Episode 09: "The O Zone, Pt. 1" (+)

So let's talk about this guy Oren for a second:

He's one of the best people you will ever meet.

I've mentioned him a couple times in blogs past, but it would be a shame not to divulge more about just how cool this young man is. I met him during my first trip to the Old City and it's been gravy getting to know him from there. His warm-heartedness, consideration, hilariousness and compassion are shining facets of his personality, and if you hang around him long enough and you'll start to realize that you're not the only one who loves the guy; he's got a quality that attracts just about everyone. So you can imagine being in his company for over two weeks for Passover break wasn't too much of a chore. My time in The Oren Zone was well, well spent.

The break started off with the Sea-to-Sea Hike, which turned out to be my final OSA trip ever. And it was a hell of a finale to a long line of great hikes the madrichim provided for us. Noa, the miss behind the hiking mayhem this year, divided us into "Survivor" groups that would arbitrarily compete against each other for a certain prize at the end of the hike. My team, which included Oren, was named "Givati", and we grew close pretty quick. This is the group:

Hellbent on glory.

Nati, Erica, Becca, me, Ari, Ashley, Zack, Sharon, and Oren.

We won a trivia challenge against other teams, lost at an arm-wrestling challenge (the other group cheated!) and won the best challenge of all: singing an original song. Ashley and I came up with the lyrics, which we sang to the tune of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." It killed at the final challenge, had plenty of heart, and won us the whole contest. It was icing on the cake to a really incredible weekend.

And speaking of the cake itself, the hike was a challenging, worthwhile experience. After a light hike the first day and a night spent at a semi-snazzy hotel, the real work began. Our guide, Guy (not the other Guy guide from first semester), kept us walking at a brisk pace. The scenery was always changing and always, always beautiful. The terrain went from rocky to grassy to hilly to woodsy to rocky again, springing up surprises like cows and creeks and pools and even a group of Druze women cooking for their husbands. On the first night of camp, we had a hilarious encounter with a centipede, ate dinner by the fire, and took turns watching over the camp site at night. The second night was a lot of the same, except Oren and I had a great conversation with a couple of people named Alex and Jenny during our night shift. A couple spectacular detours in our trip included bathing in a refereshing mikvah (a cleansing pool), as well as repelling, which I'd never done before.

Yes.

Anyway, finally reaching the end was amazing. The whole hike was a trip going east from the Mediterranean Sea and building up to arriving at the Sea of Galilee, and we reached the end in style. Noa had set up a visit to a pool right on the edge of the Galilee along with a barbeque, so we finished our hard, hot hike with full bellies and a refreshing dip in a cooled pool. Such a fantastic trip. Other than hiking and tent-ing it with Oren and other close friends, I got to know a bunch of good people, like Courtney, Jessica, Harry, Scott, Ben, Zack, Sharon, Allen and others.

The day after getting home, I bounced out to the city of Sderot, an Israeli city right on the edge of the Gaza Strip. It's famous for being bombed regularly by Arab militants. The city is shelled so often that their bus stations double as concrete bomb shelters, and people are regularly hurt or even killed by the routine rain of kasam rockets.

The Sderot police station.

And only a fraction of the total number of rockets

fired on upon the city along the station's walls.

As a group, led by the Man with the Plan, Rafi, we headed over to Lev Achad ("One Heart"), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping out the city. Through the organization, we got a job for the day at Sderot's community kitchen. At first we organized and gathered good fruit, but soon we were given bigger jobs. Since it was Passover, and half (I think) of the city's citizens were depending on the government for food, we had the privilege of putting together food packages to give out to waiting people. It became a madhouse as the crowd began to build outside of the center, anxious for the food they would be bringing home to their families.

I have no idea how Nicky caught me on camera smiling in all that chaos.

Because this is what it was like outside.

And the need for Passover food was no joke out there.

The next day, I went out with Val and Oren to Ein Gedi, a hiking spot near the Dead Sea known to be where David fled from Saul in the Good Ole Days. The spot is hot for its incredible waterfalls and pools in the middle of a dusty old desert, and hiking it out there was worth all the hype. At first we came upon some picture-perfect pools that were heavily crowded, so we brushed by those in hopes of finding something better, although not without stopping to take some of it in.

But in trying to find a more promising trail, we had a long trek ahead with a hot sun, rocky desert terrain and time running out before the trail closed for the day. Pressing onward, thirsty, tired and barely oriented for a concrete direction, a happy ending to the day wasn't necessarily a given. But when we finally reached the new trail, and were given some helpful advice by the nice guy selling tickets there, things started to turn around. Here's how:

And even further down the trail, we were able to find the "hidden" waterfall we'd been gunning for all day. It took some more desert walking, but we were so refreshed and relieved it really was part of a fun ride.

The waterfall at the end of the journey.

Reaping our reward.

We even had a fantastic time on the way back, trekking a course alongside a river flowing back from the final waterfall. The scenery was relentlessly beautiful and our spirits were at their peak. To top things all off, we were able to pull off a good deed for someone. A father and son were walking just ahead of us at one point, when a wind blew the a cap off the son's head and down a steep rock face. When the father saw that we felt bad for them, he said losing the hat was no problem, and kept walking. After they left us, Oren said that we should get it back, Val agreed, and I started climbing down the rock face. It was deja vu from my fine example of rock climbing in Petra, but I got through it. When the three of us ran and returned the hat to the father, his face lit up. He touched my cheek with his hand in thanks, beaming. The three of us felt pretty damn good.

We got home satisfied with our day and ready for the approaching Passover weekend, which Oren turned into sheer gold for me. To be continued and all that. But the short version is that he came through big time, and showed me--even more definitively--what a great friend he really is.

Shalom,

Eric