in the bus while the other half went searching for Sne rocks in the Sinai area near Egypt. I'm sure you've heard of the rocks that have pictures of thorn bushes printed into them... no matter how many times you crack them. That's what i'm talking about. I didn't go search for them but i got to see some cool ones when the girls got back.
Finally we checked into the villa we would stay at that night. It was actually really small but there were HUGE blow up matresses all over the floor. Like 6 person huge. We got assigned beds and I fell asleep upon my shared matress. When i came too, the teacher/chaprone was standing over me telling someone to wake me up and peel me an orange. Apparently she thought I had passed out. Well, i did... but not in the literal sense. Once I was up, I became aware that there was a BBQ going on... poolside! There was a whole cool back yard, with a pool, patio, BBQ, lawn chairs, and a pool table!!!! boy do i miss playing pool. Music was blasting and soon e/o was dancing and having a great time.
After we all had a chance to shower and chill out for a bit we hopped back on the bus to go to a pontoon. Where we partied it down for about an hour an a half on the second story party boat on this gorgeous sea of black water surrounded by a thousand sparkling lights of different colors.... sigh, it was awesome! During the Dance Party a girl smashed her head and got a concussion. I knew it was a concussion because of my recent personal encounter with the ailment. I half carried her back to the Villa where we waited to find our which hospital we could take her to. And let me tell you- keeping someone awake who is in pain and totally unaware of their surrounds, is a hard task.
Finnally a Hebrew speaking madricha and I were able to take her to the ER. In the Israelli ER we waited 40 minutes to be seen since surprisingly the American-Israelli insurance office wasn't open at the hour of 1:30 a.m. They wouldn't let us be seen without knowing that we had some way to pay for the visit. On a positive note, when we did get in everything was alright. The girl was given pain killers and we were told to watch her for 24 hours. When we finally made it back to the Villa it was close to 3:00... the place looked like a dead town. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere, and the girls were stretched out, sleeping on couches, floor, grass, lawn chairs, or wherever they had found room. At that point i made the wise decision to check myself off the 'to wake up at 4:00 for the murder 6 hour hike up Har Shlomo' list.

Day 2 in Eilat:
Unfortunately, i had not quite escaped reality.... which woke me up at 6:30 to go on the not so murderous 3 hour hike through the dessert.... whoever calls it not so murderous must think they're funny. You know what its like to walk on the beach... through all the hot sand?? well imagine walking through that, only your surrounded by giant red sandy mountains and the blistering hot sun is beating down on your head, for an hour and a half- on an upward slope. And then we got the privilede (no sarcasm here) of hiking down the mountian for an hour and a half. The privilege comes in by nature of the fact that somehow there was a breeze on that stretch and because there was almost no sand. :D The climb we did was called the Red Canyon, it looked kind of like Pride rock in the lion king.... we even got to see real live lion-king-trees! :} (the smiley is because i just reminded myself of the time I was explaining to my 7th grade class about the bodies exibit in Detroit... [its made up of cadavers]. the line i'll never live down is "and they have real live dead bodies!")
After the Red Canyon our wary troups met up with the Har Shlomo survivors and together we progressed to our next activity. SNORKLING! ahhhhhh, sigh.............. it was a blast. I decided to wear a bright green dress that i bought at a thrift store in order to have a tznious beach dress for exactly this purpose. I have to say that together with my black knee socks, sneakers, and snorkling gear, i must have been the most stylish snorkler there!! Watching the coral and fish was the most amazing thing i have ever experienced. At one point i was practically holding a tiny Nemo fish and i saw tons of other beautiful and colorful kinds of fish including Dori! The coral was all colors... purple, red, orange, yellow, black, pink... all different types and variations. One of the girls by mistake touched a piece of coral and got this massive poisonous infection... it was soo cool!
Afterward we went on a glass bottomed boat to veiw the deeper coral. While we were going between the veiwing spot and the dock I got to sit on top of the second story of the boat, right in the front. It felt like I was flying.... totally free.
And then we left.... and our last hike was canceled due to popular Demand. So instead we made a pit stop by the Egyptian border and girls took turns taking pictures with there hands stuck throught the fence to show they were in Egypt. While half of e/o was running around doing stupid things for the camera the other half of us were being lethargic in the bus... like me for instance. But i got out pretty quick when an army jeep and tank pulled up. :} And then the picture taking on the army equipment ensued while the drivers were talking to the tour guide and security gaurd. When one of the girls asked if she could drive the jeep the dude said that if she could figure out how to turn it on than she could drive it, and then he went back to his conversation. he he. :D needless to say, we figured it out. but sorry to dissapoint you all, we didn't get to drive it any further than the 10 feet we got before they realized we were in motion.
On the way home we stopped for pizza. And I slept in the overhead compartment again. And that just about concludes our trip to Eilat.