At the end of your Succot vacation when your thirteen year old is about to have a meltdown looking at the long 6 month stretch of serious yeshiva learning that lies ahead, and he thinks his vacation wasn't packed with enough action, well, you go against your own grain and do whatever it takes to send him off to yeshiva happy, especially if he is your baby and a bit on the young side to be away from home! What am I babbling about? First of all, I am generally not in favor of water sports that involve fast boats and noise to put it politely, I am the kayaking, sailing, canoeing kind of gal. Parenting teens always involves compromises however, so last week I put all that aside in order to take a little trip to The Sea of the Gallilea so that a fast boat could pull my son along as he clung dearly to an inflated mattress. I do believe this is called "tubing" and yes, my daughter and I did ride along on the boat, and yes this little outing involved lots of adventure as we first missed the bus, then got on the wrong bus in Tiberius, and were entirely sure the tubing place had closed, but in fact not, and we even waited around and found some other boys to accompany my son on the raft. After the action we walked across the street and up the hill to pray at the gravesite of Rebbe Meir Baal HaNess, a very holy site.
The end of the story? My son went off to yeshiva happy and did exceptionally well on their first test, when 3/4 of the class actually got low scores. Now i really have no idea whether this was due to the fast boat, the prayers or something else altogether, but I can say I did my part.......ah yes and we even literally ran to catch the bus back home! Care to join me for a little spin on the lake, come along.......
Lovely mountains rising from the lake, never quite sure if this is Jordan or The Golan Heights, and where the border is, so it is one or the other. Are we ready?
Okay boys, lets get this party started!
That would be the holy city of Tiberius (we call it Tiveria) in the background.
Lovely pink tinted mountains as the sun begins to set.
A fun time was had by all, and now I'm wondering how those other 2 boys did on their first tests back in yeshiva? Funny thing is, they came along randomly but we actually know the father of one of them as my husband and boys buys their suits in the father's store......so now I can be nice and email him some of these photos!
Ah yes, and of course we were in one of Israel's four Holy Cities, so we also added a spiritual note to our adventure by crossing the street, walking up a steep hill and visiting the tomb of Rebbi Meir Baal HaNess, which is actually a huge complex visited by many. Tubing and tombing, and that folks is life is Israel!