The excitement built up like one block upon another. Then, when I saw my little baby cousin for the first time, the small tower of excitement burst up into a sky scraper. I couldn’t stop smiling as I wiggled her ear lobe. Everyone laughed. I laughed. It’s contagious.
My cousin ENTERED the world! Continue reading ‘Lily is out!’
Author Archive for Justin
I was learning how to play football in a sandy playground not so far from our campsite. Dusk and dark fought each other when a kid a foot shorter than me asked if he could join. I answered with an affirmative. His fierce blue eyes hung under spiteful eyebrows trapped in a eternal tilt. He spoke in one strong, demanding tone which would be difficult to imitate. ‘I’m good at weaving through attacks and destroying your enemy.’ He went on.
We never got to finish our game. If a nicer side of him existed, it never revealed itself. It crossed my mind that he might just be mentally ill. He jumped on people who were down, rammed his own team mates because ‘they weren’t paying attention’, threw sand in peoples eyes to get passed them, hurt someones cheek, threw a pop can at a little girl’s head, and all in all, ruined our game. What does it feel like to live life in hate and revenge?
From this experience I learned how hard it is to turn the other cheek and love my enemy… Even when he’s on the same team.
Somebody asked me what I would most miss about Israel, and I easily summed it up in three things: Falafel, busking on Ben Yehuda, and, most of all, the family I talked about in this post. I know missing Falafel sounds silly, but it’s the Israel snack and I love it. Someday I might start a Falafel stand in America and get everyone addicted to the delicious sandwich.
Leaving Israel was sadder then I thought it would be. It took two days of chaotic packing and an all night plane ride to get to Germany. I made my whole family miss a bus because I went to the bathroom, so we where forced to wait for the next one. The bus we got on plopped us down at the train station- from where we missed three trains. The reason for missing the first one is sadly funny. Mom got the tickets while we waited for her. Unfortunately when the train came she was on one side of the platform and we the other. Right when the train pulled away we saw each other. Ah! It didn’t seem funny at the moment at all. The second one was so late that if we would have taken it we would have missed the next connection, and the third we just plain missed.
Finally we arrived at our distant cousins house, which everyone called the ‘yellow house’. We ate pasta, had a reunion with my grandma (she looked great; she was thinner and had short hair) and talked to our hosts till 10:00. It was still light when we left for our hotel! It was very fancy. The hotel actually is a remodeled farm. Everyone loves it… But I personally think that I’d rather have the experiences of coach surfing. However, it is a nice break from traveling rough.
We left Jerusalem bus station at 5 PM and got to Eilat just before 10 PM. Crossing the border form Israel to Egypt took about an hour. Then, for 500 Egyptian pounds (about $100) Dad got a large bouncy taxi van to take us from Taba (across the border from Eilat, Israel). I got the most sleep because I laid down in the back. We arrived in Cairo at 3 AM on Thursday. We hung out in Ramses Square at what we called the cockroach restaurant because of all the roaches on the walls. The largest one was at least a inch. Only Dad ate his rice and very greasy beans. At 7 AM we arrived from a taxi to our couch surfing hosts. Me and the first bed I saw acted as very strong magnets toward each other. I snored away for three hours.
Across the valley a bonfire three story’s high flickered up into the smoky black sky. Me, Doron (a friend of mine who lives next door) and two other kids sat around a smaller version, talking about nothing in general. Just stuff like, ‘want another hot dog?’, ‘its burning!’, ‘why don’t you shove that board cross ways on the fire now?’, ‘pass me the fan’ and ‘I’m gonna have a marshmallow now’. The only serious subjects that we touched were about religion, what we were celebrating and a how most people don’t know what most cuss words mean. They asked me about Christianity.
I learned that many secular and religious Jews light bonfires on May 22 (but the celebration usually slides passed midnight) to celebrate the death of Rabbi Akiva. 24,000 of his students died in a plague. Some say that the ‘plague’ might have actually been the roman soldiers. Whatever the ‘plague’ may have been, it ended, and to let everyone know that it ended they lit fires on top of the hills. Hence the bonfires.
We helped a group of six girls light their fire at about 11:00. Then we went over and watched Lavi (Doron’s brother) and his friends built a very tall teepee fire. As the base was burning, we bet on which way the fire would fall. Lavi was ready to run for the fire extinguisher if it fell on the trees. Finally it toppled over safely. Later some people came by with a ton of paper files and asked if they could get rid of them. They tossed them on the fire. A huge blaze flared up and lit a tree near by. Luckily the fire extinguisher was at hand.
We stayed up till two, said our farewells and went to bed.
WARNING: DO NOT READ THE NEXT PORTION IF YOU ARE A FEMALE… Since it was just us three middle school boys after everyone else had gone to bed, we peed on the fire to put it out. We took turns. What a manly thing to do.
At fist general society thought it was a huge wale of some kind. But then why would it glow? How could it possibly move so fast? How could a wale sink a ship?
Then they imagined some sort of monster. A monster? Impossible!
Finally someone came up with a theory that might be possible… a submarine! But of course, submarines didn’t exist! Even if they had existed, how could a private person create such a machine without the world knowing?
Finally a handful of people boarded the Abraham Lincoln on a quest to find out what the mysterious object could be. When they finally came across it, they found that even at full steam they could not catch it. In a last attempt Abraham Lincoln shot at the creature. The shell simply bounced off. Enraged, the animal came after the Abraham Lincoln and sunk it to the bottom of the sea.
After being thrown off the Abraham Lincoln, a Canadian, a professor, and the professors assistant found themselves clinging for dear life onto the very monster they had hoped to find. It was not a monster. It was a submarine.
A strong bond and a scents of camaraderie develops between them after many adventures. The submarine travels from ocean to ocean at the will of its captain, a man who has loosed almost all connections with the world.
Pretty good; it was a classic. Although not one of my favorites, I loved the style of writing. I think the main point the author was trying to make was that a submarine is probable.
“Look! There it is!” cried Mom as we approached Gibraltar rock at midnight. It just looked like a hugenormis rock, and it definitely didn’t look habitable from my point of view. As we got closer, I could get the full aw at the almost vertical sides of the rock.
The next day, we were traveling around, having our hosts show us the rock. It rocked! My dad had gotten in touch with one of his internet students, asking if we could stay with them. They answered yes. As we were driving up to the uppermost part of the rock, Nathan, me, and two of the kids got dropped off to go walk to the upper part of the island. The grown ups tried to get up another way in the car, but never found us, so we were left to walk home alone.
I learned flash from looking over my brothers shoulder at age 8 or 9. This is a little something I’ve made, just for the fun of it:
Sometimes my dad hires me to make banners and stuff for his websites, and he pays me as if I was a professional. 