Coreyoria World Tour

I have arrived here, at Kibbutz Ketura, despite a very shaky start! I had to take a bus by myself from Tel Aviv towards Eilat, so the stress began in the Tel Aviv central bus station where I held up about 50 impatient Israelis as my luggage was thoroughly inspected. 7 floors with hundreds of bus departures, I found the way to my gate, the last gate - number 628, on the 6th floor and waited. Then there were 2 buses going to Eilat at the same time, but I had to get onto the correct one, which thanks to the help of some people, I managed to but I was quite nervous that someone might have misunderstood me. So I'm on this bus for about 4 hours driving through desert and I reminded my bus driver twice that I needed to get dropped off at Kibbutz Ketura, but he was busy chatting on his cell phone and wasn't listening. Then he yells out "Kibbutz Ketura!" at this lonely bus stop in the middle of nowhere and I knew it wasn't the right one because the driveway of the Kibbutz was supposed to be right next to the stop. So I didn't get off the bus, thank goodness, becuase it turns out that the next stop was the one I was supposed to get off at and I did. As I exited the bus, I told the driver I had stuff under the bus and gave the universal hand motion for baggage while pointing down. Again, communication barriers arose and he just smiled and closed the door behind me ... and then started driving off!!! I ran after the bus and began pounding on the sides (at this point my heart is in my throat) and after he realized what was going on, he stopped a few meters down the road. I was never quite so happy to see luggage in all of my entire life. I was almost dropped off in the middle of the desert without any of my belongings! Oy!

Good news is that things got much better from there. I've met a lot of very interesting people, got in some serious pool time, hung out with some dairy cows and camels, climbed up to some mountain huts, listened to lots of conversations in languages I can't understand, consumed muchos houmus and water too (it's effing dry here), stared for hours at stars and the milky way, and ran into a herd of donkeys while going for a night tour through fields of date palms. It's been a very full, very interesting few days. More volunteers are coming this week, including my future roomie. Also, I started my job today. Housekeeping in the Kibbutz hotel called Keren Kolote (pronounced "Karen Colote"). It's a shit job ... I mean, who likes to clean? I'm cleaning up the crap people leaving behind in their rooms. But it's a job, mostly air conditioned, not bad hours, and today I scored a bottle of Dolce & Gabana perfume that someone was so kind to leave behind ... tehehe ... and some body-wash too, which was awesome since I ran out. I hated cleaning the house before but I have a feeling the hatred for this type of work will reach an all new high after this summer. :)

I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot, but it's 9:06pm and I'm running on 3 hours of sleep right now. More information and updates to come ...

Peace and love,
Corey

This entry was posted on 25 June 2006 at 12:23. You can skip to the end and leave a response.