How do you say "Namaste" in Hebrew?

As my sister-in-law Amy recently became a certified yoga and unknowingly inspired me to try it out. So yesterday I went to my first ever yoga class. (I'm not counting the McDonald's yoga DVD I tried once, I don't think McDonald's qualifies as yoga.)

I was supposed to walk or lightly jog a little less than a mile to get to the class and when I realized it was more like a two mile run (in 90* weather) I started to realize this may be a wee bit more difficult than I anticipated. The studio was in a basement on a very hip street and the instructor spoke English. Unlike my McDonald's DVD which is very calm and pleasant sounding, this instructor went pretty fast and sounded a bit like a depressed/bored secretary.

About 20 minutes into the class, as my friend and I are balancing like a stork on one foot with our bodies flat and perpendicular, tucking our chins down to look at our back foot, do we notice a great big beetle crawling towards our mats. I giggle as the beetle heads the other way annoying the yoga expert in front of me. Oops. 5 minutes later he returned. I quietly tip-toed to the back of my room to grab my shoe (you do yoga barefoot) and quietly brushed the bug away from our mats, careful not to interrupt the class. WHACK! Okay - so I interrupted the class but the bug was dead. Namaste.

The class continued well and with about 20 minutes left the expert in front of me looked back - I think to make sure I was still alive as I hadn't interrupted her recently. Lucky for me the pose the instructor had just told us to do was a stretch I've been doing since 6th grade before every soccer game or practice. Who's the expert now!?! Well she trumped me five minutes later when everyone was standing on their head and balancing on their elbows...that was a bit beyond my skill level.

Jen's First Sandstorm

"It's a bad one out there," says an elder colleague as he exits the office. "What?" replies Jen, confused at the thought of less than perfect weather in Tel Aviv. "The sandstorm, it's a bad one," he clarifies. Jen runs to the window to see a haze over the city. It's the end of the world!!

Khamsin (with the harsh "H" at the beginning) is a sandstorm produces when winds kick up the sand in Africa (Egypt) and blow them towards the Mediterranean Sea. The sand is then carried thousands of miles until it blows West onto the shores where we found it in Tel Aviv this week.

Because my image of a sandstorm prior to this was either a.) winds blowing sand into your face in the desert or b.) my brother throwing sand at me, I'll explain what it was like: The sky was a yellowish-gray color like something from a movie about the apocalypse, the beach was deserted and few people were outside. (I purposely did not play with the colors or blur on the photo so you could see exactly what it looked like. This is well before sunset. The buildings are .5 miles away)

When you walked outside you were greeted by the finest mist of sand almost unnoticeable except for the grind you start to feel in your teeth and the sand collecting in your shoes. (Think of magic ferry dust.) The sand was most noticeable on the cars which looked like they had just passed under a bridge and sand/cement splatter on them. Before we could pull out of our parking spot we had to turn on the windshield wipers - but instead of water dripping off, the sand was pushed aside. At home our "garden" plants were doing better than we'd expected, but the balcony floor had a light coating of sand.

The temperature was the same and you didn't feel or hear the sand falling, but the eerie color of the sky, the grit in your mouth and the light covering of sand on everything really looked like the end of the world. But don't worry- it is sunny with a high of 75 today. I think we'll be okay.