In the guest house, I was once again reunited with my buddies Yair and Jake. Finally, I was able to keep tabs on them the way buddies in a buddy system should.

Some day we went on a hike through Red Canyon. It was a big canyon that had a very odd reddish color to some of the rock walls. Very pretty and surreal at times. The coolest thing was that while down in the bottom of the canyon, we were actually in a spot that I used to have as the background to my computer many years ago. I had no idea that it was even in Israel. I think I'd lifted it from National Geographic or something. Very cool. It was beautiful down there with the wavy walls.

Then we went snorkeling in the Red Sea. The Red Sea was gorgeous, by far the prettiest of all the waters we saw in Israel. The water was pristine, perfectly clear and an aqua blue color normally only seen in pictures. There was a tiny little reef very close to the shore, so we rented snorkels and masks from some little place, didn't even use fins, and walked out to the edges of these docks, ready to get into the water.

When we get out to the edge and we're about to hop in, we see closer up that there are millions of jellyfish swimming all around in the water. They assured us that these weren't stinging jellyfish, to which I was like, "Yeah, right." But eventually they picked a couple up to prove it, and plenty of other people were swimming in there, so I very cautiously entered the water, going through all sorts of contortions and effort to avoid any touch of the jellyfish, although it was completely futile. Eventually, I'd accidentally touched them enough that I stopped being as afraid of them, and felt a few of them on purpose. They feel exactly like you'd expect them to feel. I even held one in my hand. Nevertheless, the entire time snorkeling, all I could really pay attention to were the jellyfish, and they completely freaked me out the entire time. But, my first time snorkeling at a reef, albeit a tiny and not that interesting one. I wish Alex would post his pictures, because he had an underwater camera. But here are mine:

I think it was that night that we went out partying. We had saved a couple bottles of wine from the last Shabbat, and had purchased some cheap ass vodka. Oh yeah, that's something I don't think I've mentioned. The cheap vodka there makes our cheap vodka look like Grey Goose prices. There a 750mL bottle of Keglevich (which was better than Country Club or Taaka) was about $3. Yeah, that cheap. Anyway, I was already pretty damn drunk when we got to the club. I drank more at the club, you know how it goes. The band at the club was very odd. Their lead singer looked like Prince, and they played a whole lot of Guns And Roses covers. But, very surprisingly, they finished their set with "Killing In The Name Of" by Rage Against The Machine. Not exactly a party-themed song. They were good, though, and I was into it.

At some point we left the club, for reasons that had something to do with lots of people wanting to hook up with each other. Some people went to McDonald's and I ended up like pressing my face up against one of the McDonald's windows making crazy faces and mooning them for like twenty minutes till some security guard came out and we ran. Then we went to some other area of bars and I forgot who, but someone bet me like $2 that I wouldn't go ask some girls something, and of course I did and got $2. Then we went to a pizza place, and when we walked in, who did we see there but Alex and Michelle (Yair's at-this-point-ex-girlfriend). They were trying to have a serious conversation (or at least Michelle was), so me, Gary, Amy, and maybe one or two other people sat at the table behind Michelle (so that Alex was facing us). We made faces at him to make him keep laughing while she was trying to tell some story. It was great. Sorry, Michelle. She was a really hot, sweet girl, and Yair is a dog.

These are ridiculous pictures taken by others that night, including some beautiful ones of me dancing and being danced on, especially by Alyssa, who was hot and ridiculous.

The next day was our last day in Israel. We hiked through some part of Ein Gedi that was cool and had some strange little red dragonfly thing.

The first picture here is one Kendra took of a crater called Hamachtesh Hagadol we visited while on our way back to Tel Aviv for our flight out. I didn't have any trouble with security when leaving the country. I bought some chocolates duty-free to send to Bridget with the satchel thingy I got her earlier in the trip. Couldn't find anything for my brother. The whole trip home was entirely uneventful (except that, once home, I had lunch at Wright's Gourmet, whose sandwiches would be heavenly if there were any such thing).

And that concludes the formal recaps of the Israel trip. I will do two more long posts at some points: One of interest only to Bus 428 people, consisting mostly of redundant pictures of people from our bus; and one set of glorious pictures of Gary. It takes time to perfect Gary pictures, so everyone will have to be patient if they're waiting for them.