Well, since everyone else is posting week status, I may as well join in. Mine’s been pretty
exciting so far, with the partial down note that my great-uncle passed away last night.
I say partial because it was probably in the best of possible ways; (well, apart from being
shot in bed at 98 by a jealous husband – and knowing him, he would have probably found
that a pretty good way. For those of you who have heard the stories, he’s the one whose
sister gave him a bike helmet for his 80th birthday, and he thought it was so cool that he
immediately put it on and biked 40km through Israeli traffic to show his nephew; he’s
also the one with the huge scrapbook of pictures of girlfriends) he was very healthy until
a few months ago, then suddenly everything happened at once. So his death was both
swift and an end to suffering, and it’s for the best. Funeral tonight.
Apart from that: Trip has been going very well so far. Got to see lots of people that
I’ve been wanting to, got to travel in all sorts of odd parts of the country (random note: There’s
a not-bad coffee house called Coffee Annan – and the pun is even worse in Hebrew, BTW – on
a tall mountain overlooking the Syrian border. It’s kinda weird, especially because the border
is visible – the ground changes from a rich brown (on the Israeli side) to a sort of
gray (on the Syrian side). I have no idea what they’re doing to the ground to make it look that
way, but it doesn’t look particularly arable. The coffee house itself is right next to an old IDF
bunker, which is still open as a sort of museum; kinda in a loose sense of the word, though.
The machine-guns are all still there (but completely rusted; kids play with them) and there are
even sheets still on the beds in the bunker. The border area is actually surprisingly calm;
basically both Israel and Syria are more or less satisfied with the status quo, at least for now,
and so in the far north people are actually much more relaxed than in the center.
I’ll save the detailed stories for when I get back – but there are some good ones, including a
wedding and getting to visit an archaeological site in Jerusalem that isn’t open to the public.
*hug* to everyone!
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
I miss you! I’m glad you’re keeping in touch. Stay safe!
It sounds awesome! If that archaeological site is the same one you mentioned to me before, you are definitely going to have to tell me about it! Good to hear you are having such a good time.
*ears perking up* archaeological site? not open to the public? I want a FULL report! and I’ll tell you about the conversations I had with some very excited water molecules this weekend.