He was up around 6:30. He nursed and played baby with Carly then she got ready to go. We drove her to school as she had her backpack for the trip. As she got out of the car he said a very nice “I love you mama!” to her. But as soon as the door closed he said to me: “Now move.” On the way back he looked out the window and talked about seeing “interesting trees”. We were back at 7:40. We played a lot of the mold and viruses game – at one point he said there were 114 germs growing in him, at another point he said there were books “through your eyes”. He was then a book making machine, making noise and then handing me books: “Here’s 150 books!”
We watered plants, then did another round of ant battling, closing off more cracks around the sliding door, where they have really reemerged. He played Space and drank milk while I did snacks. We then walked up to the recycling cages to do recycling.
Back home, he went to the bathroom, and wanted me to talk as the poop and pee not wanting to go down the drain. He then said “I can’t get out of this fire! I’m burning up!” Which was disturbing, but then a little less so when I realized he was being the garbage in a garbage power plant.
We got in the car and he said “Bye house!” He had the house say bye back, and said it was a “magic house”. We were driving at 10:05. The drive took about two and a half hours and was, thankfully, rather uneventful. It was, however, very interesting and scenic. We liked all the trees that suddenly appear when you head west (we went down 4, then east past Jerusalem on 1, then south along the Dead Sea on 90). There are trees and hills to Jerusalem, then suddenly you are in the desert.
The terrain of the desert was fascinating, and it felt a bit surreal to be driving through a desert, just me and August, and seeing signs for Ramallah, Jericho, and Jerusalem. I saw camels and donkeys, and a sign for a place called Og (which struck me as I loved the book The Secret World of Og as a kid). We drove through one checkpoint along the way, but were waved right through.
August played games on the iPad and paused and looked out at times. He was the one that spotted a flock of very large birds, maybe forty of them. He was also a machine a lot. We arrived at the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve at 12:28. We were meeting the school group there at 3, and just stopped now to get our bearings, stretch, and have a snack. Didn’t really get out, as as we sat there the temperature ticked up to 102. He sat on my lap though in the driver’s seat and we had a snack. The Vampire Weekend song “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” played on the radio and he said “I like this music.” He also looked out and spotted what he thought were dead trees and pointed to them.
We left and headed to the Ein Gedi Botanical Gardens. It turns out the entire kibbutz of Ein Gedi is the botanical gardens and you pay to get in. We stopped and went into the office to buy tickets. They sell seeds and August wanted to buy some. I looked up a couple things but they were too large for our house areas. We drove in and parked and first went to the small zoo at about 1:30. He seemed to be confused by all the dirt on the ground, asking “Where’s all this dirt from though?”
In the zoo we first saw peacocks, then the brown nutman (Nasua narica) – a Latin/South American raccoon. We watched it drink and cool off in the water. We then walked through the rest of the zoo. It was at least 102, and his face was getting quite flushed. He wanted to go to the coffee shop, and that seemed like a good idea. We saw the monkeys and lemurs (one had a baby on its back – don’t think I got a great photo, as they moved so fast, but they got up quite close to us) and several other animals, then made our way back up the stairs, got back in the stroller, and walked north towards the coffee shop. Along the way we looked at several plants and stopped at the lookout over Wadi Arugot. Near the coffee shop we saw the two huge baobab trees and the ficus.
We went to the Baobar coffee shop inside the hotel. He got a lemon mint slushee and I got the coffee one. I was a little afraid he wasn’t going to like it, but he did and drank most of it. He really liked how it was turning to water and talked a lot about that. If he got some on the table he would use his finger to turn it to water. And he said “I think if other animals ate this they would freeze up. It’s way too cold for them…That’s why I don’t let any raccoon drink my slushee.”
We went out and saw the baobabs and ficus some more and the big date palm. He looked at it and said “I see that kind of tree ALL THE TIME.” We had also seen palm farms at the north end of the Dead Sea.
Carly had said they were running a bit late, so we waited until she said they could see the Dead Sea before we left for the Nature Reserve. We caught up to them just as they were starting the hike at 3:20. As we got hiking he was being machines and said “This machine makes new people out of old people.” We hiked up with the school group until there was a part where you had to walk through a tunnel with a stream in it. Carly was nervous about me hiking with August and that was the limit. She continued on with them and we stopped to play in the stream there. It was actually a really cool spot and we would have been quite content to play there. There was a sign and chain keeping us from one part of the stream and he asked why. We talked about what a nature reserve was and about protecting habitat. He was then a machine that seemed to pick up on that: “This machine needs things that would kill the animals and it puts out good things for the animals to eat.” I was in the middle of getting his full explanation on video when Carly and Ayal came back, saying it wasn’t too much further and we should keep going.
So August walked the rest of the way up and we made it to the David Waterfall. Only had about ten minutes there, but August enjoyed it, wading in the water and playing with rocks. The group headed back, going back the way we had come. Ayal suggested we take the other route, the usual route back, which also made more sense to me as it was in the shade. So Carly and I spent a few minutes longer at the waterfall with August then we headed back. We stopped to watch some ibex feeding and saw one jump up to knock down another branch. There was one section that involved steep narrow stairs with big gaps right through the railing to a cliff several feet tall. But we had August walk down them, with me in front and Carly in back, and we made it down to the bottom. Easy after that.
Followed the busses to the Masada Youth Hostel, listening to the Lumineer’s “Dead Sea” on repeat about 5 times (seemed appropriate). We got to the hostel at 5:20. We got room 217 and the keycard didn’t work so Carly went back and got the regular key. August’s soap had leaked out of the bottle, through the plastic bag, and gotten my short and shirts. Luckily, that was it. So I washed those in the sink and Carly took a shower. I had sweated so much the front of my hat was soaked like I’ve never seen it. August played Elmo Look and Find and Music 4 Kids. Carly went out in the hall to supervise the “kiddos” and August went out after a minute to ask her how they were doing: “Are they doing good, medium, or bad?”
We went to dinner at 7. August wanted to try everything and was very excited by all the food. The first meat we’ve had in Israel since the party as we had a chicken pattie thing here. Grace gave him a high five earlier as he was seeing how the kiddos were doing in the hall, and he would continue to get high fives from Grace and other kids throughout the trip. At the end of dinner he lay down on the floor and said he was sleeping.
Went back to the room while Carly went to the drum circle event. He watched Peg + Cat and I gave him a shower. He did a whole dialogue thing on his own with our talking house, with it saying things like “Wait, where’s Zi
nnie?” He looked out the window at the now dark Dead Sea. I turned off the lights inside so we could actually see but he wanted them back on. We talked about how pupils work though and he said “That’s what my eyes are doing with this light?” He continued to look out, but was looking at his own reflection and doing a little dance with his hands.
He said “I think I should read some books.” We read the awful Mickey Mouse book and Sarah and Duck Stay at the Duck Hotel. He then made his first solo phone call to Carly, where I let him do all the talking, telling her “I want to nurse.” She came back from the drum circle and was nursing him to sleep just before 9.
Photos. Ready to go:
Pointing at dead trees:
Sweating at the zoo:
Looking at the date palm:
At the waterfall:
Walking back:
Hot. Very hot:
View from the hostel looking out at the Dead Sea:
High five:
Looking at his reflection:
Comfy while reading:
