The Amazing Race

Tuesday was the start of a special three day program, called the Amazing Race. It's very similar to the TV show where there are teams that find clues and race around to where the clues tell them to go and then the team who wins get a prize. So in our group we had a version of that racing around Israel in 5 teams of 7 with a certain budget meant to take us through the day to our challenges and next clues. We started it all off in Tel Aviv at the beach and our first clue was to find a building with waves on it, so the area close to where we were called the Namal is where all the beach hotels are in Tel Aviv that's where most of the groups headed, we asked someone and they told us about an apartment building that's has architectural waves which was in the opposite direction so we headed that way. Sadly we started second guessing ourselves and headed in the direction the other teams went, then we got a text with a hint saying if you're going towards the hotels that's wrong you should be going to a building with architectural wave, hence the building we were at in the beginning but then doubted. We had walked a long time in the wrong way for a long time so we had to find a short route through Tel Aviv to get there faster. Once we got to the apartment building we had to look for an envelope with our next clue, go to the Carmel Market, since we messed up and went all through Tel Aviv we knew how to get to the Carmel Market very quickly and got there only second, we got our task for the Market which was to negotiate trading a pen for something worth at least 40 shekels and we had to film the negotiation with the shopkeepers. It was really funny to see our group try and trade a pen with Israeli shuk sellers but we did the task so our next task we had a choice between two things people or places, our group chose people, that task was to collect 30 people on Rabin Square and take a picture with them. When we finished that task our next one was to go to the place where the Amazing Race show started, we called some people close to computers and found that we had to get to the Ben Gurion Airport. So we took taxis from Rabin square to the train and booked it to the airport. In the clue it said we would meet a friend at the airport and after we all said goodbye to our friend going back to America we found him again at the airport and he had our clue for the next task, the task was to take a picture of an Asian person, a hostess/stewardess, and a pregnant woman so although the pregnant woman seemed to be elusive at the start we got all the pictures and got our next clue. Go to the International Convention Center (ICC) in Haifa, so at 2:56pm we went to the train station and saw the next train to Haifa was at 2:59pm, so we got our tickets in about a millisecond, caught the train within three minutes and were on our way to Haifa. We figured out which stop was closest to the ICC and got off walking distance from the ICC and got there in five minutes after getting off the train. Apparently on the train we were very ahead of everyone else because our rakaz (director) called to say that we should call when we get to Haifa, obviously implying that he wasn't there yet and we needed to wait for him and our madrich. So when we got to the ICC we were expecting one of the madrichim to be there to give us our clue, we did a task via text message to take a picture on one of the stages and we did that in about a second then we waited about 45 minutes for the madrich and also while we were waiting our "enemies" started arriving which was awful because we had a giant head start to everyone else. Finally after what seemed like an eon, our madrich came with our next task to find numbers on palm trees get the sum of them and have a pile of rocks equal to that sum. We finished that pretty quickly because we got to go first because we did the task in order of arrival, our next clue was going to the pitstop, a hostel in Haifa near the ICC. It was great to finish the race first on the first day. The hostel was simple but a lot nicer than we expected it to be, the view was beautiful, the food was pretty good, the showers were hot, comfortable beds, I had no complaints, it's a great place to sleep when you have to wake up kinda early for the next day of the race. Wednesday started off pretty early for the second day of the race, we got up at 8:00am to leave at 8:45am, to pack our backpacks, eat some breakfast and get our clue for our first task of the day. The first task was to count the steps at the Bahai Gardens, we guessed it and we got it right but one of the other teams overtook us in the race and we tried to catch up with them but it was a pretty futile attempt after a while. Our next task was a detour at Dada beach we had two choices, water or fire, fire was to light seven candles with one candle one person at a time going about 20 meters and it was windy so that didn't work because we couldn't even get the first candle lit so we changed to the water task which was kinda messy, we had a dig a hole and have a person in it and be covered in water on the beach so we became like frantic dogs trying to bury a bone we started digging a hole in the sand to put our team mate in. After like an eon of digging we got our teammate buried in water, our next task was to go to the sculpture gardens and find puzzle pieces which was our clue to our next location, the Marina at the Fisherman's Wharf. Then we got on the bus on our way to the Central Bus Station (so we thought...) and waited about 15 minutes until we started talking to some people on the bus who said wait you need to be going the other way, that was bad news seeing as we had just wasted about 15 minutes going the wrong way whilst in a race against four other teams. So we hopped off and hopped back on to a bus going in the right direction. The bus journey to the Central Bus Station took about 45 minutes which was a bit too long and we were all going a little crazy waiting to get there because it was just taking too long. When we got there finally after what seemed like a century we looked for the bus but we missed the one that we wanted so we went to plan B a group taxi (sherut), luckily there was an empty sherut heading to Tiberius waiting there we hopped on but there were only 8 people in the 10 person taxi. We guessed the driver was waiting for two more people so we obliged as we were just happy to be in a sherut going in the right direction, then of course just our luck we saw the purple team come up towards the sherut. Which was really funny because some of our louder teammates started yelling at the driver to go, lets go, begging and pleading then finally the driver sympathized with our urgency. So on our way to Tiberius we went, a pretty long drive but worth being in a sherut because it's about a half hour less than the bus. So we got to the Harbor to the Fisherman's Wharf found our madrich got the task, collect 20 different pamphlets for attractions found our best friend the tourist information and collected the pamphlets pretty quick. So we got our next while overtaking the lime green team and got our next task to go to Rabbi Akiva's grave to get our next clue, the first part of the task was to make the Bnei Akiva symbol from rocks and plants that we could find, second task was to find numbers that were dispersed on books in the bookshelves where the siddurim are kept, all of the girls were so uncomfortable wearing leggings not with skirts in a religious place like that. There were ten books to find which was similar to trying to find a needle in a haystack. It was very uncomfortable because of being in leggings with many religious people there praying. We had some drama because the first group that came was there for an hour looking for books, then our group came found one book after the first group found five then all the other groups started arriving looking for books, we all started yelling about who got the found books next and so we did it by arrival time, all the numbers were a scrambled phone number. The phone number was for a guy who was in a yeshiva right above Rabbi Akiva's grave who asked the groups a few questions about the famous rabbi so we answered and continued to our next task going to an old mikvah near the Fisherman's Wharf to meet our madricha get our leftover money from the day before and got our next clue. To go to our pitstop on the beachfront and saw a couple that visits our group a lot and they had a task for us, to collect a minyan from the gas station area and say the blessing of blossoming trees, so although it was a little awkward we did the task ran back to where we were staying and got second for the second day of the race. That day, we didn't know about where we'd be staying or what else would be happening there besides our group sleeping there. We found that a Bnei Akiva Machane camp for Pesach was going on there so around 4,000 kids were staying there too, which if you can imagine a campground with 4,000 kids it was noisy and we could barely sleep because they were up all night. Our task that night was to find our clue for the next morning, our clue location was in five CDs, where were those five CDs, with five campers of Bnei Akiva out of 4,000 so in some freakish luck that our group had we found our CD really quickly and then ran to the gas station to ask one of the drivers there if we could use their CD player to listen to the clue. Our first location in the morning was to go to a falafel place in Afula where we'd be catching falafels in a pita and each falafel we didn't catch was 2 minutes that we had to wait to go to our next place. So we started figuring our fastest transportation time and how we were going to get ourselves to Afula, we searched egged and then decided to call our friend, Shlomo the sherut guy who drove us around a lot in Tiberius so we thought a shetur right to the falafel place would probably be the fastest option, we got a great deal the first quote was 250 shekels then we called later and he lowered it to 220 shekels which we were thrilled with so then after making our plans for transport we went to sleep. How ever much we could actually with 4,000 kids from Bnei Akiva up all night causing a ruckus and that we were outside and in sleeping but were still freezing cold. When we woke up early in the morning we packed got ourselves ready for the day we had to be ready on time because our sherut was meant to leave the same time we were allowed to start the race so when they opened the gate never have we ran faster to get on the sherut. So after about an hour we got to Falafel Hanasi which boasts having the best falafel and is one of the most famous in Israel. Our first task catching falafels in a pita used a bit like a moving basketball hoop with a bottom, we voted the boy with the best hand eye coordination to catch the falafels, he only missed 5 out of 16 which was really good for having 8 in each pita only missing 2 the first one and 3 for the second one, we were proud of him, the only issue was that meant we had to wait 10 minutes until we could get our next hint to go to our next task, those 10 minutes passed like molasses we were all asking how much time there was left the way an impatient kid asks if "we're there yet?" on a road trip. Our hint asked to buy 7 cups full of sunflower seeds for the next task and go to the central synagogue in Afula, Afula is also known to be the sunflower capital of Israel hence the next task. We got there to find the group ahead of us gave us a barrier of 20 minutes which was awful seeing as we already lost 10 minutes because of the falafels. After the longest 20 minutes ever we could start our task, each team member got a cup of sunflower seeds the goal was to eat that cup of seeds and then fill the cup with the shells and we weren't finished until everyone filled their cups with seeds. After our snack we got our next task to find the thinking soldier which was near the library in Afula we got a clue to our next location that was a code B19, A2, D3, F15, E9 or something like that and the code was for a location in Israel and with something in the area we had to figure it out to go to our next place. We first thought maybe the numbers are library books, maybe map coordinates or something, then our rakaz told us it had to do with soldiers so we looked at the thinking soldier again to see if there were any clues after being there for an hour trying to figure this code out all the other teams started to arrive, so finally with everyone trying to work together we looked at the soldiers memorial with lots of names and dates and finally figured it out and headed our way to Netanya. We ran to the bus station in Afula, saw the bus to Netanya literally sitting about to leave in a few minutes, we all stuffed on to the bus most of us sitting in the aisle of the bus and much to our dismay the lime green team got on the bus as well. I guess the more the merrier, we all laughed in a cruel way because as the bus was leaving the two other teams ran up, and that sucks because the next bus wasn't for another 30 minutes. The bus dropped us off at the end of the street that we needed to be on it just meant we had to walk a long time to get to the main square of Netanya, once we finally got there we saw the madrichot from another year program waiting for us, our task was to earn at least 30 shekels doing a street show and to film it for proof, we saw one of our team member's friends so we sang for them a Bnei Akiva, like I knew the words and her friend gave us 50 shekels which was generous of them. So we ran back to the madrichot and showed them the video and money we earned and they gave us our next clue, to go to the oldest tree in Netanya, the Old Sycamore the task at the tree was to solve a riddle about it. What the tree has in common with our Italian Rakaz, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Moshe Montefiore. We figured out that the Italians planted the tree and I can't actually remember the ret of the answer but we solved it and got our next task to find our madrich in the Netanya for the next task. We found him but it was liking trying to find Waldo, being a nerd we found in a book store, obviously he couldn't have chosen a nerdier hiding place. We had two choices either traditional or modernity, we chose modernity the task was to get 30 signatures on a petition to make all malls into parking structures because malls are a waste of space, according to the other groups the task for the traditional option was to eat a really spicy tuna sandwich. We did it pretty fast thankfully there are always lots of people at the mall in Israel so it didn't take too long. Our task was to go to the last location, aka the finish line the hint was that we started on the beach and were ending on the beach but we were just going to viewpoint near the sea with gardens, we had extra money so we took taxis there we found our rakaz standing there filming us run down this long walkway, it was funny because we didn't see the first place team around so we thought we beat them so we were screaming like no way, oh my god, we won or stuff like that until our rakaz told us we came second, it was a little embarrassing but we were still pleased that we came in second. We then had a break to eat with our extra budget money which was a relief because we were all starving. Then when all the groups finished and the rakaz gave us a bit of a talk about it and things we needed to know for the coming weeks we went home to Lod to relax for a while, after a truly amazing race.

Beit issi Shapiro, deaf & blind museum, Masada, matza baking

On Sunday morning we started our day at Bet Issi Shapiro in Raanana, which is an institute for children with special needs where parents can drop their kids off for day care, there is also a dental clinic that is accessible for people with special needs. Our volunteering there consisted of putting together gift baskets and boxes with lots of things for Pesach, these gift baskets are used for fundraising where the profits from the gift sales are put into Bet Issi Shapiro money that is used for various things to keep the institute going, as well as for parents who might not be able to pay for the services offered at Bet Issi Shapiro, the institute will pay for them to be there. After that we had some free time in Tel Aviv in which I got the cupcakes I was dreaming about, walked on the boardwalk had some relaxing free time. After our free time we continued to Holon to the deaf museum, it was amazing because you have to be silent, also you have big headphones so you can't hear almost no outside noise. All of the guides in the museum are deaf and they take you through the exhibits that have to do with being deaf, like how to signal different things with your facial expressions, body language, hand movements and also at the end we can order at a silent bar and learn some signs from Israeli sign language. After the exhibit I finished we can ask our guide questions about her life being deaf and what it's like, if she knows sign languages from other countries besides the Israeli sign language. It was really interesting and it helped me understand what it could be like to be deaf and how hard that it would've not to hear. On Monday morning we started with a class about disabilities and how we relate, think, feel about them and then we also learnt about how people with disabilities are being treated by legislation in Israel, and the staggering number of people who have a disability of some kind, 1 in 10 people in Israel live with a disability registered with the government, 10% of the population, I thought that was pretty unreal. After that we got on the bus to go the Bet Shemesh to bake kosher shemura matzo for our Seder. The whole process is very strict and very particular in all the steps involved, there's a mikhitza to keep the flour and water steps separate every surface that the dough touches needs to be washed every round so that the leftover dough that turns into chametz doesn't make the next round of dough unkosher, also all the rounds of dough (1 kilo of flour per round of dough) has to take maximum 18 minutes from water mixing with the flour to taking it out of the oven. It was pretty tedious but was cool to make the matzo for our group Seder and I'm excited to eat it Seder night. After the matzo baking in Bet Shemesh we returned to Lod for ulpan class and after we went back to Holon to go through the Blind museum. The blind museum was amazing, it's next to the deaf museum and I definitely felt that the experience was much more intense in the blind museum, the whole museum is completely pitch black, like you can't see your hand in front of your face. There were many different rooms, like a park where there were trees, the smell of grass, bird and frog sounds, my favorite one was the market stand where we could hold vegetables and guess what they all are by touch and smell. From room to room there are doors that lead to the next rooms, so the group left me in the room that was meant to be a street type scene with cars, motor bikes, phone booths, and signs so I'm stuck in this room no idea where I am, I hear the voices of the my group getting farther and farther so I basically had to walk the entire room feeling everything and trying to find the door to the next room, I finally found the door and continued with the group but it was quite scary. Like the deaf museum, the blind museum really made me understand what it would be like to be blind too I found it really amazing. On Tuesday we started our morning off at the Tnuva factory, Tnuva in Israel is probably the largest producer of dairy products in Israel or at least most well known. We got to tour around the factory, see the process of milk into different dairy products through a movie simulator ride, see where they package all the products, learnt that the two countries with highest quality and health standards are Holland and Israel. We got free dairy products including our favorite chocolate milk. After the factory we went to the Rehovot mall for free time and lunch break and then continued to visited the house of Chaim Weizman in Rehovot which I thought was one of the nicest houses I've ever seen, it really had culture to it and was designed very elegantly. Wiesman was the first president of Israel he lived with his wife Vera in England for a long time before making Aliyah to Israel therefore their house reflects that culture of England. His house has about 20 rooms, 12 bedrooms and a beautiful dining room, living room and immense library with 1200 books of 6 different languages, pool and spiral staircase. After our tour we continued to Tel Aviv to the Jabotinsky museum, Jabotinsky was a Zionist born in Odessa now in the Ukraine. He wrote many poems and books also was excellent at translating literary works from and to Hebrew, Russian and English in any order. There was a film showing him sharing his life to son as a spirit talking to his son and answering his questions. After a long day of museum visits and eating dairy products we finally went home to Lod. On Wednesday we started our day at night, we woke up to get on the bus at 3:30am to Masada to see the sunrise, we took a short tour of Masada, the famous fort where the Jewish soldiers refused to convert to Christianity so they committed suicide. It's built on a cliff therefore making it an excellent in the respect of strategy. After about an hour walking around the old fort we went down the very windy snake path and got down to the visitor's center to eat breakfast finally. We had a short hike after that we all went back to Lod.

Caesarea, Wingate institute, Zikhron yaakov, Yarkon river

On Sunday we went to Massuah, a holocaust museum that also has an exhibit especially on the subject of Adolf Eichmann and his trials in Israel, after the short movie about the trials of Adolf Eichmann, we learnt alot about how although the trials didn't need 100+ witnesses who survived the Holocaust to testify, they needed to share their stories and Israel needed to hear their stories so they could understand what they went through. After that, we continued to explore the museum. We listened to audio clips from the witnesses for the trials who survived the Holocaust on specific topics, looked at artifacts from the Holocaust and then met at the end to talk about the Holocaust and how it relates to Israeli society. We watched a couple of short movie clips about Israeli society one that was about Holocaust survivors and how the tried to integrate into Israeli society after such a surreal experience that can be difficult to cope with, another movie clip about Israelis going to Germany to buy a car to sell in Israel who then get stopped by German police and how they related the Holocaust to their interaction with these German police. After the museum we went home to make dinner and have a chill evening. Monday, we went to an outdoor amusement park and we did the ropes course it was pretty scary because it wasn't like a ropes course in America where there's a person below you that has a rope to you if you fall or want to come down they can drop you down by that rope this one you only had one rope that connected you just to a wire above the different obstacles which made me all the more uneasy with the whole thing, I only got to about the middle thing before I got scared so I went back to the ground which was very comforting after an almost nervous breakdown. After that I went to climb the little rock wall which was fun and then we went to the zip line, the place we went to is home to the second longest zip line in the world and the longest in Israel, that one was under repairs so we all got to go on a still very long 400m zip line which was so much fun and a big thrill. After all the excitement in Gush Etzion on the ropes courses we went in a hurry back to Lod because we had a shiur with the boys Rabbi from yeshiva who told us about Passover. On Tuesday we went to Tel Aviv to a park on the river to go paddleboating it was really fun and a kind of nice relaxing activity it was nice and sunny outside so that made it alot nicer. After that we went to the Ramat Gan Diamond museum to learn about how diamonds are processed, created, cut and traded. Ramat Gan is the largest diamond exchange in Israel, also what makes it special is that their offices are connected to cutting labs, processing labs and everything that they need to process diamonds for trade. Also we saw replicas of famous diamonds like Elizabeth Taylor's famous pear shaped diamond and many other fancy diamonds that are well known. After the diamond museum we had lunch and then went to the Wingate institute for Athletics. The Wingate Institute is home to some of the most advanced equipment for athletes, they have physiotherapists, psychiatrists, and trainers to help athletes train for the Olympics, soldiers train there for army exercises, there is also a boarding school in Wingate specifically for exceptionally high school athletes who stay in dorms at Wingate and train everyday along with their school studies. We took a tour around to see their Jewish Athletes Hall of Fame, learnt about the different techniques they have for measuring a person's fitness and a room the specifically has less oxygen in it to imitate high altitude training. We then took a kickboxing class which was fun but I wasn't dressed for it (jeans) so I only stayed for about half of it. When we all finished the kickboxing class we waited for our bus so we could finally go home to Lod. We had dinner and then a free night. On Wednesday we had tours in the north, we started in Caesarea where we saw the remains of the old Roman port and how amazing the advancements were for humanity even for that time. We started in the theater where we learnt about culture that citizens would've seen in the theater back in it's prime, like plays and drama. We continued to look at the port and all the houses and mosaic remains from the prime of this ancient port city. Although I had been before I learnt a lot of new things for example that there was a large Jewish population living in Caesarea in it's prime. After a couple of hours in Caesarea which I think is necessary to see everything we continued our tour of the north in Zikhron Yaakov, a town famous for the winery and beautiful town center. We started at a tour of the old cemetery to learn more about how the city began and what the hardships were in the beginning. Our plan next was to take a tour of the Aaronson house which was home to a spy ring for the British about the Turks, Sara Aaronson was captured by the Turks and was going to be questioned about the secret spy ring so she convinced the guard to take her to her house to change clothes and whilst he was standing outside, she killed herself with gun she had hidden in her wall behind a tile. This act saved the spy ring because she obviously couldn't reveal any information to the Turks, therefore she is known as a heroine to the community in Zikhron Yaakov. Unfortunately we weren't able to get into the museum which was sad because I was quite excited about going through to see her room where apparently the tile where she hid the gun is still there.Thursday we went to a shiur about Pesach and then continued to the Yarkon river for a tiyul. We walked around the swampy areas also to a cool castle type building and some people jumped into the river during lunch, then we got back on the bus and continued to another castle which had the most amazing view and you could see about 6 cities just from the one spot. After the tiyul day, we had dinner and then a free night