November 15, 2013

Today was the first day of our school trip weekend in Eilat! It was five or six hour drive to get down there. We left the dorms at school at 7am and didn't get there until 3:30 or so. We did have a few stops along the way though. It was really cool to drive through the Negev desert. I literally felt like I was right in the desert because we were basically on a dirt road winding through the red and orange and white and black desert mountains.

 The first place we stopped was the Hebrew Israelites community in Demona. It was about halfway between Tel Aviv and Eilat. This kibbutz village was probably the weirdest thing I have ever seen or heard of in my life. The people that live there are all African Americans that came to Israel, following the beliefs and rules of the Torah. They do not consider themselves to be religious at all or have any religious affiliation. Their customs and beliefs are very strange. For example, they are all vegans and fast one day a week and are not allowed to eat after sunset everyday and once a year they have to eat only raw food for a week. THey are also forced to exercise everyday and work in the mountains. They do these things and follow these rules because this was what they interpreted the Torah and Bible telling them to do. The Hebrew Israelites also do not believe in higher education. They think that everyone should be equal and make the same amount of money, so nobody needs to go on to higher education. They also think that because of higher education, bad things have happened. The weirdest custom, to me, out of everything they believed in and thought and did, was their practice of polygamy (the men are allowed to have multiple wives). The guy that was showing us around this kibbutz and telling us all about it claimed that he has five wives and at the time twenty one children. This idea and concept just freaked me out. Apparently this kibbutz only has about 500 people living in it, and if all of the men have four or five or more wives, there must be a lot of incest. I thought that this was disgusting and I still do not believe that all of the women are happy and ok with their husbands marrying their all of their friends. EEWWW! I was ready and happy to get out of this weird kibbutz. After leaving this kibbutz in Demona, we drove past the israeli nuclear power plant. The next stop we made on our way to Eilat was at Yotveta; we stopped here for lunch.  This was the chocolate milk factory and Israel's biggest dairy farm. At this point we were about thirty minutes away form Eilat.

We finally made it to Eilat and I was so happy to be there. I was in Eilat at the beginning of October and it was so much fun so I was excited to be back! Once we got to our hostel and checked in and got our rooms, we had a few hours to relax and kinda explore before dinner. I called my dad and told him about the day and then took a nice nap. Then it was dinner time, but the food was terrible. I have to admit, I think it was worse than the food that was served at DU's dining halls (which were gross). Anyway, I made it through dinner and it was time to go over to the marina and start our night off! We had a party boat waiting for us in the marina. it was a big sailboat and we were on the boat for a few hours. It was fun to go into the Red Sea and cruise around, listening to fun music and having a great time. There was a fat belly dancer on the boat which was very interesting. HAHA! She was big and not wearing a lot of clothes and belly dancing. She was also trying to get everyone involved and dancing with her, which did not really work out too well. Other than the weird belly dancer, the party boat was a lot of fun. Paige and Alona and I net some new friends and were hanging out with them all night. Every though we started the day with a long bus ride and touring a weird kibbutz, the end of the night ended really well!