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.