Last week of seminary, winter break and start of sarel

The last week of seminary basically consisted of lots of packing,cleaning and goodbyes. We started the week with our last shiurim with our teachers, Tuesday night we went to a musical on the life of Devorah the judge. The musical was performed by religious women their troupe is called "Raise your Spirits" they formed during the Second Intifada to perform biblical stories by religious women performed only for other women. It really was a great production and I was impressed by the talent in the area around our seminary. Wednesday was dedicated solely to packing up our rooms as well as cleaning our cabins (if they can be considered cabins). After cleaning all day, we went to Gush Etzyon winery for a farewell banquet with the girls and most of our teachers. The Rosh Midrasha pointed out to me, approximately a thousand times that I had perfect attendance for the morning Seders, he was very impressed by that, made me proud that my hard work was appreciated by someone else. After sad goodbyes wednesday night, thursday morning we said goodbye to our Migdal Oz home and set off to our various destinations for the winter break. As we sat on the bus waiting to leave, all of the stray cats were sitting outside the cabins, like they were waving goodbye to us, it made my day, it would've been great if just one rose a paw like a wave. When we got to Jerusalem, eight of us heading to Netanya got on a shirut to our respective locations there. When the five of us got to our friend's flat, after we got ourselves organized in the rooms we were staying in for Shabbat and the week for some of us; four of us got in a taxi to go to the supermarket for groceries for the week. The next day we received 2 more guests to stay for Shabbat, we had a lovely dinner with chicken and soup, a lot of gossiping about our groups and the drama involved. Saturday morning, Christmas morning came in the Israeli/Jewish fashion, treeless, snowless, but we did have plenty of christmas music playing in the house. The weekend was normal Shabbat activities, hanging around the house, not doing much for the day. When Sunday morning showed up the Shabbat activities kind of continued the rest of the week, I left the flat only twice for six days until thursday when our friend's mom came to the flat to visit from England and also surprised her by bringing her older brother who our friend hadn't seen for seven months, was a really cute moment and we were all really happy and teary from their reunion. Thursday night I left to go to the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv to meet my boyfriend, after I met him from his bus coming from Eilat we continued to our Shabbat location, my stepmom's cousins who live close to Rehovot. We had a really lovely weekend and really enjoyed being with them, they have the biggest hearts of gold and the highest hospitality level and it was even hard to get a dish to the sink before getting scolded to sit back down. Sunday morning I started a new adventure of going to volunteer for the army in a program called Sarel, on this program we are sent to an army base and do the tedious little jobs that the soldiers don't have the time to do. In the last week we have done a lot of tedious tasks like painting signs and boxes, cleaning different equipment like stretchers and canteens, polishing boots, folding and sorting through sweaters, all the little and tedious jobs that the soldiers in the warehouse don't have the time for. I find this volunteer work rewarding, although it doesn't seem like much help to the army for us to clean a bunch of stretchers or organize sweaters but it helps to some degree when they have all those little tasks done so the soldiers don't have to worry about them. This weekend I'm heading to my dad's cousins who live in Renana until Sunday when I have to go back to the base in the morning. I'll be volunteering at the base from Sunday to Thursday when we go to our new locations in Netanya and Lod to volunteer while the remainder of our group are either doing army basic training and Magen David Adom volunteering