A week in Israel

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, i've been very busy all week and any sleep I can get is taking priority over this at the moment.

So Sunday Sally and I got up and headed to the Eratz Yisrael Museum to meet up with all the trips. I didn't think that I was going to be staying very long but she wanted me to wait for all the buses to arrive to meet her group and staff. While I was there I saw so many Emtzanicks- so to all parents who kids on USY that I know they all are having a great time. After that I headed to work for the day. After work I went home to nap before going into to Tel Aviv to meet up with Ari for dinner. After dinner I went to find people from my trip to chill in Tel Aviv for the night.

Monday I went to work and I wrote my first grant by myself. That was terrifying for the most part. It's for a grant from the US Consulate for the Magazine. I got about half of what I was supposed to get done because I was so confused and Emily wasn't in the office Monday, so I did some more work on the website. Hopefully by the end of next week we'll have the new website launched- it's much better than the old one. After work I went back to Bat Yam and relaxed before making dinner and then Ellery and I went to walk around Bat Yam looking for a store that sold cleats, which turned into a quest for ANYTHING open. It was Erev Tisha B'Av and so everything closed at 7. After that basically failed quest we went to Ulpan for activities. Gal had some announcements for us about the upcoming week and then after Neil Lazarus came and spoke to us about Israel advocacy and stuff like that bad press Israel gets from incidents such as the flotilla thing earlier this summer. After that I went to sleep because I haven't been getting much sleep at all.

Tuesday Ellery and I went to Park Ha'Yarkon to play in an Ultimate Peace hat tournament. The week leading up to Tuesday had been the Ultimate Peace Camp in Acco so all the coaches from UP were there and a bunch of locals or Americans just in Israel for some time were there as well. Some of the best Ultimate players were there- many of them has just come from Prague from Club Worlds. The tournament was a lot of fun. I haven't played in about 2 months so it was really nice to be able to play again. It was some of the most fun I've had in Israel yet. After that Ellery and I attempted to be presentable because we were going to meet the group to go see a performance of Yentel. Yentel was ok- they had English translations but I was so exhausted from the tournament I could barely stay awake. After the show, some of us went out for a short amount of time.

Wednesday at work Emily went over the grant with me and helped me finish writing it out. We have to have it connect with America in some way so we are connecting it to the civil rights movement- we also got a new intern. After work I went to do some grocery shopping and relaxed and then took a nap before getting ready to go out. Some of the guys from 1st session are still in Israel so a bunch of us met up with them at the beach in Tel Aviv.

Thursday we went to Sderot- which is the largest city next to Gaza. Since 2001 over 12,000 rockets have landed in or around Sderot. Our first stop was the police station where we saw a small collection of all the rockets. The rockets were either painter red/green for Hamas or yellow for Fatah. Our next stop on our trip was this play ground that had a shelter in it, which allowed for children to be able to go to the park and play with the safety of a bomb shelter right there. We also drove around to see the synagogue that was destroyed. The very interesting thing about Sderot is that for the most part the destruction isn't noticeable because they rebuild very fast. All through the tour everywhere we looked there were bomb shelters- most than I have ever seen in my life. Our final stop was an overlook where we could see Gaza from Israel. It was so interesting how the border was just a road- compared to the border with the West Bank. Prior to the bombings, Israeli would freely go into Gaza City to go to the market or just to be there. And we could also see Ashkolon, I city in Israel that supplies most of the power to Gaza. We then went to this volunteer place to get talked to about the Jewish fund- which was extremely boring and then went to paint a wall. It was really strange because we were supposed to paint a white wall white- which made no sense. After that we went to have lunch. We then went to this kibbutz to see how fruit and veggies were produced in the Negev. It was sorta interesting but the Negev was so extremely hot and I hadn't really dressed in clothes that would be cool enough. We got to release carrier pigeons which was extremely cool and then we got to make our own pita. After we headed back to Bat Yam and then got ready to go out. We went out for Avia's birthday in Tel Aviv at a new club.

Friday I woke up early and Marisa and I headed to Haifa to visit Amy and Shani from first session. Started out with us missing our bus, but then we met a solider who was trying to get to Haifa as well and showed us how to get to the train station. The train was much faster than the bus would have been. We then took the bus to the University of Haifa where they are taking Ulpan and then headed to this Druze village near by. The Village was very cool. While it was very touristy it was still interesting to see the Druze culture. They dress very differently than Arabs or Jews. A lot of the men were this white skull cap and the women where a thin white shawl over their head, but besides that their clothing styles vary a lot from person to person. We got lunch there and did a little shopping. After we started the LONG quest to get back to Haifa. We waiting for at least an hour and buses were going to the village but not the other direction, which made no sense because it wasn't that late yet. We had to call Gal to have him get us a cab. We had already missed our bus to Tel Aviv so we needed to get a ride to the shiruts and then get one to Tel Aviv. After we got a cab and headed back to Bat Yam to make dinner. I fell asleep so quickly- I was so tired from not sleeping all week.

There is so much I still want to do and I'm only here for about a week and a half. I still haven't really explored Yaffo, and I just feel like my time is running short. So again- probably no sleep to see people I want to see and do things I still haven't done.