April 22 (Leah's)

 

We got up (too) early today – Spencer woke up at about 6:30am- and we got ready and took the train to the bus station so we could catch a bus to Miztpe Ramon. There were so many young soldiers on their way back to their bases after spending the weekend at home. So we had to “fight” for a spot on the bus. We had to switch buses in Be’er Sheva, which was a push-shove experience to get on the bus. I was basically attached to Spencer because I didn’t want to get pushed out of the way. We made it on! In one piece too. We drove through arid, desert areas until we got to the place where we were going to be staying- Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev Desert. 

A lady helped us find the hostel, which was across the road from where we got dropped off. It’s such a nice place- a taste of home almost. It’s clean, relaxing, peaceful, and comfortable. The owners just got married on Friday, so there were lots of leftovers in the fridge for the guests- lots of yummy, gourmet salads. Also there are lots of leftovers from other guests- CEREAL too!! I was so excited! We went to the supermarket with one of the volunteer-staff also named Spencer to get a few items.

We basically spent the rest of the day/night in the hostel, relaxing and chatting with people. We were pretty tired, and we knew we would be doing hiking the next day so we just wanted to do nothing. We actually got a “offer” from the owners to come and help out for a month since Spencer (the volunteer-staff) is leaving in two weeks and they need some more people. So we spent a lot of the day chatting about it with each other, and I didn’t sleep well because my mind was racing- thinking about that and other things.

We met some people that we planned to go hiking with. The one couple (Astrid and Whim from Belgium) had a rented car so we could drive with them to a cool place to go hiking, and another guy, Thomas, from Germany was also going to come along.  We decided to leave at 6:45am because we wanted to beat the heat, and the couple had to be in Tel Aviv to return the car later on in the day. So off to bed I went- and as I mentioned, it was a pretty unsuccessful sleep!