Our Fourth (and final) Week
1/29 - pov lilly
We got off to a late start this morning since we didn’t get back to the school until 3AM. Once we were up, FTA!!
Then we dilly-dallied all day. Cleaning a tank here, cleaning a tank there, mixing fertilizer, brushing seahorses, fixing pools, etc.
The highlight of our day was definitely going over to Liel’s house for dinner! He and his fiancée Yana wanted to cook for us, so we stopped at the grocery store and then went over around 5. First things first, we met the bunnies. One boy named Jazz and a girl named Shanava. They were soooo cute. We got to give them treats and watched them hop around the house. We attempted to help Liel start his cooking, but were quickly shooed away from the kitchen. So instead, we sat on the couch and watched Too Hot to Handle. I had already seen season 4, but Marie was still halfway through the first episode, so that’s where we picked up.
Approximately three episodes later, Yana got home from work and we finally got to meet her! She went to the kitchen to help Liel. Around 8, Liel was wrapping up most of the food. We got up, set the table, and laid all of the food out. I’m not a super big fan of vegetables, as you know, but Liel is vegan, so we had a lot of vegetables. But everything was sooooo good. There was salad, pasta, soy chicken, tofu, bread, and Liel’s special drinks. We sat and chatted for about two hours about everything from SAT tests to the Lancaster farm show to the MIT math department. After dinner, we cleaned up and watched a few more episodes of THTH. By 12:30am, I was falling asleep on the couch. I woke up to what I thought was Marie poking me, only to find one of Liel’s bunnies two inches from my face. Freaky! Once we finished up episode 7, it was time to call it a night. We taxied back to the school and went right to bed.
1/30 - pov marie
FTA!!
We started our day with a quick run to the fish hatchery, where we picked up a bunch of rotifers. Those are little tiny organisms that eat algae and then get fed to the aquariums. Once we got back, we put them into tanks did some counting. It was quite difficult because every tiny little bubble had like 20 rotifers, but unlike cells, they move like crazy. So you count three of them, and then by the time you get to the fourth, the three you've already counted have moved and are now indistinguishable from the giant group.
After a bit of lab cleaning, we went down to the dive shop where the teachers had organized a little going-away party for us. Theey brought figs, nuts, halva (which is a sweet sesame paste kinda like fudge-looking), Arabic coffee, and little notebooks to celebrate our time at Mevo’ot Yam. Carmel, the boat driver, had just come back from a dive and we got to see his super fancy wetsuit. I think I want to get one like it.
Then we did some more work with the 10th graders to wrap up their projects before their big final presentations. Lilly helped the goldfish boys some more making graphs that they understand a bit better while I did calcium tests with another group.
Then we had lunch and spent our afternoon cleaning the lab and mixing fertilizers for the algae. You have to mix a bunch of beautifully colored liquids together so I felt like a witch making a potion. Maybe this is my calling.
At dinner, we ran into Mika, who sat with us and chatted about Marvel. She showed us around some of the dorms on campus and gave us a bit of an insider tour. After she left for her dorm meeting, we both went back and got online for our own meetings. Our spring semester is starting in less than a week, and whether we’re 6000 miles away or not, there’s no stopping it. I had a meeting with her advisor to talk about course registration. Lilly had one with professors for a class that she is TAing. Pretty exhausting and not fun to think about school again, so it was nice to finally go to bed afterwards.
1/31 - pov lilly
Another day, another FTA!!
Today was the rainiest day we’ve had yet. It was absolutely dumping all morning, which meant we spent most of the day inside working on whatever came up. We spent a good amount of time cleaning up the algae room and making new bags of algae, which the seniors will sell as part of their coral business. The floor needed to be cleaned and some old equipment needed to be cleaned and put away.
We also had a brief moment of terror when we found one of the big Blue Hippo Tangs (basically dory from Finding Nemo) stuck in a corner of the big aquarium. Luckily we got it out. To see if it was injured or not, Liel let it go. It just kind of sank, so we went to get a small box to put it in, since it would need to be put in another tank and quarantined until it got better. By the time we got back, it was gone! So we spent the next twenty minutes looking for it, only to find it wedged underneath another rock. Fish really aren’t smart. This time it was a bit more difficult, but we got it out and into a freshly cleaned tank. We watched it swim around for a few minutes, only to see it bumping into walls and not really using its right flipper. It kept coming to the surface of the water and spitting out a little fountain, so in line with its identity crisis, we named it Free Willy, or Willy for short. Liel wanted to give Willy a freshwater treatment, which needed to adjust to the tank temperature before we could do it. So we left Willy to relax and got back to more cleaning. After lunch we made some more fertilizers and then gave Willy his treatment. Hopefully he will look a bit better and stop bumping into things tomorrow!
After we wrapped up at the lab, we headed back to start packing, since we are leaving on Thursday. We had dinner with Mika and Omer, which was takeout from a place called the Portugese. It was soooo good.
2/1 - pov marie
No FTA! This morning, we did not feed the aquariums because we went on a field trip with the other youth village kids. We were supposed to go to the south of Israel for a glamping trip but the weather was really bad so it got cancelled. Instead, Judie and Noga organized a trip to the north.
First stop was Acco, which is an old port city north of Haifa. The weather was pretty awful, so we ate some pastries and had some coffee under a little covered staircase. We then walked through the old ruins that were inhabited by like every ancient empire possible. It was really cool because it was all underground and it was a bunch of tunnels and buildings and stuff.
After that, we walked through the old market. Most of it was closed because it was pouring at this point, but it was still really cute to walk through. It looked like most of the old markets in Israel but there were a lot of fish vendors (basically the only ones open) which was different. We then stopped at a typical tourist store to buy our last souvenirs of the trip - Lilly and I both got little glass pomegranates and glasses.
Once through the market, we landed at the Templar Tunnel. It’s a water canal? (honestly not totally sure… woops). You can walk through it and it’s underground and really short so we had to crouch the whole way. It was really cool. Once we got to the other end, we went up a tiny little staircase that led directly to outside. Sam, Josh, Jessica, Kayla, Lilly and I all went outside and got absolutely whipped by the wind and the rain and the sea water. We were just having fun but then it got really bad so we ran back inside to meet up with the others.
We walked back to the bus along the outer wall and so we were pretty protected until there was a window and then suddenly boom! you got hit in the face by wind and water. The sea was going craAaazy. Let’s just say we were happy to get back in the bus.
Next stop was a youth village, Ramat Hadassah. We had lunch in their dining hall and then we got to have a little tour of their animals. They had emus, peacocks, pigs, donkeys, chickens, birds, guinea pigs, some really cute bunnies and snakes!! I got to hold a baby bunny which was the cutest thing ever and then I held an adorable orange snake that had a lot of energy. It was moving all over the place, just wandering around my torso. We made some pretty intense eye contact - not sure if that meant it was going to eat me or if I am a snake whisperer.
After the farm tour, we sat around and discussed the last month at the youth villages while eating tons of baklava and other types of typical Israeli snacks. Judie got us these Israeli capri suns that were just sugar water with a grape aftertaste. Twas interesting. We also showed our videos (see: post gtl reflection) which was super fun because we got to see what the others did all month!
Once the day was over, we got picked up by Karinne who drove us back to her house. The teachers wanted to do a final dinner with us before we left, which was really sweet. Liel was busy with exams and wedding things :o so he only stopped by for tea, but Rafi, Karinne and her husband, Lilly and I got delicious kebab. It was a great (almost) last dinner in Israel with great company! We’re definitely going to miss the teachers (…and the food…).
After Karinne dropped us back off at the school, we started packing our suitcases :( and then went to bed.
2/2 - pov lilly
FTA for the last time :(
First thing today, we checked on Willy. We hoped he would be doing better, even though we weren’t at the school yesterday, Karine was there to check on him. But Willy was nowhere to be found. Liel messaged Karine and Rafi, with no success. Nobody had any clue where he went. Considering he could barely swim correctly, I don’t think he spontaneously grew legs and walked out of the main aquarium hall, so we checked the floor around his tank. Nothing still. Then we flushed out the tube that connects to the tank he was in. Still nothing. We literally had no clue where he went. He’s definitely a Free Willy now…
After that little side quest, we spent some time straining the new rotifers, making new bags of algae, and cleaning up the lab. It was extra fun because quite a few of the kids that we met over the month came and hung out with us since they were all done with their projects. At 1:30 (or 6:30am EST), I got online to watch Puxsatawney Phil decide if it would be winter or not for the next six weeks. As a Pennsylvania native, I had to tell all of the kids about Groundhog Day and get them invested in it too, so at 1:30 we gathered around my computer and watched the national anthem and a large quantity of fireworks. Around 1:35, I got back online and it turns out I had the time wrong and Phil wouldn’t be out for about another hour, so we didn’t actually get to see him.
At 2 we headed to the mall for our last lunch. If you remember, Liel had taken us to the hummus bar our first week at the village, so we wanted to go back and get it again before we left. I also needed to clear my name from the large bowl of hummus that I didn’t finish last time. So we get there and this time I know my limits. Liel ordered me the kids size instead for the big one, which was absolutely perfect. Hummus, falafel, veggies, French fries, and lemonade. It was awesome. And I finished all of my hummus!!! Then we hit up the spice store, since I needed to get some of these really good mini rice cakes that I tried at Liel’s house on Sunday. Liel translated all of the spices for us and we ended up spending most of the last of our shekels there. A+ stop.
Then we headed back to the village to finish up everything for the afternoon. We fed some more fish, made some fertilizers, and said goodbye to the kids. Omer and Mika came and made sure to give us plenty of hugs (and take plenty of going away selfies)! Mika also made sure that I knew it was going to be winter of the next six weeks according to Phil, but we both decided that we don’t like the cold and are manifesting warmth in Mikhmoret and Boston.
After all the labs were clean and all the fish were fed, we worked a little bit on painting a door with the kids’ company’s logo. We made the outline of the name Aqua Coral and filled it in a little, but it still needs to be finished at some point. Then we grabbed Liel and watched our last sunset. It was pretty windy, cloudy, and the seas were still rough after the storm, but it was super nice. We read all of our best out of context quotes (the most inspirational of which was “every time you fart you make a change in the world” - liel), talked about Liel’s upcoming wedding, and manifested good energy for Marie and I’s upcoming semester.
After sunset, we met up with Sam, Josh, Kayla, and Jessica, who had all come over for dinner at the village. Except the village doesn’t do dinner on Thursday nights because all of the kids go home, so we actually just ended up taking the bus to the mall and going to BBB, which is a super good burger place. At the end of dinner, we hear this loud, cheery song start playing, and a waiter comes over with a plate of pastry ice-cream sandwiches with sparklers on them and sets it down on the table while the other waiters all clap. Marie and I look at each other so confused, because it wasn’t anyone’s birthday. Turns out they just gave the birthday dessert to the wrong table, but they let us keep it anyway. It was delicious.
Then we headed back to the youth village to finish packing. Kayla and Jessica stayed over with us so they could get a ride to the airport, so we had a big sleepover! But before we went to bed, Marie and I went to the lab one last time, partly to tape up some containers for the flight, partly to return the bowls Karine had let us borrow, partly to check and make sure that we didn’t forget anything, but mostly to be there one last time. We are really going to miss hanging out there every day with Liel. Too many failed jumping photos later, we headed to bed for our flight in the morning.
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