The Look

My friend Jon and I were recently talking about wearing the white coat and trying to differentiate between the possibility of pride and simple satisfaction that it symbolizes what we both want to do with our lives... in any case I thought I would post a couple of pictures from one of our clinical days last fall...


From left to right, classmates, Bryanna, Claire, Anna, Katy, Helen, myself, Ivona, Amber and Adam, ready to start interviewing patients!





Behind me is the hospital laundry!

Pictures from Egypt - As Promised

Here are just a few highlight pictures from my trip to Egypt! There are more posted on Facebook if you are so inclined. Amber, Ivona and I had a fantastic trip. Egypt was diverse and bustling, full of markets and ruins, mosques and churches, buses, trains and water buffalo.

The view from our Cairo hotel...

Amber and I in front of the Egyptian Museum.

The Great Pyramid.

Amber and I with five pyramids... can you find them all?

Far south in Aswan my travel companions and I had henna tattoos done in a Nubian village...

Grand Mosque in Aswan, as viewed from our hotel...

Sailing on the Nile!

Ivona and Amber as we leave Aswan on our way to Luxor....

A close-up of my henna tattoo from the night before....

We ran into some friends from school while sailing!

Check out the stark difference between the palms right next to the Nile and the desert beyond...

A self portait...

The beginning of the ancient temples we expolored. This one is at Kom Ombo.

My favorite photo from inside the the Kom Ombo temple...

And the end of my temple touring on the West Bank of Luxor outside the embalming Temple of Hatshepsut

Exodus to Egypt

Really I just love the irony of this post title! Today I leave for Cairo to spend the Pesach (Passover) Break exploring the wonders of Egypt. While about a third of my school is also going to Egypt, I am traveling in a small group of three including my friends Amber and Ivona and myself. I am very excited as Egypt was the second place I ever conceived of traveling to as a child! (The first was Scotland, to which I still have not gone.) Our plan is to explore Cairo for a couple of days, see the pyramids, the sphinx, and the national museum, take a small boat up the Nile for a couple of nights, visit the Valley of the Kings in Luxor and perhaps the Valley of the Dead and head back home after nine days. I'll be sure to post pictures when I get back!

K

Ridiculous But Fun Quizzes

You scored as Emma Woodhouse. Emma is possibly one of the most loyal characters of Austen, always wanting better for those around her and doing all she possibly can to make it happen. Her motives sometimes get in the way of her good intentions and her own opinions can end up ruling her actions, but she has a good heart. She loves to be social and is welcoming to most, unless they are too silly to tolerate. While she some- times changes her behavior to make others feel comfortable, she knows who she is and is always bettering herself. Emma Woodhouse 84% Marianne Dashwood 78% Elizabeth Bennet 59% Jane Bennet 47% Elinor Dashwood 47% Lady Catherine 38% Charlotte Lucas 34%

Music Help

OK. So I do understand that there are sites out there that will do this for me... but I'm a little slow with this kind of thing so I thought I would call upon the possible kindness of friends and family... I've grown tired of my present music collection and I need help. But what to buy? There is so much out there and so little time to wade through it all! So, if you have a favorite, please send it to me! Things I already love are as diverse as Pachelbel, The Black Eyed Peas, Dixie Chicks, The Eagles, Dido, Nora Jones, Usher, Bach, Jars of Clay, Keith Urban, Ben Harper and anything Bluegrass or A Capella...

Please help!

K

Still Weird

I remember reaching this point in West Africa where I felt as if I hadn't anything more to write about. I was sure that my everyday life would still be a surprise to all of my family and friends at home, but since I was no longer surprised by it, I couldn't think of what to tell everyone. I feel a bit that way now.

Yesterday late afternoon I hopped on a bus to Jerusalem to attend a once-a-month worship service with third-year students Amy and Olivia. These two women are awesome. Not only are they both about my age and have birthdays within a week of mine but they also share my faith in a very real way. They are really trying to live the path that God has laid before their feet. The worship service was also very, very cool... but in the midst of all of this relatively normal sounding "me" stuff there were the following:

As usual the bus was full of soldiers on their way home for the weekend... carrying their guns and a weeks worth of dirty laundry in giant hiking packs. They are mostly all a lot younger than me...

The desert is blooming. Literally. Where there was dust and... well, dust there are now wild flowers. My favorite are the small blood red poppies. They are more rare than the other wildflowers but they are so dramatic.

Jerusalem continues to be this bewildering mix of Holy Center of the World and modern city where you can buy high fashion clothing on every corner and old men tease the girls behind the counter at the pizza shop. Every time I go there I wish more that I lived there and not in Beer Sheva, which is sadly a little bit of a backwater.

On the bus back home last night I spent 45 minutes fending off the advances of a very friendly young Jewish man. He wasn't out-of-line particularly... just not easily discouraged by my "I'm not Jewish" and "I cannot live in Israel after I finish school" and "I don't have a lot of time for a social life outside of my studies" comments. Those of you who have been reading my posts and newsletters for a while will know that I don't actually see this as something to brag about... but simply a huge irritant. I'm not especially fond of being complimented on the color of my eyes by someone that knows nothing of my soul.

Today, back in Beer Sheva, it is supposed to be sunny and 82 degrees. I need to study for my upcoming physiology quiz and Cell and Molecular Biology Final.

Exciting, isn't it?

Too much!

Have you ever been told you were "too much"? Too sarcastic? Too focused? Too serious? Too laid-back? Too sensitive? Too passive? Too aggressive? It turns out I've been told I was "too much" a lot in my life... and I just realized it today. What's worse, I've been told this by a lot of people that really love me. Family, friends, several exes... I've spent days, months, years, toning myself down because other people are overwhelmed. I've stayed me... just a more "handlable" version of me. And here's the catch... God made me just as I am. On purpose. He made me the worried, sensitive, serious, exuberant person that I now only let out with people I know love me. And even they are concerned. They don't want me to be so sensitive that I get hurt, so serious that I forget to laugh... but the truth is that God can protect me from those concerns because He made me, me.

Yes, I know. This isn't about Israel. And is a bit more personal that I ever thought I would put on a blog... but I'm betting on two things... 1) No one actually reads this blog except my best friend and 2) Sometimes my life isn't all about living in Israel.

K

Unlikely...

Have you ever been sitting at the Paris Cafe on the beach in Ashkelon, Israel, eating pizza and hummus with your American friends, listening to Russian karaoke and watched a man walk by in a kilt? I have. I did it today after five glorious hours of laying on the beach, getting mildly pinked by the warmish January sun. Then, as we drove through the rolling green hills of the Negev in winter, wondering at the fields planted in wheat, we saw the anti-missile blimp lazily turning circles over Gaza to the south. Finally we detoured through the recognized Bedouin village of Rahat to see the clinic there and watched the green lights of the mosque towers blink on as a huge fuchsia sun set on this small Arab city.

I live a surreal life.

K

Ethiopian "Bar"

After one of our finals a big group of us decended on this small market in a mostly Ethiopian neighborhood and bought them out of beer and snackfood...we love this place!

The whole group

Artsy shot of Melissa, Colin, Ezra and Reena... I'm sure Ryan took this picture...

Katy and Olga!

My First Israeli Chanukah

Just a couple of pictures from a wonderful night at Adam, Sera and Colin's Home...

Anna, Sonia, Reena and Bryanna
















Myself, Melissa, Carolyn and Adam....

From the upstairs balcony, I put my white elephant gift to good use...

The whole gang...

The Beginning of Several Holiday-Related Posts

So I admit that the last post was lengthy and a little serious so this is the first of several posts highlighting some of my holiday fun...

First was Thanksgiving, attended by most of my class and generously hosted by Ezra and Chris, two other Northwesterners. Ezra is from Vashon and Chris from Montana...
-K



Chris deep fried one of the turkeys!



















Sonia and Bryanna










Katy and I

Nima reads an original Thanksgiving poem

Thirty-five plus hungry first year med students dig in....

Receiving a little love from our class dog, Jed.

We're so full! Can we stay the night? Chika, myself, Carolyn and Sonia snuggle on the couch.

Dr. Birk Was My Genetics Professor Last Term...

Unraveling a Genetic Mystery
Published March 21, 2006
The New York Times

Moshira, 9, and Salame, 8, who began life as apparently healthy babies, fell into vegetative states after their first birthdays.

Now their dark eyes stare enormous and uncomprehending into the stillness of their room. The silence is broken only by the boy's sputtering breaths and the flopping noise his sister's atrophied legs make when they fall, like those of a rag doll, upon the mattress.

"I cannot bear it," said the children's father, Ismail, 37, turning to leave the room as his daughter coughs up strawberry yogurt his wife feeds her through a plastic syringe.

The sick children are Bedouin. Until recently their ancestors were nomads who roamed the deserts of the Middle East and, as tradition dictated, often married cousins. Marrying within the family helped strengthen bonds among extended families struggling to survive the desert. But after centuries this custom of intermarriage has had devastating genetic effects.

Bedouins do not carry more genetic mutations than the general population. But because so many marry relatives — some 65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry first or second cousins — they have a significantly higher chance of marrying someone who carries the same mutations, increasing the odds they will have children with genetic diseases, researchers say. Hundreds have been born with such diseases among the Negev Bedouin in the last decade.

The plight of the community is being addressed by an unusual scientific team: Dr. Ohad Birk, a Jewish Israeli geneticist, and two physicians, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and Dr. Khalil Elbedour, himself a Bedouin from Israel.

They work together in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba at a genetics center with two neighboring branches, the Genetics Institute of Soroka Medical Center and the Morris Kahn Human Molecular Genetics Lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Dr. Birk heads both institutions, which work to identify the mutant genes that cause these diseases. In the last two years, the center has identified eight mutant genes not previously associated with a disease, as well as dozens of new mutations in other genes that were already associated with diseases.

The findings are passed on to interested families who are given premarital genetic counseling and prenatal testing. More than 20 couples chose to end pregnancies over the past year, after doctors diagnosed in the fetuses terminal diseases that usually kill within the first few years of life.

But there are risks. In a small, closed society in which secrets are hard to keep, there is the danger of stigmatizing carriers and their families, subsequently lowering their chances for marriage should word get out that a genetic disease runs in the family.

The researchers try to minimize that risk by approaching families confidentially through their family doctors and offering them discreet testing, even in their own homes. Extensive genetic counseling is provided before and after testing. Results are given only in person by genetic counselors who walk individuals and families through the science and emotions of the process.The researchers are also working closely with local Muslim leaders to spread a message aboutthe benefits of genetic testing.

Many of the diseases among the Bedouins are not only rare but extremely severe. One such disease is aplasia cutis, in which babies are born with no skin on their skull. Some babies are born with neurological-spastic diseases and die within a few months. Other inherited conditions are blindness and severe mental retardation.

In a Bedouin tent camp south of Beersheba, Omar, 11, lives with an especially rare disorder known as "congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis." Children with this disorder become their own worst enemies, burning and maiming themselves without feeling a thing.

Omar's body is covered with scrapes and bruises, and his left leg was amputated below the knee — a result of a septic infection that set in after he hurt himself. His mother, who like several others interviewed asked not to be identified for fear of being stigmatized, fears he will hurt or even kill himself if left alone, so she carries him constantly around the steep, rock-strewn slopes. But it is exhausting, and she also has to care for her 11 other children.

"He is glued to me," she said. "I am very supportive of testing so people won't suffer the way I have suffered."

The Beersheba research team seeks to identify the mutant genes behind such diseases through genetic linkage analysis, in which the genomes of affected and non-affected family members are scanned at 10,000 known points of variation using powerful Affymetrix chips.Once researchers home in on the area where the defective gene is housed, the region is sequenced to find the specific mutant gene.

"It's very satisfying to be able to tell families" that the gene causing a particular illness has been identified, said Dr. Elbedour. Of course, he cautioned, it is not easy for families to receive the news that they carry a risky gene, and the knowledge is not a cure. But it can be a step toward prevention.

Identifying the disease-related genes may help researchers design drug therapies. The Israeli lab is working to do so. "We are actually finding pathways and the molecular basis for diseases," Dr. Birk said.

The team is focusing on Mendelian diseases, the relatively rare type caused by disorder in a single gene. But Dr. Birk said the research might also help the team members find genes that combine to cause more common problems like diabetes, epilepsy, asthma and obesity.

The findings on Mendelian disease could be used by the major Bedouin populations in neighboring Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia with similar gene mutations. But so far, Dr. Birk said, scientists in those countries have refused offers to collaborate.

"It's so essential and basic that we should be working together," he said. "It's funny. The only Middle Eastern people we are collaborating with are the Palestinians."

The cooperation sometimes falters. On a recent morning an exasperated Dr. Abuelaish stormed into Dr. Birk's office. He was furious that Israeli soldiers at the crossing from Gaza into Israel had made him wait two hours to pass through and then asked him to take off his shirt to make sure he was not wired with bombs.

Still, Dr. Abuelaish declares, "Medicine does not know borders."

Dr. Abuelaish, who works as an obstetrician and a gynecologist in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, is one of the few Gaza Palestinians permitted to enter the country since Israel's recent withdrawal from Gaza, traveling to Beersheba once a week.

An estimated 140,000 Bedouins live in the Negev desert in the south of Israel bordering Gaza. Some of the families the researchers are studying have branches in both the Negev and Gaza.One of the lab's breakthroughs was solving the genetic puzzle that caused members of three extended families to be born without eyes. One of the families was in Gaza, another in the Negev, and one was a Jewish family of Syrian-descent living in Jerusalem.

One member of the Gaza family is Ramzi Abu Aljidian, 24, who like his sister has eyelids but no eyes underneath them. He is pleased his family's participation in the research was fruitful."We want to prevent such cases in the future," said Mr. Abu Aljidian, who added that his condition persuaded him not to marry within the family. Mr. Abu Aljidian married a woman who is not a relative, and the couple have two normal, healthy children.

Dr. Abuelaish is the lab's connection to Gaza. A specialist in fetal medicine, he meets with families who have a history of genetic diseases, collects blood samples and draws up the detailed family trees of his patients.

"People need help, and we try to help them," he said. Access to the modern facilities in Israel is essential for his patients in Gaza because there are no genetic labs there.

In Beersheba, Dr. Abuelaish shows Dr. Birk a collection of X-rays he took of a brother and sister from Gaza who suffer from phocomelia, in which their limbs are short and twisted.

"That's his hand," said Dr. Abuelaish, pointing to a 6-year-old boy who has three oversized fingers on one hand, two on the other. Like his older sister, he has legs that are only a few inches long. The two get around in wheelchairs that they roll down the dusty streets of their refugee camp.

The children, like many of the Gazans, do not have permission to enter Israel. Dr. Abuelaish must therefore document the clinical side of the cases as thoroughly as possible and take that documentation — together with blood samples and photographs — back to Israel.

The lab was sponsored by Morris Kahn, an Israeli philanthropist, and was championed by the acting president of Ben-Gurion University, Rivka Carmi, a genetics professor herself, specifically to research genetic diseases among the Bedouins. Its research has helped establish Israel as an important center for the study of genetic diseases among inbred peoples.

One of the main challenges facing the researchers is how to reach out to the people affected in a culturally sensitive way.

Bedouins are known for their pride and privacy, and illness is associated with weakness and a loss of family honor. The stigma of disease causes some families to balk at the idea of testing.Muslim religious leaders have been drafted to help educate the members of the group about genetic problems, speaking out about the dangers of marrying relatives and increasing awareness of genetic testing and counseling. The imams also let families know that under Islam a woman can abort a fetus up to four months for health reasons.

"We are trying to convince people that to do a test is in their best interest," said Jomah al-Zodeah, 36, an imam in the Bedouin town Rahat. He and his two wives, cousins from either side of his family, recently had their blood tested by Dr. Elbedour.

Mr. Zodeah knows the toll of genetic disease; several children in his own extended family have died young.

Among the genes the Israeli genetics lab has identified is the one that caused Moshira and Salame's devastating disease. For years the children's parents, cousins who are both carriers of the gene that causes the illness, struggled over the decision of whether or not to have more children.

Just over two years ago they decided to take a chance. They had a baby girl who is free of the disease. Now pregnant again, their mother, Gazia, 30, was able for the first time to receive a prenatal test that determined the fetus she is carrying is indeed healthy. In her modern and immaculate home, Gazia has just finished feeding Moshira and Salame a liquid lunch through a plastic syringe. She muses on the better lives genetic research might bring.

"I hope everyone will have healthy children," she said.

Newsletter #5 - Culture Shock in the Details

Dear Family and Friends,

There is a point, when living in a culture that is not ones own, that one comes to feel a certain amount of dis-ease with ones surroundings. For some, this point happens upon arrival and for others it takes months or years to develop. For me, in regards to Israel, it happened before I left the U.S. While the Stimac in me excels at creating confrontation when I think it is necessary, I am generally too sensitive to conflict to search out situations and people where I know it is common. Even the little I knew about Israel before moving here indicated that this was a place of conflict, a land where I would be engulfed daily by history that wasn’t precisely mine and war that I could not understand.

Writing about culture shock when living in the Middle East takes on far more dimensions than it did in West Africa. Here I must walk a careful line between reporting my experiences and seeming to take sides in a conflict that has spanned decades, if not centuries. I have already raised the hackles of several new Israeli acquaintances by expressing my distress at hearing bombers fly out of Be’er Sheva on their way to Gaza every couple of nights. I am not on the side of the extremists inside Gaza that are launching missiles in the general direction of Israeli towns. However, I cannot say I am really in support of Israel’s choice to bomb the general population of Gaza in return.

Here is what I know from my own five senses:

-My culture shock is directly in relationship to Jewish (practicing and secular) Israelis, as that is who I am surrounded by every day. It is not political to say that I find them abrupt, loud and argumentative…even rude. It’s simply how I find them. It is a frequent occurrence for me to find myself walking down the sidewalk toward two people (of any age and gender) who are apparently having a loud and rude argument and then to find that they were simply discussing how much they like the weather today. It is disconcerting to a woman who is largely used to her family being the loudest people around.

- Customer service frequently seems non-existent here which doubles the anxiety related to ordering sliced extra-sharp cheddar, in Hebrew, in the deli.

-My school was founded by Zionist Orthodox Jewish Israelis. Or would it be Orthodox Jewish Zionist Israelis? It has been implied (but never directly said) that our school is a part of the Jewish Zionist movement. In any case, our mostly American and Canadian student-body is apparently thought to be indicative of the high level of the concern that Israel has for the International Community. This to me seems ironic, since the only Israelis in the program are of American origin and want to keep living in Israel after school. Also, there is not similar international focus in the Israeli medical school next door. What is more, most Israelis that I speak with (medical students and otherwise) think I am crazy for wanting to work in the developing world, that I am just kidding myself and will surely go home and stay in America where I “won’t want to leave once you are making $200,000 per year,” this last part being a direct quote from the doctor that took me on our first clinical rounds in the pediatric emergency room this past week.

-Many of the administrative staff and some of our professors (but certainly not all) seem totally unconscious of the derision in their tone when they speak of any non-Jewish populations in the Negev. Many of them are genuinely trying to be open-minded toward the huge variety of communities that receive care at Soroka Hospital. But there is a larger pattern in their tone and word choice that I find troubling.

-Driving through the Judean Desert in the West Bank makes me wonder what everyone is fighting over. It’s a desert…. Not a very pretty one… I know it is so much more complicated than that, but the thought persists nevertheless.

-I am stared at all the time. This one is weird. In Africa the staring was not hard to figure out… I was, and still am, white. Most people there are not. In Israel though, this is puzzling. I have enough Eastern European blood to fit right in here, especially in Be’er Sheva, which has a huge immigrant population. Israelis mostly dress like a combination of Europeans and American/Canadians so my clothing shouldn’t stand out. Many young Israelis walk around with ipods in their pockets, so even that shouldn’t make me strange enough for a long stare… AND, when asked, most Israelis I have spoken with say that it is quite rude to stare! However the staring is so persistent that, earlier today, when sitting in a café, studying Immunology, someone walked in and didn’t stare and I was convinced they were American…

-A fact that I may have failed to mention before or that I probably down-played: Gaza is 30 miles from my home. What does this mean? Well, to begin with it does not mean that I am in any danger. But it does mean that Israeli Army Helicopters regularly (at least a couple times weekly) land next to our classrooms and bring in the wounded and dying from the continued conflict in that not too distant place. My classmates and I watch them unload from our desks… Recently, an Israeli friend of mine explained that it is easy not to worry about the conflict that is 30 miles away, but that one is only really concerned if bombs are going off in one’s own town. This I find extremely strange. I found the conflict in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon distressing from half a world away. I cannot help but feel it is more so from a distance of 30 miles. And yet average Be’er Sheva residents act as if nothing is going on. Truly. If there was an armed conflict going on 30 miles from your home, what would you do? Would you protest? Would you join the armed forces? Would you put all of your energy towards a peace process? Would you go on a Gandhian-like hunger strike? Or would you go about your life in the normal way? I cannot help feeling like I should do something… but what? As my father pointed out, I am here on the good graces of the Israeli government. And now I have an Israeli visa in my passport which makes travel to nearly any other Middle Eastern country a real problem.

On the counter side of culture shock are these points:

-The aforementioned café is lovely and is only two blocks from my house. The owner knows me and likes to help with my Hebrew. He makes this incredible brown bread with lots of nuts and seeds on top that is so good I do not feel like it is healthy.

-Shabbat brings this alluring quiet to everything. Fewer people drive, shops are mostly closed and children play in the streets. There is a sense of not quite peace, but real calm, that descends and pervades even my most stressed weekend studying.

-I did my first patient interview today!

-Thanksgiving is tomorrow. My class is having a huge dinner together, complete with a table of kosher food so our religious Jewish classmates can join us. I am excited for Thanksgiving… for the food and the community.

-I will be home for Christmas a month from today.

All my love,
K

Halloween

Just a couple of pictures from a MSIH Halloween Party a couple of weeks ago...
















Three guesses at who I was... As for the rest of these crazies, from left to right, A as Steve Zissou, R as Ginsburg, V as a cat, myself, I as "God's gift to women" (his costume was lost by this point in the evening), C as Bombs over Baghdad and, down in front, C, as Goose, missing his (better?) other half.





















Two of my favorite members of the Class of '10, C and A came (I think) as TivTam... the local, non-kosher grocery store where all the employees speak Russian and are usually mildly grumpy.















Myself, E as Maverick (the better half of Goose?) and Bombs of Baghdad...





















Waltzing with "Steve Zissou"......

My Favorite Tea

S & A! Thank you so much for sending my favorites. Your package was a huge bright spot in my week!

Access at Home

I finally have internet access at my apartment so if anyone wants to call me using Skype ('cause it's free!) I'll be online a lot whenever I'm home!

Overdue Thank-You Notices

A - Thank you so much for my first package and great coffee and music! A woman couldn't ask for a better cousin!

Mom and Pop - I know I already said it, but thank you again for sending just what I need when I need it!

J, C, J, M & E - You ladies are the best kind of friends. It is amazing how much it lifted my week (a couple of weeks ago! yikes!) to receive a package from five women who obviously know me well and love me! You are the best! That package was amazing!

A & R - You're going to be annoyed but I haven't had a chance to become a Grey's Anatomy addict yet... I'll work on it as soon as my Cell and Molecular Bio quiz is over on Sunday!

Kitsap County - Thank you for sending my ballot in a timely manner. ;)

You are all the best! If anyone else is interested in sending some material love my way... I'm going through the coffee and tea like a flash... and please don't forget to mark the package as "personal items/gifts" of less that $50 value as the import taxes in Israel can be astonishingly high for items of higher value than $50.

My Apartment

Where I live:




The kitchen...




















The Living Room...














The Dining Room... these first three are also all the same room.


















My room....




















My desk...






















My closet... because I know you were all concerned...

Too Much Fun

For those of you who think I'm having too much fun in Israel.... this is how I spend most of my evenings and weekends:

Yep... it's pretty exciting.

Camping at the Kinneret (a.k.a. The Sea of Galilee)

The weekend of Yom Kippur we had a four day weekend so I joined seven of my classmates and a friend of one of theirs from home and went to northeast Israel. We spent the first night just north of the Kinneret at Yehudiya (I don't have any pictures of the campground) where the next morning we hiked a beautiful slot canyon... part of the hike required swimming the trail... we had a great time! We spent the second night right on the Kinneret which was also beautiful but not quite as mystical as my mind had somehow built it up to be... there were lots of windsurfers and parasailers...

Group at the start of our slot canyon hike.















S and A on the trail.
















The guys...





















The ladies....





















S and I in one of the pools.





















C and N in the back (having gone back to find the hat I dropped....)
















Group climbing down into one of the pools





















Group in one of the waterfalls....














View of old (ancient??) town we hiked through earlier in the day.





















Sunset over the Kinneret





















Me eating pasta fron a jar... the car with the utensils had gone on a water run...






















The guys in the Kinneret sunset...





















S and I during our late night swim...
















The next morning we were all a little tired but....
















N made breakfast and we headed home....