Pesach, kibbutz, remembrance day, independence day

Sunday we had a busy day of packing and cleaning the house for our preparation to move out of the house. Our room was decently big but apparently not big enough to let six girls pack their bags at the same time so we kinda packed two at a time it was very stressful. Also to make matters worse it was unbelievably hot outside therefore our room in the highest place in the house was similar to a sauna because of the heat rising to our room unfortunately we were all too hot to move and the packing process went much slower for that reason. After our "packing time" everyone had a job to clean something in the house like the floors, cabinets, dishes, my job was to clean the disgusting toaster oven which had about four months of food residues that I know who know when the last time anyone cleaned that thing was. After the daunting task I finished my packing and cleaning. The next morning we had a bus to Qiryat Arba to a place where we would have our group Seder. Once we got there we had lots of free time which we all spent napping, getting pretty for the Seder and snacking. Finally the time to go to shul came around so we all waited a little longer in shul and we were all starving. We got to our Seder table finally, got our group haggadahs that we all contributed to. We started the Seder with some letters from the Chief Rabbi and our rakaz, then followed by the seder which throughout people prepared games, skits and dvar torahs within the Haggadah which made the whole thing really fun and also made the 8 hours that it took much shorter. After the Seder at 4am we all naturally went to bed. In the morning we had some breakfast after shul and lunch with the Australian Bnei Akiva group which was nice, then we were really bored for about a century because we had all this free time that we had nothing to do with, so we played cards, hung around outside, just waiting for dinner to come around so we could eat and then leave to go to our Pesach break. Annoyingly, they decided to take us to Tel Aviv Arlozorov station at around 10pm, when they know that buses stop running at around 10:00pm-11:00pm so therefore we didn't have much time to catch a bus to our destination, even worse in my case I had to get to Rehovot or Nes Ziyyona to stay with some family but of course just my luck, no buses at all go to those places from Arlozorov, only at the New Central Bus Station (biggest bus station in the world, 7 floors/ 7 rings of hell) awesome news for me seeing as the bus station was a bus ride of around 15-20 minutes and the buses stop running at 12am so I'm in a time crunch. I get on the bus to the New Central Bus Station at about 10:30pm get there at about 11:00pm, there's still another ten minute walk to the station itself,because the bus stop was around the corner. So now if you can do 2nd grade addition, it's 11:10pm, I still have to wait in the line for security which seemed to take around the time it takes to watch paint dry, so once we get in to the bus station in the line of about a thousand people, thankfully I met an Australian on another youth movement year program, so I had someone to chat to. So now after the security line and helping this girl find her way to the Egged ticket counter to go to Eilat, I'm now at 11:30pm so I walk up to the terminals where the buses to Rehovot and as I walk up the bus I need was driving away, so I'm in a pickle, I could wait until 12am the next and last bus and get to my destination at like 12:45am which would upset me seeing as then my family would have to come and get me at around 1am which I believe is rude, and completely blame the awful scheduling of Bnei Akiva for this dilemma. Besides it being rude to have them pick me up so late, and as a result I would feel very guilty for, 11:30pm is still pretty late so I would feel bad either way. So I call my family, tell them the situation, and to my surprise they say we'll come fetch you, I feel almost worse but also it's better to drive a little bit longer about an hour earlier than to wake up an hour later to drive for five minutes, so I'm stranded until they come and get me,which I'm relieved because I despise the New Central Bus Station. In the security line some people from America and Canada who were also in Israel for the year they seemed pretty nice, so I go down to the bottom floor aka the 7th ring of hell and they're hanging out there snacking and waiting for there bus and one of the girls who heard the conversation I had with the Australian girl in the line about me living in Canada and having Canadian citizenship called to me when I walked past like "Hey, Canada! Come chill" and I used my gut feeling which told me they seemed chill. I went to sit with them for a while, waiting for my family to call to say they'd arrived, learnt about what they were doing for the year, where they were from, whether they were gonna make Aliyah, then I get the call which was a huge relief because I just wanted to get to sleep and get out of the 7th ring of hell, did I mention that there were stray cats roaming around inside the bus station, and there's trash everywhere and the public bathrooms have no toilet paper, soap or paper towels, yes it is my personal hell. Finally I get the call from my family that they had arrived, Hallelujah! So I say farewell to my friends and head to the car which is like a beacon of light, a halo of freedom from the New Central Bus Station, I told my family thank you about a million times just for picking me up and then we head to their house. I'm so tired I fall asleep pretty much immediately, wake up pretty late I the morning, I had a chill day doing my laundry, watching TV, sleeping and eating. After I finished my laundry and watching a movie on TV, I went to bed. Got up the next morning a little earlier to go to Jerusalem to meet with my boyfriend to stay at his family friends for Shabbat. When we both got to his family friends we watched a movie, ate and then my boyfriend had to go to the airport to pick his mom up who was coming to visit from Kansas City. So while I waited I was babysitting the family friend's kid and we watched a movie. Everyone got back from the airport and the family friend came back from the grocery store. Lots of catching up and shmoozing for my boyfriends mom. The next day being Friday we went around Jerusalem, going to the Mamila Mall, Machane Yehuda (the shuk) to get groceries for dinner, after a long day we went home to make dinner and relax before Shabbat. I cooked some of dinner, green beans, helped make vegetable soup and some strawberry sauce, which was fun because I hadn't cooked in a long time. Saturday nothing is open in Jerusalem so we pretty much just stayed home all day and relaxed because thats what Shabbat is for. After Shabbat went out we made fried matza and then me, my boyfriend and his mom went to the "Night Spectacular" at the City of David which was really cool, it was cool because in lights and projections it shows the history of Jerusalem. After the show we went to dinner in Mamila which was delicious even for a kosher for Pesach restaurant, we went home after that. Sunday afternoon I packed my stuff and went to the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem to go to Rishon LeZiyyon to see my cousins for second night of chag, in Israel they have one night of Seder unlike outside of Israel which have two nights of seder instead, they have a another night a week after that is kinda like our second Seder night but not a Seder, like Shabbat. Sunday was erev chag so it was still chag on Monday, I stayed home and relaxed watched some TV, ate, napped a bit, Tuesday early I had to go back to Lod because firstly people wanted to go to Lod in the morning and I had the key and also because my cousin couldn't drop me off any later than at 8am, so I took the bus to the train station in Rishon LeZiyyon and then took a train to Lod and got there at 9:00am so I had time to do laundry, take a hot shower, relax and be happy. Later that morning I got call from my boyfriend that him, his mom and one of our friends are going to Max Brenner (restaurant that has unbelievable chocolate and desserts) in Tel Aviv, that sounds fun so I say ok cool I see you there, I forgot about the whole transportation thing, I took the train to Tel Aviv, took a bus was still a little too far, took a taxi and then got to the restaurant, but of course I'm on time a few minutes early my boyfriend and his mom are kind of lost so I go get them and then we got to Max Brenner, my boyfriend's mom treated us, which I thought was really nice of her and I had an amazing dessert with waffles, caramelized bananas, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles basically a bananas foster on steroids, it was incredible. After the treat we all went our separate ways, I back to Lod, our friend to his grandparents in Tel Aviv and my boyfriend and his mom to Herziliya. I get on the bus which I had to wait for about an eternity for to go to the Train station, so I get on the train and get call from my friends who are apparently back in Lod and they want to go to dinner so I say when I get back from Tel Aviv, so it's now 9ish I'm somehow hungry again and then we go to dinner. Then I suffering severely from overeating and am very tired from it so I hit the hay to get some shut eye. The next morning I go to the mall with the Dutch girls I need to pick up some things so I get my errands done, they had some summer clothes they wanted. We got back to our Lod house to make sandwiches for the bus trip to the Kibbutz up north, we had to move all of our stuff to the bus which by some miracle everything we had fit into the bus. We got to kibbutz near a town called Bet Sha'an, which has the world record for hottest temperature which in other words means the kibbutz even in the the beginning of summer is super hot. We got off the bus and the the complaining started with how hot it is, how are we going to carry all of our stuff, blah blah blah. The person who organizes us while we're in Kibbutz took us on the grand tour, to see all the different things that the kibbutz does. After that we moved all our stuff to the volunteer houses, which is where a huge argument begun and didn't end for about 2 hours because me and another girl didn't have a room because we never have a room when the girls organize them, so two girls wanted to be with certain people in a 4 person room but then there was a request by the madrichim to out the girls who were in the 6 person room in Lod to be in a 4 person room in the kibbutz, so it was a huge fight because the 2 girls who wanted to be in the 4 person room was intent on that and then one girl felt bad putting me and my friend in a 6 person room because we were in it in Lod. So eventhough me and my friend didn't really care what room we were in anyways it became this huge drama. Thankfully it got resolved and we could all start unpacking, we had dinner and then after dinner we requested what jobs we'd have for the rest of the week, I got the job in the chicken coops, just like my dad did. Little did I know that it would be like working in the movie Food Inc. Thursday morning, first day of work, wake up early at 6:25am to get ready for work and then to go to breakfast at 6:45am and then we eat and go to work at 7:30am, where the job boss picks us up at the bus stop and we drive to one of the coops where there was water pipe that bursted so there was a big wet spot in the coop. Our first job was to shovel out all of the wet sawdust and then lay down new sawdust. After we were done with that we go to the big coop and he says to us "Alright, first thing I do here in the morning is pick up the dead." my friend and I look at each other in horror. So he hands us a bucket, a face mask, plastic booties, gloves and a clamp thing that they use to pick up garbage. He says so start this row and go down this row and back up the next row and watch out for dead chickens and put them in the bucket. I picked up 5 or 6 and my friend picked up more. I don't think chicken will be easy to eat anymore. He let's us off early because he needs to fix the pipe for the drinking water for the chickens. We get our first Kibbutz lunch which after that point has become the highlight of all of our days, the. We have free time until 7pm which is insane because we have 7 hours and nothing to do, so we sleep, watch movies etc. Then dinner comes which is identical to breakfast yogurts, vegetables, cheeses etc, I'm always still hungry after that. Then since we have nothing better to do we go to sleep or watch more movies and TV. Friday we didn't have work and had an group Shabbat on Kibbutz, the lunch on Fridays is different than the rest of the week usually it's chicken and meats food but Friday is dairy so there's all different pastas and sauces, macaroni and cheese, it's definitely the highlight of my week. Shabbat was very relaxed lots of free time, Friday night dinner was good and Saturday we went to a kibbutz family for lunch, me and a friend went to a Yemenite family that made an amazing meal with mushroom blintzes, Jerusalem kugel and halva ice cream which was delicious. We relaxed and then went to bed anticipating the early morning work. Sunday I worked with the chickens again, so we started the morning with picking up the dead chickens and then we helped the boss vaccinate the chickens which made me laugh because my job would be tom make sure the cord didn't get tangled for the sprayer so I stood there watching the cord and the all the chickens got curious about me being there and were looking at giving me the one eye, pecking my shoes, they're such funny birds. So since we were just in three coops filled with chicken vaccine the boss let us off early to go shower which I didn't complain about. We ate lunch, had another boring afternoon, then dinner after the madrichim talked to us about our jobs and things about Yom HaShoah, then we watched the ceremony the kibbutz was having for Yom HaShoah the next day we left in the middle because it was all in Hebrew and then we started watching Schindler's List, we watched half because it was late and we had to get up for work early the next morning. Monday at we worked with the chickens again, first picking up the dead and then we laid down new sawdust over the wet spots in the coop. There was a moment of silence in the morning indicated by a kibbutz-wide siren, and in the afternoon we met a holocaust survivor who escaped the holocaust because his parents sent him to England with his siblings for protection. Tuesday I was feeling really sick, nauseous, headache, sore throat etc, so I didn't work with the chickens, the day went as usual I went to lunch, chilled all afternoon, dinner, sleep. Wednesday I wake up and my eye feels weird like swollen at first I thought it was just a sleepy eye buy then I saw it in the mirror and realized it wasn't sleepy eyes it was definitely pink eye, my eye was red, bloodshot, swollen almost shut, itchy, painful to close, crusty and pus around the edge, great luck. So I go to breakfast looking like I'm giving everyone the evil eye because my eye was swollen almost shut. My madrichim tell me not to go to work, to see how it is the next day, had a boring day of eating, sleeping, watching movies etc, dinner came around eye still looking shitty one of the boys even said jokingly "Hey, why are you giving me the evil eye?" which was pretty funny. Next day the group went on a long tiyul that was apparently hard but I didn't go because my eye looked awful still and I was waiting for the doctor to come and check it out for me. The doctor didn't even arrive until after the group came back so then the house call doctor gave me inconvenient news that I had to see an ophthalmologist which was annoying because that meant I had to go all the way to Afula to go see an ophthalmologist to tell me I have pink eye even though I knew that in the first because it was textbook pink eye. Thankfully since it was a free weekend there was a bus organized to Afula for the group from the kibbutz so I got a ride with my madricha who had to take me to the clinic, we waited at the clinic for an eon for the ophthalmologist and finally she calls me in examines my eye with the special drops, the eyesight test etc. Then tells me that I have pink eye like she was preaching to the choir, prescribes me drops for the symptoms and we're on our way back to the kibbutz. We got a bus from Afula to Bet Sha'an but my madricha met a girl on the bus with a mutual friend and got us a lift to the kibbutz. We got back to the group having a barbecue, only some people stayed the weekend. It was a really relaxed Shabbat, for the Americans it got stressful Saturday night with the packing for Poland began. Sunday morning we had to get ourselves to Jerusalem from Kibbutz, really convenient with all of our stuff for Poland, thanks Bnei Akiva, your're such great organizers. Our bus ride was weird because there was a rest stop for ten minutes which kind of ruined our timing, the bus was late too, we had to get to Jerusalem to the hostel where the Australian group is staying by 11:00am so we were late. We got cabs from the bus station to the hostel, called a our madricha to tell her we got there and then she gave us the number to the madrich of the Australian group who was being a big asshole about it because we were gonna meet his group and go to Yad Vashem on their bus with them, but they left us there so we took more cabs to go to Yad Vashem so we got there late to the class that they were in about Jewish life in Poland before the holocaust, we had lunch and then a tour of Yad Vashem, my third tour of Yad Vashem. I think that every time I go I need to focus on something else in the museum it's so vast and filled with information it's hard to absorb everything so I tried reading the captions and listening to the tour guide. After the tour we went back to the Australians hostel for dinner and then we had a ceremony at the kotel that we were going to, apparently the madrichim of the Australian group have a huge issue with people being late because they'll just abandon you, so I was running behind one of the Australian boys to get on the bus and his madrich said we're only waiting for you even though I was literally half a foot behind him, he got on the bus and the madrich closed the door on my face and they drove, the American girls on the bus felt bad leaving us so they waited for us to get on the bus. So the australian madrich officially made an awful first impression. We got to the kotel with more than enough time even if the madrichim were going nuts that we were late but we had more than enough seats to watch the ceremony. The ceremony had all of the army units, lots of people talked in Hebrew that I couldn't really understand. So we went back to the hostel after begot our madricha who we were ecstatic to see. She told us the plan to be at the hostel by 1:30pm to work on our ceremony for Poland at one of the sites. Then we had free time until we had to be at the Kotel again at around 7pm for a Bnei Akiva ceremony for Yom HaZikron (Remembrance Day), then there was a prayer at the kotel which I used to talk to my German friends. Then we had dinner provided by Bnei Akiva from Burgers Bar but it had ketchup which I hate more than anything so after I wiped off the ketchup then it was good. After that we had free time until 2am so we went bar hopping, we went to our favorite bar in Jerusalem where we're good friends with the bartender so we caught up on everything with him and relaxed. Then we got on the bus and went to the hostel where the Australians are staying and went to bed. Next morning was Independence Day and in Israel everyone goes on a tiyul then has a barbecue, like 4th of July without the hike. We hiked the Burma Road which was a road that was randomly discovered that the Israelis could use to take supplies up to Jerusalem, after the hike we went to Independence park to have a barbecue but poorly planned they didn't start the barbecue for the 70 of us all together with the Australians while we were on the hike so we would've had to wait for like 2 hours for the food so we decided to get some shwarma instead. Apparently independence day is just as dead as Shabbat so we couldn't decide what to do with all the free time we had. So we decided to go to the biblical zoo for a while which was awesome we went for like 3 hours and then I had to take a shower and go to my boyfriend's family friends to get my stuff for Poland. I showered, got my stuff, took a nap and then we went to the hostel to make sandwiches for our first day in Poland. We got a bus to the kotel for our ceremony before going to Poland with the directors, after the ceremony we headed to the airport to begin our next adventure in Poland.

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

Purim, Moshav Carlebach, 19th birthday

For Shabbat, we went to Moshav Carlebach near Modi'in. The moshav was started by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, the Rabbi was well known in the sixties for being all about peace & love and was famous for taking jewish songs and adding short, catchy melodies to them, it's said that he wrote about 1,000 songs. The moshav being started by a Rabbi of peace and love was like going into a time machine to the sixties, over Shabbat there was plenty of beautiful singing and dancing in synagogue. We had a tour around the moshav and we went on a hike to the Maccabi graves, which was really interesting. We had a shabbat rest of playing cards, we had seuda shlishit, for the start of Purim we listened to the Megillah. We left promptly after the Megillah reading, came back to our house to get into to costumes to go to a purim party in tel aviv. So let me explain this "Purim party", first of all the organization that organized it rents out clubs and hosts religious Jewish parties for some people who want to get re-in touch with their Judaism. The party went like this, dressed in our costumes we got a ticket that gave us one drink at the club, there were lots of Bnei Akiva groups and random people dancing and drinking etc. The difference between this party and normal parties at clubs, is the separation of men and women in the dance floor, of course this is completely normal for religious Jewish parties, not normal for me, little weird. With many parties where alcohol, you may find that there are some people who can't hold their liquor. I'm not much of a dancer so I went to go sit by myself on the couches above the dance floor. What I found on my shoe was quite unpleasant, lo and behold, lucky me, I have the good fortune to step in some drunk person's vomit that they strategically put right next to the couches, thanks for that! Second situation, whilst I was chilling on the couch waiting for my boyfriend to return from the dance floor. Some religious guy starts hitting on me, trying to hold my hand, rubbing my back, which is quite possible the worst thing for me, I told him to leave because I have a boyfriend, he left to my relief. I was sitting there playing on my iPad and was drinking my drink spilled it on myself, being a klutz. We were meant to leave the club at 2:30am but of course the bus was late and we didn't get home until 3:45am which sucked because we had to be up at 9:00am the next morning. The next morning we went to volunteer to give out food for Purim in Lod. After that we had purim seuda organized by some of the group, we played games after which was really fun. After that around 9:00pm we went to Jerusalem for a midrasha Purim party, this wasn't fun for everyone, we were all there for about three minutes before everyone split, even our madricha left and we went to Ben Yehuda St. which had quite a party going on with lots of crazy costumes and drunk people for Purim. After that we left to go get the boys who were at a yeshiva party at the yeshiva that they were at in November and December, they had a great time and were all drunk and singing. When we got back I went straight to bed. Monday, we went back to Jerusalem to volunteer at two retirement homes and then continued to a Bnei Akiva Purim seuda, good meal with all the Hachsharot so it was a little crowded but still enjoyable. After the seuda ended at about 3:00pm we had free time in Jerusalem, we had a vote about when we were going to come back we decided on 8:00pm to some peoples frustration, because we didn't really understand what people were going to do in Jerusalem for five hours. Me, my boyfriend and our friend went to Mamilla Mall, hung around on Ben Yehuda St., I had to get some crocheting stuff. After that we met with our other friend and went to a video game place where you can play video games and just pay by the hour, so I sat and watched them play video games for about 3-4 hours which was kinda boring but I started knitting again which is quite exciting, I'm making a scarf. Tuesday we started back into volunteering as usual, in the afternoon I worked on baking for me and my birthday buddy's dessert party Wednesday night, I made a brownie cake with cream cheese icing and butter cookies which both came out good. Wednesday we had volunteering as usual and then went to Yafo for a tour. Shockingly, on route to Yafo we heard on the radio of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem near the central bus station, it was a really shocking event for all of us because it's a place that we frequent a lot and it's so much more shocking when you are in Israel when a terrorist attack happens. When you hear about it in the news from outside Israel it's less important than when you're in Israel when these terrible things happen. With sad news on our minds, we continued to Yafo which was really lovely and the city is beautiful and was a bit of a mood booster. We got to check out the flea market which is always interesting with many characters. Everyone was really stoked on the dessert party that we organized I also made homemade hot cocoa and whipped cream for everyone. Everyone sang happy birthday to us, we had a crazy countdown to midnight and then we blew out candles (I hear that it's bad luck to blow candles out before your birthday). I got presents from people three of my friends including my birthday buddy got me a little guitar from the Yafo flea market, it was so sweet of them. Such a nice present. Also got a big basket with lots of food from my dad and stepmom which is amazing with a chocolate cream cake with "Happy Birthday Rachel" on it. Today, I'm 19 which is very exciting.

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.

2/16/2011-3/6/2011: visit with my parents, settling into Lod, Shabbat in Efrat

After finally getting my parents from the airport,we headed to the Crowne Plaza in Tel Aviv to start my parents' Israel vacation. It was about 4am on Thursday morning, so we were hungry so after getting "breakfast" we all went to sleep until 2pm, see we were going to do some sightseeing on Thursday but we didn't have that much time after our sleep until 2pm. But we did have time to meet up with my boyfriend so that my parents could finally meet him for dinner. Friday morning, we spent the morning at the Diaspora museum at the Tel Aviv University and then a tour of Caesarea, including Dad's kibbutz, the neighboring Sdot Yam. We then ended our day at Dad's old friends from the kibbutz who live in Pardes Hanna-Karkur, and we stayed the weekend for Shabbat, it was very relaxing with lots of tea and a lot of catching up for everyone. Sunday, we first went to Zikhron Yaakov for breakfast to see the place that my stepmom spent the year at for ulpan, after that we went to my stepmom's cousins in Beit Oved to visit and get ourselves settled, we did tons of visiting the first couple of days. After my stepmom's parents arrival the night after we arrived in Beit Oved, we had a lot of catching up to do after two years of not seeing them, it was so nice to see them and I was very excited for our week in Israel together. The next day on Wednesday we went to Jerusalem for the first of two days in the Old City, we visited the Kotel and went through the Arab shuk which is always an experience. In the Arab shuk, my father has a tendency to bargain with all the vendors who are there, he does this every time he has the opportunity to, this time he met his match, he got kicked out of one of the stores it was quite unbelievable, I never thought it would happen. We went home to see family and have teat catch up some more and the next day we continued our tour of Jerusalem with a visit to Yad Vashem. It is one of the most amazing holocaust museums, it takes about 2 hours to walk through and it really gives you a true history and understanding of the holocaust it's a really great experience especially on the second time going it was even better than the first time. After a moving tour of Yad Vashem we then went to Abu Gosh for the best hummus and food that I've had in Israel. That night we went to our cousins for dinner and so more visiting. That Shabbat, we continued our task of visiting everyone who's family and friends in Israel we went back to dad's kibbutz friends in Binyamina and friday visited one cousin in Raanana and then to his brother on Saturday in Binyamina, after that me and dad went to Herzliyya to have dinner with my boyfriend's dad. Sunday, I went shopping with my stepmom and her mom to buy gifts for the family we stayed at. Monday, after breakfast with my dad, my boyfriend and his dad we continued to go to Lod so I could start getting settled. After saying my farewells to my dad we started off our afternoon in Lod with a huge house meeting to discuss food budget per week, house chores and schedule and house rules. The meeting was similar to trying to get cats and dogs to sit in a room together without fighting, there was a lot of arguing about stupid things, but somehow we got through it and agreed on most of the plan. The rest of Monday was spent getting settled and acquainted with Lod, we had a city tour and then we chose our volunteering jobs. I'm working at a school teaching English. Tuesday we met the teachers at the school and started working, we've helping the 8th grade students how to write argumentative essays because they need to write one for their entrance exam for high school. Wednesday and Thursday were the same from 9-12:45am we all go to work and then come back for lunch we have some kind of activity in the afternoon and evening or a free night then we sleep. Thursday night was free, so a couple of us went to Jerusalem, I went to dinner with some of my boyfriend's friends, my boyfriend and his dad to a nice restaurant on Emek Refaim. We saw our bartender friend Roni at his bar and hung out for a while before going back to Lod. Friday afternoon we went to Efrat to start our group Shabbat, we had Maariv, shabbat dinner, games and a little bit of singing, then we went back to our host families to sleep. Saturday was very relaxed we didn't have to do anything until about 4:30 so we played my favorite Munchkin and then just chatted about random stuff with some of the friends we've made on previous trips to Efrat, then we had Maariv, Seuda Shlishit, and then Havdallah, we all went back to our host families after that and then went home to Lod.