Mid-day…on the bus…heading somewhere.

We’ve just got out of the cactus farm and Devin has nearly lost his sunglasses again. He’s brought an expensive pair of Persol sunglasses that he has been nervously worrying about since day one–what a mistake. He’s left them in my room before, and he’s dropped them several times already.  They’re already a little crooked, and Libat made him try to fix them — making them even more crooked.

At the cactus farm I decided to try some cactus, and it really tasted like shit. One exception being one of the longer looking fruits resembling a toblerone. That was was decent, especially with the sauce she had out.

The last few days have been a crazy dramatic whirlwind, so let’s just start from the beginning. After our time in Haifa, we moved on down to Tel Aviv, where we would get to have our first offical ‘night out’. All 40 of us were out and ready to party, the counselors and our armed guardian angel was with us too. I was dancing on the bar of this place called Shooters and we were all really having a rowdy time. The problem was, the trip organizers wanted us to walk back at 12.45 AM and go to sleep. But most of us had other plans–including our counselors.

We all met at the rendezvous spot in front of the bar and did the count off. Then begun the walk to the hotel and subsequent exile back up to our rooms. Our counsellors said goodnight with a bit of a wink, and we parted ways.

Five minutes later we all went back down to the lobby and met outside the hotel, all 38 out of 40 participants. We didn’t know how to get this huge group to the club, so we spent a few minutes debating this in front of the hotel, raising suspicion. We decided to just hoof it, a huge mob of young American Jews walking through the streets of Tel Aviv.

There was so many of us that we had Omer utilize his Hebrew speaking skills to get us through the line right away. It turns out we all would have had to pay 30 Shekel cover to get in, so all us guys looked at each other and without saying much decided that we might as well buy a table. I was impressed at how with such a huge group we all were on the same wavelength–this would be reinforced throughout the trip. We got the table and two bottles of vodka for 1500 Shekels. It was about 1 AM at this point.

We had a nice table right by the sea, and the surf was crashing up on the rocks, sending up a nice sea breeze. You could hear the sound of the waves crashing over the music. It was the perfect vibe. 

I never went on the dance floor, I just chilled and talked to homies. Our counselors were there too, breaking the rules with us but not drinking. They knew they couldn’t stop us, so they came with us to make sure we stayed safe. Great vibes and energy all around.

Someone brought up that one of the girls was at the table next to ours, flirting with and then making out with some guy from LA. No one else knew those people, but we decided that she’s a big girl and can make her own decisions. The group collectively relaxed and stopped worrying about her.

We bought a third bottle for 700 shekels, which was probably overkill. Some people had already left, but there was still about 15 of us around. We all decided to leave around 04.00. The ocean was crashing around us, that warm salty Mediterranean. Might as well go skinny dipping, right?

Omer led the charge, and we all left to walk to the beach–conveniently right beside CLARA. It was me, Devin, Tanya, Merrill, Omer, Omri, Mackenzie, Andrew, Galea, Zach, and Abbey.

The beach was such that there was the sand and the water and then some piles of chairs stacked up.  We left all our belongings and clothes by the chairs.  Andrew sat by our stuff to guard from thieves.  I just had on my compression shorts as I ran up into the water.

Skinny dipping was incredible.  It was me, Devin, Omer, Omri, Hilly, Mackenzie, Kayla and some others I forget in the water.  It was so warm, yet so dark out.  So unexpected for me to feel sea water at night and have it not be freezing cold. Looks like I’m not in North America anymore.

We swam around and splashed, yelled, and had a good time for about 20-30 minutes.  It’s hard to say exactly what we did in the water, we were just drunk and merry. It was a bit of a bonding experience, and some of us guys noticed that some of the girls were in pretty damn good shape–which was unexpected for some reason.  But like the Fedex Arrow, we couldn’t un-see what we had seen.

After we all got out, tragedy struck. Despite Andrew watching our bags, two girls purses were stolen. Kayla and Merrill both got all their shit stolen.  Luckily for me, compression shorts and all, I found that my pants were buried in sand by those stacked up chairs and nothing was missing. I guess they just go for the purses.

Afterwards, I walked back with Omri and Jonah. We stopped at this shitty pizza place on the way back to the hotel. Once we got back, Omri and I went to the roof of the hotel and watched the sun rise. I get back to my room and two of my trip-mates are high on ritalin fucking talking about god knows what at 6:00 AM! They seem oblivious to my desire to sleep, so I have to yell “Shut the fuck up!!” to them a few times to make them stop, and then I doze off for a few hours.

This was only the calm before the storm.