So my 15 minutes of talking in amiyya was awful. This is because I was in a group of 3 and my group procrastinated A LOT! Me and the other girl, Danielle had done several interviews and knew what we wanted to say basically so we didn't think it would be a big deal. The boy - Tim - we were with (love him as a person but I hated him for this project!) He hadn't come with us to a single interview or paid attention when we interviewed his Jordanian roommate, so he had no idea what he wanted to say or any of the words to say it. We started recording at 10pm, and expected to take about 2 hours to do it because we only had to talk for 15 minutes each plus a little mess up time and distractions and whatnot. Tim went first because we thought he could introduce the topic and take up some speaking time with easy babble. It took him 2 hours to say 10 minutes worth of Arabic. About 6 of those minutes I fed him because I was tired and sick of waiting and wanted to do my part and go to sleep (we had our final exam the next day). I was pretty upset. After he finally finished, I didn't even care about mine really and just talked about what I needed and finished. Mine sounded real though, like I was talking to someone as opposed to being fed lines. My teachers were happy with it in the end.
As for my OPI, I got Intermediate Mid which I am kind of upset about because all of us in my class got the same level and we were not all at the same level, so it bothered me and I don't know how well I trust this interview tactic.
After my test, we had one last night to pack everything up and say goodbye. The entire program went out to dinner and we said goodbye to our teachers and some of the kids (it was very sad). We had one last party and got pretty drunk on my rooftop which was a lot of fun. I stayed up all night and me, Danielle, and our friend Jessie left at 6am to go to Israel!!!!
The taxi driver didn't know where the border was in the north and kept insisting he drove us to Amman, (not what we wanted!) and we finally got to the correct border, but it was closed for another hour because it was Friday. Personally, I think they should have said that on the website where it listed the times the border would be open! We took a second, special border cab to the border once it opened, went through security, got our exit papers in order, took the border crossing bus to the Isreali side, went through security again, and found a taxi to Tel Aviv. We were going to go to Beit She'an and catch a bus there, but the taxi driver gave us a really good deal (350NIS) to go straight to Tel Aviv. However, once we got there we got in a fight because he demanded 450NIS from us and a whole bunch of people got involved. we ended up giving him 320NIS and 50JD which came to about 420NIS which pissed us all off but at that point we just wanted him to go away.
Our hostel was the Florentine Hostel, and looked like it was in the middle of nowhere but was actually super awesome. It was a block or two away from a bunch of bars, about 6 blocks from Jaffa, and close to the beach too. The people there were really nice and relaxed, and there were tons of comfy chairs and hammocks and all sorts of good things. It was also under construction because they were expanding, so every day there was a new and exciting thing being installed like a couch or a mirror or anything! The first day, we walked around and shopped a little, and took a nap on the grass by the ocean. We met up with our friend Rob who had been in the CET program with us and we went out to dinner. The next day the four of us went to the beach and spent a while there, then showered and went to Italian food. We planned on going out but when we went back to our hostel, we met 3 really cool Dutch boys and talked with them until about 3am. The third day was sunday and we went to a cute breakfast place one of the Hostel guys told us about. We got SOOOO MUCH FOOOD accidentally! it was soo delicious tho and we got to take a lot back and have it for breakfast the next day. After that, us three girls invited one of the Dutch boys, Jimmy to come with us to the Diaspora Museum. It was a very fun day, and we rented bikes for a day. Tel Aviv has a city bike rental where you rent a bike as many times in one day as long as its only out for 30 minutes at a time. So we biked from bike stop to bike stop and changed bikes every 30 or so minutes. We went out to dinner and then went out with some other people from our hostel. Some of us ended up at a bar until around 5 when we decided to go swimming and went to the beach. we walked home around 6:30 am!
Later that morning, after sleeping for a few hours, we made the treck to Jerusalem in a Sherut (a large shared taxi) and checked in at the Abraham hostel. We had loved the Florentine Hostel, but this one was fine too. It was much larger. We got there around 7:30 and met up with Rob again and went out to dinner. The next day, we got up early and went to the Old City for a terrible free tour! We left half way through because it was soooo bad!!! We explored on our own (I remembered some stuff, and my Hebrew and our Arabic skills really helped). We bought some gifts, and then went to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum) which was really depressing. Then we went to the shook (market) in the new city which has lots of veggies and food and bought some food to cook (I didn't cook, the other girls did) It was happy hour at the bar in the hostel, and it was 2 1/2L glasses of beer for 25NIS so i had a liter of beer! it was A LOT! luckily I walked a lot that day! We met some people and played an Olympics quizz game and came in second! That night we went out with some friends we had met in Tel Aviv and one boy from our CET program in Jordan. We went to bed around 4 and I was up at 9 to pack up and get ready to go. I had to say goodbye to Danielle which was super sad because I love her a lot and we got super close on our trip. But I still had Jessie and we went shopping a little before heading over to Tel Aviv.
Jessie's friend's cousin Tal lives in Tel Aviv and he was super nice and picked us up from the bus station in Tel Aviv. He took us to Herzlia for dinner and is letting us stay at his house until 1am when we have to go to the Airport. Lucky for us, he works at the airport and his shift is at 3 so he is driving us!!!! Thats all for now, I am gonna try to sleep for an hour or so before we gotta go!
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