Chanukah in shorts and a t-shirt

The highlight of my Chanukah experience in Israel was definitely Festigal. "Festigal" is an annual Chanukah commerical performance for children, starring major Israeli music celebrities. I never would have gone had it not been for the girl I babysit for, who asked me to take her. I figured it would be good Hebrew practice, and had no idea I would enjoy it so much. I was very impressed; I truly didn't know Israel was capable of such a high-calibre musical show. What I really loved was the imparting message of the play-within-the play: there are two warring "sides" and at the climax they decide to choose love and peace over continued warfare. They come together saying "my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather was the brother of your grandfather's grandfather's grandfather", and one character even says, "It's just like us and the Arabs." It was so blatant that the mission of the play was to teach children love and peace over hate and war. I was so touched to see that, in a context where it wasn't even necessary to go there. This was simply a Chanukah celebration. But Israelis truly try to take every opportunity to impart messages of peace. I wonder if anywhere in an Arab land such a show would ever take place...

My Chanukah celebration concluded with a trip to the Dead Sea, which was wonderful. It was warm enough to sunbathe in a bathing suit, but the water was very cold. At first we were worried about traveling there in the first place because the rest of the country was experiencing heavy rain, and being that the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, it can suffer from deadly flooding. Especially because you're driving down steep cliffs to get to the Dead Sea, flooding can make rocks fall, which is even scarier. But everything stayed calm and dry, and we had a wonderful, relaxing time.

It's funny that Christmas is in 2 days. It's impossible to know it here. Christmas is just a totally regular day. You wouldn't even know that it exists, except for the fact that Israel gets an influx of visitors now coming on their xmas break. Today was sunny and warm and I went for a run on the beach in shorts and a t-shirt. I can't believe it's December! It doesn't get much better than this :-)