Ella’s “A Whole Bunch of Stuff: Part Two”

Hey! We woke up early the next morning and drove up to the bottom of Masada, an ancient Jewish stronghold. Jews used to live there until the Romans lay siege to the fortified fortress and found that all but five of the inhabitants had committed suicide in order to die free, or rather, they killed each other in a systematic and planned order so as to not commit the horrible of a sin of suicide. Anyway, we climbed the steep path to the fortress and saw the sunrise from the ruins.

We explored for a bit, but then hiked down and drove to eat lunch on the way home. We also stopped to eat hummus with aunt Ronit and eat an Israeli sweet called Crembo (a round biscuit covered by a milk chocolate dome and filled with frothy cream). Then, we went to Oved’s house without Ariel to drop Maytal off, but the adults drove away without leaving us a key. We thought someone would be in the house, but they weren’t. Therefore, because we were being loud, Chloe the puppy started crying. Later, we drove home and did homework until dinner, where we had a small party for Asher’s Bar Mitzvah and Ariel’s 19th birthday at Ronit’s house.

We did homework again until Saturday night, when we went to a cool steampunk escape room with Oved, Maytal, and her sister Noa. The next night, the whole family went out to the restaurant that we had Asher’s Bar Mitzvah at to say goodbye to us before we left for Nepal the next day. I got to talk a lot with Ria again, and, again, I must say that I really do love her. We were also talking with my cousin (her boyfriend) Oran, but Ria abandoned us for dessert (in the best way of course!).

On Monday, we did more homework until Aba’s friends came to say goodbye. Then, Oved, Maytal, Noa, Troy, Asher, and I went to another escape room. This one was hilarious because it was about flying from Israel to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines and being suspected of terrorism and having to escape from a jail cell in order to make our connecting flight. This is funny because our flight to Nepal was from Israel to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines. However, the actual funny part was when we got into the luggage room and there was a door to another room. There was a sign on the door in Hebrew and in English that said that there were movement-triggered lasers that sound an alarm throughout the whole airport unless you put in the code, and of course Troy walks right in and sets of the alarm. So… Troy. When we finished the escape room, we went to dinner. I was showing the girls a trick that my cousin Imri taught me, how to break a toothpick with only two fingers from the same hand, so the table was littered with wood. When we started to get up, Maytal threw the sticks into the candle in the middle of the table and Noa helped her (don’t judge me! I only threw one in!) Consequently, the flames soared up really high so I said we should probably blow the candle out, but however much we blew, the fire wouldn’t die! It got to the point that a man from the table next to us came over and offered us a pitcher of water. We said no, but poured a cup of water over the flames, and boy there was a lot of smoke! We ran out of the restaurant in hysterics. The morning of our flight, we did homework and I tried and failed to fix a present that I had previously made for my voice teacher. At 10:00 am, I went to my voice lesson and she ended up giving me an old necklace of hers which was very touching. We drove with Savta to the airport and met Ariel, Ronit, Oved, Michelle (my aunt), Maytal, and Noa there. Then, after a teary goodbye from Savta, we got on our plane to Nepal.

Ella

4-18-4-22  18-6 10-3!