Dec 20, 2015

Weekly Update 10: Dead Sea

I met a lot of friends this week, and I also had a good week at work, so it felt pretty good overall.

My work load had reduced from the week before and I had fewer calls/meetings. I met some friends for lunch hour during work and I would generally just come home after work to chill. I'm not the most social person when the weather gets colder, so I wasn't super interested to socialise or go out.

At the end of the week, Aileen and I visited our Israeli family in Rehovot (a suburb 20 minutes away from Tel Aviv)! A few weeks ago, we'd met someone through couchsurfing who invited us over to her house in Rehovot, and since then we've been in touch with her and her family. While she was travelling in India (infact she met my family there), we visited her family in Rehovot this weekend and then took a trip to the dead sea with them. Aileen and I hadn't been to the dead sea yet, so this was our first time!

For those of you who don't know the dead sea is one of the saltiest water body on earth and its Earth's lowest elevation on land. One of Israel's main sources of incomes is the minerals it mines from the dead sea (which has affected the water levels of the dead sea over time).

The beach that we visited of the dead sea had hot springs around it as well, so after going in the dead sea and floating there for a bit (since it's so salty in the dead sea, you just float there), we sat in the hot springs (which had mud underneath that's considered really good for the skin). My skin was quite itchy because of the salt, but it was such a unique experience to go there and I didn't really mind the itchiness!

This coming week is my last week here before I fly back home for the rest of winter. But as I mentioned in last week's blog post, I'm going to come back here in March for the spring semester at IDC (a university not far from Tel Aviv). I really like Israel and i feel like I haven't had enough of it just yet. So I want to stay longer and learn more about it. While I'm sad to leave my Tel Aviv apartment, and the company I was interning at, I'm so glad I got the chance to be here, and I'm even more glad that I get the chance to come back. It's also quite nice to visit home in India. It's been a year since I was there, and I haven't seen most of my friends and family since then! I wish I also got to see my friends in Singapore, but that will need to wait unfortunately.

Pictures later!

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