Paris

So I am in Paris!! At first it did not look any different than any other city but today I will lug my bag into the heart of the city and explore the sites.
I am sad to leave the farm, the kids were so cute and Eve and Filip were so nice and we just had a really nice time. i dont think i would ever decide to become a farmer but their life is very picturesque; where they live is beautiful, they can get so much of what they need off their own land, they have lots of friends who come over all the time, they spend a lot of time with their kids. but it is a rough life, they work ALL the time and they always have to worry about money and priductivity.
anyway, i stayed at a hostel last night which i had never done before and was super weird but it was just me and another girl, who now i cant remember her name; she was canadian and had also been doing organic farming in france, in corsica, so it wasnt that weird to sleep in a room with a total stranger. the hostel was actually very nice, good job ariela who recommended it except the deafening noise because the room faced the street, oh well.
well, my time is running out on the internet so i'm off into the city.

so then we left

so we left the farm
we had to have one of those super awkward talks where you tell someone you hate them but try to make it seem like its about something else; maybe thats not a common conversation, i guess we were kind of breaking up with them.

we wanted to say: we hate you, you are annoying, you need to treat us better than hired help, i will not pick up rocks anymore, it was a mistake to come here (maybe less harsh than that)

we said: it is a health hazard to be here, ariela will die if we stay (or just the health hazard part), its ima and abbas fault because they said we have to leave, we wanted to pick lavander and make jam, sorrryyyyy

wow, i am glad that is over. i am also glad that we made friends with their cleaning lady who is 24 and she let us stay with her the night. she lives in a big house with 9 people and we had a little bonfire party and it was really nice. especially nice not to stay at the farm after THE TALK.
we spent thursday taking the french trains north and arrived in montlucon in the afternoon and wondered how we would find the family. but we spotted them, a woman with two little kids all dressed in farm clothes which are not any different than kibbutz clothes.

sooo new farm. Eve, Filip (which i managed to call pierre for a few days), marius 6 who i called maurice until he whispered to his mother to correct me; and sarah 3 who we have to befriend every morning before she will talk to us.
super super cute family who works REALLY hard on their farm with lots of vegetables. we pick potatoes, beans, lots of tomatoes; plant strawberries and leaks and turnips.

but it is so different than baume rousse. we live in a room in their house, eat every meal with them which takes an hour and a half each time and goes like this: breakfat 8:30, lunch 2:30, dinner 9;30 its a little unusual. we help cook and clean and watch the kids sometimes, we are basically let in as a part of the family; what a nice change.

there have been lots of visitors; eves sister and her two screaming kids who we lost marius and sarah to, they couldnt talk to us with all the excitement of their cousins; eves mother and father and stepfather; and friends-soon-to-be-business partners and thei baby paul. lots of people lots of excitement.

some shit happened

ok so the farm actually sucks
basically early saturday morning ariela got stung by a wasp/hornet and got hives everywhere and went into anaphylactic shock (spelling?). it was bad and not fun and too intense but there were all these doctors staying in the B and B on the property who came to help (with homeopathic medicine they tried to heal her with doing pressure points on her ear..? but that is besides the point). basically lots of shit and the ambulance and fire department came- like 9 people crowding around her with an IV and a AED (AED? cant remember of CPR righ now) and oxygen mask and they rushed her to the hospital in an ambulance. she is fine now after 2 hospital visits and a new epipen to carry everywhere but woah. hello french healthcare.

ok, basically that escalated out idea that we arent very happy here. not only because of the wasps but because the couple didnt really care that it was all happening- they even refused to pick ariela up from the hospital because it was too late. they also are very distant; we have to eat breakfast and dinner alone and its just us working and they give us a place to stay. plus the work is all weeding and picking up rocks from a rock field and just not that fun.
anyway, ariela has had amazing wwoofing experiences and she says this isnt the way it should be- we should want to stay longer rather than not be able to wait to leave- so now we are looking for other plqces to go. we may not be able to go anyway but we will at least try. i am not that crazy about farms but i dont want to come away from this thinking farms suck and so does wwoofing.....
anyway; updates will follow

The list of things Noa did even though she did not want to

So ive tried to be very flexible; anyone who knows me knows this is hard for me and that if i dont want to do something i wont or at least not with a smile on my face (cue for my mother to laugh)
so here is a list of things i did even though in normal life i would never do
1. ate melon twice- twice!
2. ate zucchini
3. picked up rocks in a rock field
4. peed on myself- lets explain. i was stung by a wasp and the guy at the farm said very seriously that i had to pee on it. awesome. we wont go into details but lets just say dont try this at home; get some cortisone cream or something
5. hiked

Farmer Noa

So i havent written in a while, its becoming a trend, but i read some peoples blogs who wouldnt update for months so i will say im pretty good; some people (ehem rachel) are just crazy and manage to write every day but i cannot match that skill

anyhoo, the family had a lovely stay on the beach of tossa del mar of costa brava, spain. we relaxed a lot and tanned a lot and wwent to barcelona which was amazing. definitely the most impressive city weve been to with something to see on every corner; lots of tiles and colors and gaudi. ima and ariela bought horrendous matching dresses at desigual but they will tell you they are amazing.

then we had to part and ima and abba and aidan drove to paris to fly home and dropped off ariela and i at the farm. bye aidan! i wont see him until january which is the longest weve been apart (except of course the 5 years before he was alive) so tears were shed; well not really but he has really matured this summer so he actually said he would miss us.

so farm life. its very picturesque. drome; the area we are in is beautiful and tthe farm is super cute. we do lots of jobs like pick onions and potatoes and plums; make jam which i love, weed; water plants and such. its very farmer work and not the funnest but nice because we get food and shelter in exchange- a good trade i would say

Now I live in a castle

we have arrived in southern france in a town named Siorac en Perigord.we drove 14 miserable hours from belgium through horrible traffic inparis (but i saw the top of the eiffel tower- go me) but we are here. everything in this region of france looks like it has been untouched for 300 years. there are roads and telephone poles but otherwise itcould be the middle ages. everything is stone and terracotta roofs and hilly and green. when you look up the mountains you can see huge chateaus (ie. big houses) and castles on the top. real castles, its a little crazy because this is really where battles used to happen andthe knights and the princess in the tower- okay maybe i'm exagerating a little, but still.we walked up to a castle last night that dated back to 1354. if you'vebeen to israel you can understand the idea of being somewhere thatlived through history, but coming from america my house was only built in 1982 so you can imagine the difference. it just always amazes methat these places still exist and in the same conditions they wereonce in and were not just destroyed to make room for a new generationand a walmart. besides the computer i am typing on and this plasticchair it could be 1734- well maybe

moi no parles frances?

July 29
we left amsterdam today after seeing my second cousin fabian and his new baby and wife Ana. everyones english is impecable as is most peoples in amsterdam. all in all the netherlands are pretty fabulous. the countryside is very green and flat and picturesque with the old housesand windmills and cows you see in postcards. amsterdam is veryhappening and just a beautiful city overall. there isnt an ugly cornerin the whole city; everything is built around the canals with oldbrick homes and rooftop gardens and just a very clean city.
being in brussels in a good comparison because brussels is less nice but there are more sights to see- museums and monuments and big,elaborate architecture. amsterdam has less big attractions but a more livable vibrant city.

i am now in the house of my mothers second cousin, Sophie, and her daughter,Celine, which i guess is my third cousin. we are here meeting Boubi's cousin with whom she was in hiding during the holocaust. She gave us instructions to go to leuze; a town in the belgiancountryside where my grandmother; her mother and some cousins were inhiding. my grandmothers cousin said there is nothing to see becausethe house they were staying in is gone, so just Abba, Ima, and Aidan went.
Back to my second/ third cousins. they invited us over to their house to stay for the night and Ariela and i went. now they speak no english and i do not speak any french besides "bonjour" and "merci". Ariela speaks french and we made an agreement that she would translate in france and i wouldtranslate when we get to spain. unfortunately this meant that theywould say something in french and she would translate to me in englishand back and forth- it was exhausting. next time i will try to learn some french.

Hallo! That means hello in Dutch- woah!

So I failed to write, big surprise, but it has been mostly because we haven't had internet. So I'll take us back in time to July 23....

We arrived in amsterdam on thursday. i flew, separately from the rest of the family which was sad, and had a stopover in iceland. we landed in reykjavik at about 3 am but it was completelysunny and bright. i tried to stay awake so could see the view from the window when the plane took off but i kept falling asleep, so the only thing i can say is that iceland is cold, oh well.
when i got to amsterdam i was met by ima at the train station- thank god because i had no idea where i was going despite abba's 20 page trip overview handout. She took me to Ima's cousins' (Ami and Ina) house downtown which is really nice and cozy. after wwii, Zayde moved to the US while his sister Rozie moved to the Netherlands so the family is fully dutch. i have met them a few times before but it is weird and cool to have these relatives who can show us aroundthe city and translate. we have been walking around amsterdam which is really nice andeuropean. the architechture is very pretty and old and eveything looks so cute. there is so much history to this place that everything looks like a castle or old palace.i t definitely feels very foreign anddifferent- everyone is blonde for one and speaking dutch- but everyone rides bikes or tiny smart cars, and everyone is so friendly, unlikenew england.this week we are biking arond the countryside which although i am pretty sick is really nice because it is so flat.