Beach party!
Apparently, the student council here has a small budget to keep the students happy. This includes various forms of entertainment like weekend movies, and the occasional barbecue. It also seems to pay for an occasional trip to the beach. Yesterday, about 30 of us piled into a bus and headed over to the Mediterranean for an afternoon on the beach. It was an interesting experience. We went to a place called Nizzanim, which is a reserve somewhere between Tel Aviv and Gaza (I think, the maps are all in Hebrew). It is quite an interesting place, and includes a fair stretch of semi-stable dunes (dunes held in place by some shrubs), which makes it biologically interesting. It also has a nice beach, which makes it... well, fun. It had some good beach additions - showers, toilets, changing rooms, shade cloths, volleyball nets.
The weather was great, except for the wind. You know how Hurricane Francis slowed down right before hitting Florida - well I think I figured out where all that wind went. It made things interesting. On the good side, it made for some nice waves. Good fun to play in, but no power. It's nice when you can be in 3-4 foot waves, and still stand without trouble. There was some body surfing, but not much, mostly just playing.
There were several downsides to the wind, though. It made throwing the frisbee a challenge, especially for those who had never thrown one before. It also did interesting things to our food. The student council provided us food, soft drinks and a fair bit of beer. Imagine that - university funds for beer! The wind acted as an extra condiment, so we had, pita with sand, hummus with sand, salad with sand, chips with sand, beer with sand, water with sand, and a little sand on the side. It was comical watching people trying to chew without grinding their teeth to nubs.
The wind helped make an interesting volleyball game more interesting. It was a bit like trying to play with someone on a moving vehicle - when the ball went up, it also went downwind, no matter which way you hit it. We compensated by making the court about 3 meters deep on each side of the net. Sort of like playing a whole game inside the 10 foot line of indoor volleyball. The net also contributed to the adventure. One side consistently fell down, so we had to re-dig the hole for the pole every few points. Digging was easy - it's just sand after all - but keeping the bloody thing upright was a challenge. We even had an audience of sorts. A couple decided to have a romantic interlude about 2 feet ouside our out of bounds line (fortunately for them on the upwind side).
It wouldn't be a cross country trip in Israel without talking about the military. (Okay, I'll point out here that the 'cross country trip took less than 2 hours). First, we had an armed guard on our bus. Or at least we had a teenage girl with a loaded uzi. I'm sure she was official and trained by the military, but she looked like she was 15. I suppose if you're an armed guard, doing if for a group going to spend several hours on the beach would be a good way to go. Along the way to the beach, we passed an armed convoy moving through the desert parallel to the highway. I suspect that it was the same armored column that you may have heard about being involved in a skirmish in Gaza. This is a very small country. We were a safe distance north of Gaza, but that's probably only about 40 km north. There were enough military aircraft in the air while we were on the beach that we thought something might be going on, and there was. 7 dead, I think. Weird country.
The weather was great, except for the wind. You know how Hurricane Francis slowed down right before hitting Florida - well I think I figured out where all that wind went. It made things interesting. On the good side, it made for some nice waves. Good fun to play in, but no power. It's nice when you can be in 3-4 foot waves, and still stand without trouble. There was some body surfing, but not much, mostly just playing.
There were several downsides to the wind, though. It made throwing the frisbee a challenge, especially for those who had never thrown one before. It also did interesting things to our food. The student council provided us food, soft drinks and a fair bit of beer. Imagine that - university funds for beer! The wind acted as an extra condiment, so we had, pita with sand, hummus with sand, salad with sand, chips with sand, beer with sand, water with sand, and a little sand on the side. It was comical watching people trying to chew without grinding their teeth to nubs.
The wind helped make an interesting volleyball game more interesting. It was a bit like trying to play with someone on a moving vehicle - when the ball went up, it also went downwind, no matter which way you hit it. We compensated by making the court about 3 meters deep on each side of the net. Sort of like playing a whole game inside the 10 foot line of indoor volleyball. The net also contributed to the adventure. One side consistently fell down, so we had to re-dig the hole for the pole every few points. Digging was easy - it's just sand after all - but keeping the bloody thing upright was a challenge. We even had an audience of sorts. A couple decided to have a romantic interlude about 2 feet ouside our out of bounds line (fortunately for them on the upwind side).
It wouldn't be a cross country trip in Israel without talking about the military. (Okay, I'll point out here that the 'cross country trip took less than 2 hours). First, we had an armed guard on our bus. Or at least we had a teenage girl with a loaded uzi. I'm sure she was official and trained by the military, but she looked like she was 15. I suppose if you're an armed guard, doing if for a group going to spend several hours on the beach would be a good way to go. Along the way to the beach, we passed an armed convoy moving through the desert parallel to the highway. I suspect that it was the same armored column that you may have heard about being involved in a skirmish in Gaza. This is a very small country. We were a safe distance north of Gaza, but that's probably only about 40 km north. There were enough military aircraft in the air while we were on the beach that we thought something might be going on, and there was. 7 dead, I think. Weird country.
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