Israeli girls and the Bamboo River Raft

After riding the elephants, which was so worth the experience, we had lunch with the girls from Israel and then got on bamboo river rafts in groups of four. the holland couple really wanted us to ride with them, but so did the israeli girls. thankfully, the thai tour guide just assigned us and we ended up riding with the israeli girls. we didn't have to paddle the boat or anything, there were thai men doing that, which was more like them holding a long bamboo stick and pushing off the shallow river bottom the whole way. all the rafts were close to each other so we could talk across the river to each other. i said this is like huck finn or tom sawyer or something. the girls from israel turned around and said, "yes." i was shocked that they read american literature and they were like "of course." i had to tell them that i knew a song in jewish from my childhood. they were so excited and wanted me to sing it. let me see if i can spell this one out... "shalom javarim, shalom javarim, shalom, shalom... la hitraoh, la hitraoh, shalom... shalom." they totally knew the meaning of the words in hebrew but had never heard the song. i can't believe i taught them a jewish song! they were so shocked that i would know it. they asked if i was Jewish. I told them, no, i'm a christian. they asked why would i learn that then. i told them that my christian school taught it to me when i was little. it means something like "hello friends" the girls told me. i told them that jews and christians are friends so it's okay to learn that and in fact, our old testament is their torah, so it's natural. well, that was my reasoning at least.

other rafts started singing. then our raft started to sing, "row, row, row your boat." hilarious! you should have seen the thai men who were paddling and their reactions. they laughed and kept saying, "more, more."
we didn't really have anymore songs to sing, so that was about it. one thai man found out that the girls were from israel, so he made the motion of a machine gun and started making the sound effects for lack of speaking english. honestly, i couldn't believe he did that. it was so true, though, unfortunately nowadays. the girls joked back and said, "no, we are really nice people." one girl got up and took the bamboo stick from him as if she was going to push him in the water. i yelled, "sang kran!" it was fun! talk about a peaceful, lazy river rafting experience. it was so serene.