Go Golan

After spending a lovely Shabbat with good friends from my 2003 trip to Honduras, I was back in Tel-A for my last week of work.
I finished up my project on comparative domestic intelligence powers, and had some cake. Everyone at the office was super nice as I said goodbye, and it was all in all a pleasant resolution (for some reason I almost typed "it was all in all a peasant revolution," which I think says a lot about the subliminal associations I've formed regarding my office). As soon as I ducked-out with that, it was onwards and upwards for a three-day trip to the Golan, Israel's Northsideeeee.

Close followers of the blog will remember the time I tried to go to Jordan and ended up in Sinai, Egypt. Even more unexpected, the beach I landed on in Sinai had a bevy of homeys I had meet the week before at a Kibbutz in Southern Israel ("Ketura"). It was one of these fine people, Noah, who invited me to go with him and two other friends to explore the Israeli North.

All I can say is that it was some of the most fun I've had since High School. It was basically a road trip with three Torontonians that involved poorly-planned camping (tents but not sleeping bags), spontaneous hiking, and stopping for fruit and falafel at places I've never been before. One such place was a Druze town called Majdal Shams. There we went to a Druze "holy site" (that's all the specificity the English sign provided) and slept out under the stars. We swam in the Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee, made some campfires, went to the Israeli-Lebanon border, the Israeli-Syrian border, and climbed a hill that took us to the highest point in all of Israel.

We went to the Arab town of Acco, and drove through Hafia. Which reminds me: though I've jumbled the chronology, I also met up with an Israeli Professor of Civil Rights law at Haifa University who is a really cool guy. He took me to his favorite falafel stand, we did a little walking tour of Haifa, and talked about Tupac. I even spit a Warmbodys verse for him. The whole thing was tight. Haifa also has the Ba'hai gardens, which are beautiful, and which are the second-holiest cite for the Ba'hai. The breadth, immensity, and range of spiritual communities that are historically invested in this land is startling.

Ok, I'm gettin warmed-up now.