The TREK: Day #01
Hello everyone, the moment is finally here… The last of my few blogs start here, with this one post. That’s right, today, we started our first ascent up the Annapurna circuit! Our day started off by waking up at 6:45 am, which was a little bit exhausting to be fair, but I got used to it after I got prepared to trek. After about one hour, Ganesh, our two porters, Bhanu and Saroj, and my family, started our ascent up the mountain! Our walk up at its most basic form was very fun and exhausting. I loved all of the nature that we encountered and we had lots of interesting conversations, from how our day was to what Halloween costumes Trixie and Bruno should wear next year.🐕🎃😼 The entire walk was six hours long, but we, of course, took a few breaks on the way up. Our first stop was breakfast, which was 2 hours away from where we started. The place is called Chamje and it was next to a tall waterfall that we got a spectacular view of and while we were there, I tried a new food! It was vegetable fried rice and it tasted amazing. In fact, every Nepalese food I try turns out to be very good, so I will try more of Nepal’s wondrous food from now on. We hiked for a while after that, but we saw even more awesome things. Along the way, we passed a lot of villages that have very nice and healthy people in them. The atmosphere of these places was very friendly and I would recommend coming to visit these places, even if it’s only for the people. We went down to a river called Marsyangdi, where a wobbly bridge was located that I successfully crossed without fainting.😉 We started to climb up for some hours before we reached a goat colony. There were goats everywhere and Ella even held one that was very cute looking!🐐 We climbed the rest of the way up and we finally reached our first location, Village Tal! We remained at a place called the Father And Son guest house, where we saw many natives having a good time. One of them was even trying VR! The best part about it was that everyone who left before us, even by an hour, came 2 hours after us!!😆😆😆 During dinner, Ganesh explained to us what was going to happen tomorrow and I had the same vegetable fried rice as earlier and, believe it or not, it started to pour!😨☔💧🌂 We got drenched while I was brushing my teeth outside, but we thankfully made it in without injury or harm. So far, this trip has been awesome and I think that I can make it.

Chapter 6 of “The Legendary Sandwich: A Trixie and Bruno Tail” :

Chapter 6

Bruno woke up feeling very dizzy. He tumbled a long way down a hill and didn’t know where he now was. He quickly checked his arm and, thankfully, both clues were still there. Trixie, Pierre, and the map where nowhere to be seen, though. Bruno heard “Augh. Foooood…” and knew that it was Trixie. He caught up to her and saw she was uninjured. Bruno read the second clue to her: “Not right in plain sight, but in a really obvious kind of place”. The cart and its contents were strewn about below the window.  The pets searched around the woods for the map, but they could not find it. “Oh no. We’ve lost the map. Fortunately,  I studied it for a while, the third clue is in… the park!” Bruno said to Trixie. They quickly got out of the woods and headed toward the park which wasn’t too far away from them.

Meanwhile, Boris was alone and running wildly in the forest. Bruno had hit his nose real hard and disrupted his sense of smell, so he couldn’t sniff out Pierre’s scent. He had escaped the school and was searching around for minutes before finding his comrade in the wild. He was damaged, but alive and holding a map. “I know where they’re going next,” He said, smiling. “Let’s take a little trip to the park.”

It didn’t take Trixie and Bruno long to find the park. It was densely packed with families and there was tons of playground equipment scattered about that the third clue could be hiding in.  Additionally, the most impressive piece of architecture there was a 40-foot tall rocket that had bars covering parts of it and others covered in walls. It was a piece of playground equipment that kids could climb on and hopefully not fall and die. The pets decided that that would be the best place to look for the clue and as they went inside it and looked up the hole with a ladder, they saw a yellow sticky note posted on the inside of the rocket roof. The pets were amazed and did their very best to climb the ladder without hands. When they finally got to the top, Bruno stuck the third clue to the same arm as the other two and read the clue: “It’s really obvious. The location of the sandwich”. Bruno thought he started to see a pattern in the clues but when he looked outside of the rocket’s round window, he saw Boris and Pierre, who was wielding the map, exit the woods and look around.

Bruno ducked and told Trixie to stay down and to stay away from the many exposed places in the rocket where they could be seen. “Ok Trixie, Boris, and Pierre are onto us. We have to find a way out of this park without being seen” He said, panicked.

“Ok, but I better be getting my food after this!” Trixie complained as Bruno shut her mouth. As he looked outside, he saw the two talking.

“I feel like they’re here boss,” Boris said. “I can’t find their scent, but I just feel like they’re here.”

“Excellent. We can’t let them get ahold of another clue. You search around the playground while I search this peculiar rocket” Pierre stated and looked at the rocket just as Bruno pulled back unseen.

“Trixie, we really need to get out of here!” Bruno said to the dog picking its nose. He looked out the window and saw Boris walking in the opposite direction and Pierre walking right towards them. Once Boris was out of view, Bruno saw a tiny hole in the rocket’s roof and again, pushed Trixie out through the hole and followed after her. On the top of the rocket, there was no way down and he thought about evading Pierre on the way down, but Pierre looked up the hole just as Bruno looked down. Bruno pulled away in time but knew that Pierre would eventually spot them if they stayed. The pets then spotted eight sticky gloves that belonged to Asher, who left them there with a note that said: “If you get into trouble, use these.” Suddenly, Bruno got a clever idea.

Trixie and Bruno started to climb down the rocket using the sticky gloves to stick to the solid sides of the rocket. They had to make sure not to be seen by Pierre and Boris and get out of the park as fast as possible. Whenever Pierre gazed through a window or unexposed part, the pets hid on the other side of the rocket. When Boris looked in their direction, the pets went to the opposite side of the rocket. Bruno nearly got caught by Pierre who had briefly seen his tail flash through the window, but didn’t think it was him because he looked down and the pets weren’t there. Trixie and Bruno eventually made it down and ran away without being spotted, taking clue #3 with them. The lake was very close by and the pets darted for it. Pierre reached the top of the rocket and when he climbed onto the roof and looked down, he could see no sign of Bruno or Trixie. He regrouped with Boris shortly after. Boris said that there was no sign of them or the clue so Pierre said, “They aren’t here and neither is the third clue. They must be at the lake already” and the two also headed for the lake.

What’s up what’s up! I’m back with another radical blog post on the first day of our Annapurna expedition! I left off last time by describing our first 2 days in Kathmandu and what thinking about what might happen during this adventure. Well, now I am on that very adventure that I’ve been wanting to go on since I was small!😆🙌 Yes, I did climb Kilimanjaro, but this trek will last up to fourteen days while the last trek was only six days. Also, the environment is different and there seem to be more people than Kilimanjaro. We started off today by waking up at 4:00 am, which, thankfully, is the most boring and dull part of today. We got dressed, brushed teeth, and did all that stuff before meeting Ganesh and driving off to the mountains. So note that from this point on, we are going to be living in huts and that today was the last day where we had good service and reception before the trek was up, so I have mixed feelings about this. The rest of our day consisted of driving to the location, but some interesting stuff happened along the way. We stopped at a cafe on the mountain that has a very nice view of a lake. There were two very cute puppies there that we petted a lot and they are very sweet. They kind of reminded me of my cousin’s new dog, Chloe. They’re both very young, playful, and they even look the same. It made me miss Israel a little bit and realize how big Chloe will be the next time we see her. I had a very good pancake there that looked like some ordinary dough but actually tasted pretty good. After that, we drove to a village called Beni Shahar. We switched jeeps while we were there and got a new driver. We drove for some time before reaching a very peculiar construction site. There was a massive traffic jam of jeeps that blocked us from moving forward and there was another line preventing us from moving backward. We got out of the jeep to get a closer look and we saw construction workers implanting a pipe into the ground! Surprisingly, it didn’t take them long to finish implanting the pipe, but it was really interesting to see the construction process and how everyone around us reacted to the scene. After the experience, we continued forward to our first stop on this journey. We went to a small settlement called Syange, where we spent the rest of the day and played a delightful game of UNO. Dinner was also good and late at night, we slept for the mighty trek ahead of us.

Chapter 5 of”The Legendary Sandwich: A Trixie and Bruno Tail “:

Chapter 5

“Are we there yet? I’m hungry. Huuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnggggggrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy!!!!!” Trixie whined at the poor cat trying to find the school.

“Quiet! We don’t want Pierre and Boris to find us, although they’re probably already onto us. But that’s no excuse!” Bruno whispered back to the clueless dog. “Dogs” he sighed before he finally found the school. The building was basically a gigantic hallway with brick walls from the outside. Unfortunately, it was secured at the front door was locked and there was no way in, or so Bruno thought before he looked up and saw an open window. Bruno did the impossible and lifted Trixie up to the window and she climbed into the school in ten seconds. Bruno followed her in and closed the window to make sure that no one else would come in.

As he made his way inside, Bruno realized that they were in the school auditorium because the entire room was filled with rows of black, identical chairs and there was a high ceiling. Suddenly, the pets heard a clamper of feet heading their way and the pets had to hide somewhere safe.  Dozens of students arrived and sat on the seats, where Bruno was hiding underneath one. Trixie was hiding next to him. The lights dimmed and a film started to play on the auditorium screen. Bruno saw this as an opportunity to escape as he whispered to Trixie to follow him and escape the crowd of kids. They quietly snuck out of the auditorium and they located a janitor cart with a towel covering part of it. They climbed into the cart, with the towel keeping them hidden. They were there only a few seconds when the janitor came and began pushing the cart around the school.

While Trixie and Bruno were being wheeled around the school on the janitor’s cart, Pierre and Boris found the school, following the pets’ scent. “At last, we have located the pets and the location of the second clue. Now, we just need to find a way inside the school.” Pierre stated with an evil grin. As he looked around, he found the window that the pets went through, but it was shut courtesy of Bruno. He found a sewer hole, but it was too small for Boris to fit in and probably didn’t lead to the right place. “Boris, help me find a way in,” Pierre said. The two searched for a little bit before finding a large enough window slightly opened on a side of the library that they could get through.

The cart traveled slowly around the school. It stopped in classrooms and dirty bathrooms before finally reaching the library. Bruno expected to find nothing, but on the highest point of the tallest shelf, Bruno spotted another clue stuck to the wall! “Ok Trixie, you stay in here while I get the clue from the shelf ok?” Bruno whispered to his sister. She just snored in response but Bruno clamped her mouth shut before anyone heard. There was also a class in the library, so Bruno had to put his bunny-hunting skills to the test in order to make it to the top of the shelf and back without being seen or heard.

Bruno, like a ninja, darted across the room in a second. If someone had seen him, they would have only seen a blur. Bruno hid behind one of the bean-bag chairs on the floor in order not to be seen. There were many of them on the floor that could hide a big animal like Boris. Bruno then darted and hid behind a bookshelf. The teacher thought she saw something, but ignored it and went back to teaching the class. Bruno faced the side of the shelves with books and thought about how he could make it to the top without being seen. With the first clue still attached to his arm and the map in the cart with Trixie, Bruno climbed up the shelf with extreme caution. It took him ten seconds to climb up to the top of the shelf, but he made it up with no casualty, unlike Trixie. Or, Bruno thought so.

As Bruno stuck the second clue on his arm and started to climb down, a white blur darted up the bookshelf, knocking down many books with a loud thud, and pinned Bruno down. The blur was Pierre; he had been hiding behind a chair the whole time and now he was trying to take both of the clues from Bruno’s arm. Bruno fought back as the two cats engaged in a brief battle that was interrupted when the teacher grabbed a ruler and started to swat both cats. To make matters worse, Bruno looked at the cart where Trixie had just woken up and saw Boris come out of the shadows and push the cart away into the hallway, with the map and Trixie still in it.

Bruno successfully dodged the teacher’s swats and punched Pierre off of the bookshelf where he was beaten and swatted repeatedly by the teacher. Then, Bruno did a high ninja jump over the teacher and ran into the hall after Boris while everyone was watching in awe. Bruno caught up to the dog and swatted him with his paw, claws out. Boris fell down and let go of the cart as Bruno got on the top of it. Pierre ran past his fallen comrade and jumped onto the cart where Bruno was. The two engaged in a highly dramatic fight on top of the moving vehicle while on the bottom shelf, Trixie was fantasizing about the sandwich. Unfortunately, the two cats never finished the fight as the cart was heading towards a large window at the end of the hallway. The cart crashed into the window and the cart and all three of its passengers flying out of it into the rocky, tree-covered terrain beneath them.

Shalom!!! That is Hebrew for, “Hello”! Anyways, I am back with my last blog post before we start hiking up the Annapurna in Nepal(probably)! We have had a very interesting time since my last post as well as some very exciting and new adventures. First, we went with Savta to a restaurant called,” The Old Man and the Sea”, which was actually based off of the novel written many years ago. The book is about an old man called Santiago wanting to redeem himself of his bad luck by capturing a huge marlin to sell for money. I won’t spoil the end because it’s so good, but that was what the restaurant was based off. The food there was very good and I even tried hummus, which I wasn’t a big fan of. It was very fun there and we are with my cousins from my grandmother’s side. They are very fun and we had a good time.
The next day, we went with our other cousins to the Bahai Gardens. The Bahai is a religion that was created in the 1800’s and their principles include pacifism, equality, harmony with all of nature, and acceptance. The gardens are their second holiest place and they gave us an astounding tour. We learned many new things like how they originated in Persia and quickly spread throughout the world. Their first prophet was killed, but the next prophet took over and helped create the religion we know today. There was a video there that explained everything and the sight of the place was absolutely spectacular. Later that night, we also had dinner with family from my grandfather’s side. The people were very nice and I came to know them better since I last saw them. The next day, my family and my cousins drove to the Ramone Crater far from where we lived. While we were there, we went stargazing and saw the individual rings of Saturn! We also saw the giant craters that scarred the moon and Mars through the telescope which was very fun.
We went rappeling the next day on the edge of a cliff! It was my first time and I was a little bit scared, but I did it a second time and it was all better. However, we had to climb down the cliff eventually, so we hiked down the mountain, for three hours, WITH the blazing sun on our backs, back to the car were we later drove to our hostel! It was tough because the sun turned me into a lobster and I could barely move with all the sunburns! We did get a break later that night though when we went scorpion finding!!! We found many different kinds of cool scorpions and even a few rare ones! We went to the top of a mountain called Masada, which is a mountain that was settled thousands of years ago by Jews escaping from the Romans. They all committed mass suicide up there when the Romans got close so they wouldn’t have to become Romans. The whole trip was very exciting, but we went back to my aunt’s house where we celebrated my birthday and Bar Mitzvah again!
It was so much fun and the strange thing about it was that 6 airplanes that all looked the same flew in the same spot over us constantly, which freaked me out. You guys will never guess where we had dinner the following night: the same place where I had my Bar Mitzvah! It brought back many memories and the food was absolutely spectacular. The last full day in Israel had my cousins, Troy, Ella, and I put into an escape room! Basically, we arrived at an Istanbul airport and were questioned repeatedly, so we have to escape within the time limit. We made it out 4 minutes past the deadline, but the funniest thing happened! In one of the rooms, there was a mini room with lasers that triggered sound if touched and Troy activated all of them by not reading the instructions and not disabling them before he went inside!!! The alarm went off and everyone was so scared!!! It was an absolute blast and the next day, we sadly departed from Israel and left to start a new journey in Nepal. The whole family came to see us to because we might not see them in 2 years and Savta cried. It was very sad and I hope we see them in the future.
To be continued in the future…
Chapter 4 of “The Legendary Sandwich: A Trixie and Bruno Tail”:

Hello everyone! I have yet another blog post for you today about two very important Jewish holidays that I took part in, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. My experiences started when Yom Kippur happened, and it was my first year of doing it because I just finished my Bar Mitzvah a few weeks before. Yom Kippur is a holiday where everyone fasts for 1 whole day and stay disconnected from all electronic devices. Even though this might sound easy, it was a little bit hard because it was my first year ever doing it. We started the day off, as usual, doing homework and having fun activities, but then we went to the cemetery with our family to visit our deceased Saba, which is the Hebrew word for “Grandpa”. Savta, my grandmother, cries a lot when we go there and you can’t blame her for it. Saba was really awesome and he died 6 years ago, so Savta has been alone for a while. After we went there, we went back home for an hour before the rest of our family came over to where we were staying and began to do fun stuff together. At 6:21, the grand fast began!

As I mentioned before, fasting for a long period of time can be hard for newcomers, but I was ok for the most part. It wasn’t that hard to go for a day without food, but the water was a completely different story. I constantly drink water in order to stay hydrated, so about 30 minutes into the fast I was dehydrated and would remain that way until the end. We were also disconnected from electricity, so we played a really fun card game called UNO. UNO is a very fun card game where you try to get rid of all your cards and for some strange reason, I either always got first place or last place. I was never second or third, but first or fourth. It was very fun for all of us and the first day passed by fine. The next day, I woke up at 3:00 on because I was so exhausted from last night and from when my family and I took a walk down the road to analyze the activity going on. We didn’t do much the second day because I woke up so late, but at the end of the fast at 7:19 pm, I finally had a really big meal that tasted so good.

The next day, my cousins, Ella, and I went to an escape room, which is a room where you have a certain time limit to solve the puzzle and escape the room. The room was serial killer themed, so it added an extra layer of spice to the room! Aside from Ella and I, my cousins Ariele and Imri (who was was with us in Africa) joined us and we began the quest to escape. We made it out of the room half an hour after the time limit, but we still did it! Anyways, after that, we had Sukkot, which is a Jewish holiday that’s about how when the Jews left Egypt and lived in tiny huts for 40 years. We went to my uncle’s house and we had a big party there. It was very fun and we watched a movie called Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson as an Air Martial trying to capture a murderer on an airplane. Overall, it’s been very fun here in Israel and I am having an awesome time!

Chapter 3 of “The Legendary Sandwich: A Trixie and Bruno Tail”:

Hello everyone! It’s all-time awesome Asher Shaul with another ballistic blog-post! If you’re wondering what my family and I did this time, we went to the capital of France… Paris! As I was literally finished my last post, I was getting ready to pack up and go to France in order to meet my other dad, Greg. If Ella didn’t tell you, Greg is a T-shirt designer and he makes very awesome shirts. We call him daddy and we love to hang out together. Anyways, we drove to the airport where we went on our first flight by ourselves!! Yes, Ella and I flew by ourselves for the first time and it was… ok. It wasn’t as weird as I imagined; it was just flying without parents. In the airport, we were given an attendant that assisted us to get to the airplane and in Paris, we got another one who took us to dad. The last time we saw him was 3 months ago in Mexico where we had an amazing time touring the place and trying new foods.  We met with dad and went to his apartment where we had a cheese toast and slept for there the nights to come.

We woke up the next morning at 11:00, which was magical because, in Israel, we woke up at 7:00 or 8:00 to do homework. Right as we woke up, we got dressed and decided to get the small amount of homework we had done. It took us less than an hour and our reward was getting to tour the whole rest of the day. We walked around our neighborhood and then we went to this crepe place with really fancy crepes. They weren’t the best I’ve ever had, but they filled me up for the day ahead of us. From the crepe place, Dad, Ella, and I toured Paris for the whole rest of the day and had an amazing time there, despite the last time being there we were 8 years old. The 5 days we were there consisted of us touring Paris and seeing all-new things. Even though I might make it sound boring, it was actually very fun and I would recommend you do it whenever you travel and decide to go to a big city. However, there was one part of my whole Paris trip that bugged me. When we went to the Eiffel Tower, they did construction all around it and put a great glass barrier surrounding the whole tower and replaced all the grass there with dust and gravel!! I was very mad because it used to be so majestic but the terrorism forced people to put the Eiffel Tower in a cage. This was fortunately made up when we went to the very top of the Eiffel Tower for the first time ever!! The view of Paris was amazing and I saw many famous landmarks like the glass pyramid, the palace of King Loui, and the Notre Dam. It was very fun to be there and it was very sad when we left because I didn’t know when I was going to see dad again. When we got back to Israel, we went to bed and started homework the next day.

Chapter 2 of “The Legendary Sandwich: A Trixie and Bruno Tail”:

                                         Chapter 2

“Oh boy, I can’t wait to eat that slice of life” Bruno said, with his eyes big. “What do you suppose it tastes like?” But Trixie wasn’t paying attention to Bruno and was singing to herself;

“Food, glorious food… I will eat the sandwich. Nothing better, but a TASTE of thee!…” Then, Trixie stopped singing and started drooling. However, outside on the fence, a sinister Siamese cat called Pierre watched through the window at the two pets sitting on the kitchen floor. He had overheard their entire conversation about the Legendary Sandwich, and when he saw it through Ofer’s window it brightened his world.

“That sandwich, it’s so beautiful” he said, grinning. “Thankfully for me, the dad is not giving it to those two losers immediately. I must stay and find out more about this precious beauty that will live in my tummy. Mwahahahahahaha!”

Asher and Ella exited the office. About a minute later, Asher went back into the office with colored pencils and a large, blue sheet of paper and Ella went into the office with a pencil and a stack of yellow sticky notes. “Uh-oh. This can’t be good” Bruno said. He then turned to Trixie.

“Food in my tummy. It’s so yummy. It will end up in theeeeerrrrrrreeeee!” She sang.

“Stop it, you miniature beast of burden!” Bruno shouted.

Just then, Ofer walked into the kitchen and said to the pets, “Ella and I are going on a little car trip. Asher will watch you.” Then, he and Ella left. The night passed in silence and everything was still, except for the jittery cat and dog dreaming about eating The Legendary Sandwich.