3/6/2011-3/8/2011: Israel museum, volunteering, Samir's

On Sunday, we had our weekly tiyul day, we started the day at the Bnei Akiva offices in Jerusalem for a seminar about synagogues and how they get started, so we had to design and synagogue. What it would be called, how the rooms building would be set up, activities offered, what adjectives would we want it to be described as. Our group of 5 made a synagogue called New Generation in Hebrew, our synagogue had two floors one was a banquet hall and kitchen for parties and bnei mitzvot; our second floor had a large prayer hall the altar was on a circular stage and on the women's side the kid's play room was attached so that the children wouldn't disturb the people praying, it was a pretty great setup. After that, we had lunch and then we were scheduled to leave the BA offices at 1:15pm but of course since Israel usually runs on Jewish Standard Time (the scheduled time in always 20-30 minutes later in JST), so we didn't leave until about 1:40pm, we were headed for the Israel museum where we had a tour scheduled for 1:30pm so we didn't start until probably 2pm. So that was just peachy because if any of you have ever been, seen or heard about the Israel museum, it's massive it like the Israeli Louvre. We were meant to have like a good 2-3 hours at the Israel museum, which still is barely enough but at least we could've gotten to see a lot. Thankfully we had an awesome tour guide who took us to the important parts of the museum that were really what we were there to see, a lot of the people in the group have been to the Israel museum multiple times and have "been there, done that" but I found seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls, statues of the kings, artifacts and the model of Jerusalem depicting the city during the second temple period, I found it really interesting and just the vast collection the museum has specifically on its own history, shows how much has happened on this small piece of land. We had a half hour of free time to check out the museum for ourselves so I went to look through all the artifacts from other countries that this museum has to offer, there are artifacts from the Americas, Eskimos, Native Americans, China, Africa, Oceania, it was amazing to see such a vast collection of artifacts from so many different places in just one country's museum. After two hours at the museum we continued on the bus to Mevasseret Zion to volunteer for World Hesed (kindness) Day, half of us went to one place and the other went to another, the gist of our volunteering was to go to different youth hostels where underprivileged, special needs and people who have had a hard life and need a safe place to stay, we went to visit these people for Rosh Chodesh Adar and cheered them up, played bingo with them gave them face paint all in the spirit of Purim. The group I was in went to the hostel with the special needs people, they are all so sweet and it was really rewarding to cheer them up even if it was just for an hour. We then went home at 6:30pm had to get some groceries for the week, make dinner and eat dinner then I went straight to sleep at 11pm. Monday morning we went to our volunteering jobs and came back for lunch, after that we had ulpan, we then had a meeting about an idea the madrichim have, to make a Purim shuk/carnival at the Ethiopian youth center in Lod next week, we have to split into groups of 4 and come up with an idea for a stand, our group of just Americans is doing that classic game of having bigs jars of candy and the people having to guess what the correct amount of candy is in the jar and whoever guesses correctly wins a prize or maybe wins the jar of candy, we'll see how that goes. That night my boyfriend's dad invited my boyfriend and I to tag along with his program from Kansas City to a dinner in their sister city Ramla. We went to a place called Samir's the restaurant serves classic middle eastern food like hummus, shish kebabs, falafels etc, the owner (Samir) is a friend of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, so when people from Kansas City come to Israel they always eat in Ramla at Samir's. the dinner we had was big and complex, there was a guy who is involved in the distribution of Israeli wine internationally, consults vineyards about their wines, also produces wine himself, the chef made a dinner that was served in four courses, appetizer, second course, main course and dessert and each course was paired with a different wine. It was a delicious dinner appetizers were olive bread, pitas, zatar, hummus with warm chick peas, onion jam all was great the appetizer was paired with a really nice Chardonnay, the second course was rice and lentils, stuffed vegetables (grape leaves, carrots, squash), roast potatoes, and falafels with tehina the second course was paired with a Bordeaux. The main course was lamb chops, shish kebabs, Nile perch and roast chicken stuffed with rice and fruit, the main course was paired with a Cabernet Sauvignon. There wasn't enough time because of their schedule to have dessert paired with the dessert wine which was fine we still got some delicious baklava for the road which was really nice. We went home to Lod, me and my boyfriend watched some of 'Milk' which is an awesome movie if you haven't watched it, check it out. Tuesday, we had another morning of volunteering we discovered that we actually don't have to come to school on Tuesday until 10am not 9am so I think we'll remember that for next week. We had a especially boring day we were in the computer room for about 2 hours and then we had one hour to work with the students on their argumentative essays and then we decided that it wasn't worth staying for another hour to play on the computers so we asked to leave, and we called the cabs and went home for lunch. After lunch we had a shiur about Purim to which my German friends from the German Bnei Akiva group went to which was awesome because I've missed them a lot after that we had free time, pancakes for dinner and some more free time that I spent watching family guy, finally finished 'Milk' which took about 3 nights to watch, then I went to sleep, got a semi-early night at midnight.