Updates from Israel - Tuesday, July 15

Ronald Rubin:
We started off our day in Israel at an archeological dig. We were digging in four different sections. I was in a cave known as Aphrodite and I found charcoal and pieces of pottery. Towards the end I found an intact, black oil lamp. It was the biggest find of the whole day. The lady who was leading the dig said she thinks it will put in a museum after they do some research on it. That was really interesting. We explored some excavated and non-excavated caves and that was really fun. After that we went to a pool and had lunch. It was nice to have some relaxing free time, no salt water. Then we drove down south for a few hours to the Bedouin tents. We went on camel rides which were really fun. Then we went back to a tent and had some tea and crackers and learned a little bit about the Bedouin culture. We had a nice dinner. We ate with our hands. Then we had a bonfire, ate some s’mores and sang some songs. Overall it was a really fun and relaxing day.

Eva Westheimer:
Over Shabbat I stayed with a Shomer Shabbos family and it was a really good experience for me because I don’t practice Judaism a lot in the States. We went to Shul and everything was in Hebrew, but it was fun. On Saturday, we didn’t turn on the lights and we said the Kiddush on Friday night. There was no driving on Saturday and we just walked around. My host sister showed me her town with some of her friends which was really nice because they were born in the States so they spoke English. Overall my Shomer Shabbos was a good experience. I can say that I don’t think I would want to be a Shomer Shabbos family, but it was a good experience.

Sunday night we went into Jerusalem and saw a traditional folk dance festival. That was really nice because it reminded me a lot of dance festivals back at home. It was teenagers about our age and they had a lot of upper body strength so I admired that. It was a very tiring day because we spent about an hour at the beach so the sun made us all tired. I want to say hello to my family.

Adam Birkan:
In Tel Aviv right now in a so-called hostel, I’m pretty sure it’s a hotel – it’s nice. It’s pretty hot outside. Give a shout out to the parents and anyone else who views this. I came up with this great idea. If you’re ever in a hot place where the air conditioning doesn’t work and you have a refrigerator, take your blanket and leave it in there for an hour. Take it out of the refrigerator and then you have a cold blanket. I’m a genius, I know.

Alex Kraus:
We woke up at 7:30, which was like sleeping in. We drove to Jaffa and did some community service to help the people that can’t afford their food. We packaged boxes of food. We saw the summer camp that they have and we played soccer with the kids. After that we went to this bullet museum, where they made bullets for the War for Independence underneath this kibbutz. Then we went swimming in the Mediterranean for a couple of hours. It was really nice except we got stung a bunch of times by jellyfish. We drove back and had dinner. Then we had free time in the square in Tel Aviv.

Brianna Pecsok:
Sunday and Monday have been really fun, relaxing days. We began Sunday by ending our weekend with our host families which was so much fun. Then we went to Tel Aviv and went to the beach and to this museum that was really cool and we shopped around. Monday we went to the beach again and it was really fun because the waves were really big, but the jellyfish were really bad. We went to another cool museum and shopped around more in Tel Aviv. The past few days have been a lot of fun and I’ve had a really good time.

Annie Brant:
We are chillin’ out in the Bedouin tent right now. We’re in the middle of the Negev Dessert and its totally different the North of Israel. We had an awesome bonfire and an awesome dinner.

Bogdan Leshchinsky:
Today was a pretty good day. We went spelunking in caves and we looked for fossils and then went camel riding in the desert. Right now we are gonna sleep in the camp which is pretty cool. Just having lots of fun right now.