today i ate a whole pomello in less than 3 minutes, and tomorrow i plan to do the same.

At just under 60 years old, Israel is a young nation of people struggling to reach a consensus on a joint identity for themselves: Jewish or democratic, secular or ultra-relig, cologne bath or au-natural? But one thing that characterizes nearly all Israelis is the wholehearted disinclination toward walking.
This trait is especially evident in the North. You see, Qiryat Shemona is the type of town where drivers stop for you when you step into a crosswalk (unlike my former homes in Be’er Sheva and Baltimore); it’s not because they think you’re about to cross the street, but instead so that they can offer you a ride somewhere.
“Trumpeldor Street? You’ll never make it, it’s much too far.”
“But it’s just three more blocks!”
“I’ll drive you.”
True story. Teachers, students, and random citizens at bus stops alike, unite in their astonishment over my 30-minute foot commute to and from school every day. They simply can’t understand why someone would actually want to walk when the temperature reaches the ungodly low of 15 degrees Celsius (almost 60 Fahrenheit if my calculations are correct). And although I may be Israeli by blood, I have still been unsuccessful in my previous three attempts to obtain legal documentation, thus the time has not yet come for me to truly submit to my idle roots. So last weekend, my roommate and I chose to ignore the local norms and find a new way of entertaining ourselves during the lockdown hours of Shabbat, which was to walk from our apartment to Lebanon. Why would we want to do this, you might ask? The answer is quite simple, really. To say we could.
While half of my readers (Mom) are familiar with the geography here, the other half (Max) may need a little explanation in order to fully understand the significance of our trek. The area around Qiryat Shemona is kind of like a little triangle on top of the Upper Galilee and due west of the Golan Heights. Does that make any sense? Probably not. If I stand outside my apartment and look West, I can see Lebanon just over the hill. The northern-most town in Israel, called Metulla, is six kilometers North of Qiryat Shemona, and Lebanon kind of surrounds it and the highway leading up to it. To the East is more Lebanon and then the Golan Heights, and Syria is evidently farther off in the distance. The Hula Valley is somewhere around that area as well. Hence the triangle comparison, but I realize that this makes no sense to anyone who doesn’t have access to the intricate workings of my impenetrable mind.
Anyway. At the fair hour of eleven we embarked on our journey with backpacks full of fresh fruit, filtered water, and sunscreen. To counteract the inherently un-Israeli act of actually walking somewhere, we decided to approach our pursuit in an especially Israeli way: that is, we neglected to plan a route or even investigate possible trails, instead assuming that because Lebanon is straight down the main highway anyway, we would somehow manage to find our destination. Eight kilometers away, at the Northern-most tip of Israel is something called “The Good Fence,” which has been coined as such because in comparison to borders between our dearest Jewish state and Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, it has been relatively “good” to us. I’ve already been to said fence twice before, and I assure you that it is not unlike something you might find on a kindergarten playground or between friendly neighbors in a typical American suburb; there are, however, several Israeli soldiers guarding the door at all times, and a vast, grassy valley separates the fence and the closest Lebanese village. Our goal was to march our way to the border, take a picture with the guards, and return to the City of Eight in one piece.
So, back to finding a trail. We walked along the side of the highway for several minutes, and despite it being Shabbat in a 98% Jewish area, there were more cars on the road than we had anticipated, disrupting our conversation and blowing my mane all over the place. I spotted a dirt path off to the right, and after carefully deliberating over its possible direction for a few seconds, we headed off on our new course.
We trudged through orchards of olive trees, grape vines, and onions on Kibbutz Yuval, pretending we had business hiking through private land and meeting looks of bewilderment from farmers with our most cordial grins that proclaimed “we’re American, we can do whatever we want.” Our trail snaked its way through that kibbutz and maybe another moshav, somewhat following the same route as the main highway off to the left, so we weren’t worried we’d end up in Syria or anything: Lebanon was just past the town and over the hill.
Finally our trail forked in two directions: one led to a canyon separating the farm from the highway, and the other to the same canyon in between us and the town of Metulla. In other words, we were stuck. I figured there had to be a way around this nonsense so we continued down the path to the right, hoping maybe the canyon was merely an illusion and that there might be another way to the border, as Elise held back a few paces while calmly alerting me to the fact that we were definitely lost. We walked until we reached a giant electric fence with all kinds of barbed wire wrapped around the top, with a sign that read “UN border patrol.” One UN soldier was positioned at the top of a white lookout tower with his binoculars zeroed in on us, while another was making some bizarre hand motions to him from another building about 20 meters away. It was then that we realized that although a perilous ravine stood between us and the Good Fence, we had instead stumbled upon the UN buffer zone, which you don’t need me to tell you is decidedly not anticlimactic, but rather, remarkably cooler.
The first question on all of your minds is undoubtedly, what is the UN buffer zone actually buffering? As I’ve already described, on our side of the fence was a hippie commune, but what dangerous terrorists resided on the other side? All I could see was unoccupied, desolate prairie for miles. Supposedly there were tanks and stuff all up in these fields a mere six months ago, but I’m happy to see that our armored comrades are still doing their job to protect us (and, as it appears, stare at us with binoculars). We ate our lunch there and pretended we didn’t mind the hostile glares from the troops, and finally returned home after four exhilarating hours of scouring the land. So now when I say that I can literally walk to Lebanon from my apartment, you know I speak the truth. Awesome.

Oh, and the biggest news of the moment is that I will be living about a half-hour from Eilat on Kibbutz Ketura from mid-March until the end of May. Three main points:
1. I will have the best tan EVER, and probably also a little skin cancer.
2. I’m gonna be queen of the dining hall, which is to be my super sweet job assignment!
3. Incidentally, I will probably also be queen of all the kibbutz volunteers, who happen to be 18- and 19-year-olds spending their gap year after high school in the holy land. Dude, I DON’T like younger guys, THEY like me! It’s not fair!
More details to come as they unfold.