Today I had to wake up around 8ish. Chelsea left today and i was so sad! Hopefully she will come back soon to spend another shabbas with rach and me. We are running out of food so for breakfast i had to have cereal with lactose free milk. yuck. By 8:45, Mike (a madrich) was taking me, ashley, erin, and anna to where we would be volunteering. It was cloudy and i felt some mist coming down! It almost drizzled, but then the clouds went away.

Ashley and I are working at this one school that is combined middle and high school. Erin and Anna are working at a different school with younger kids. The school is huge! I took some pictures but I'll put them up once i take more. When we get there we sit in the staff lounge waiting to meet our teacher. We were sitting there for about 20 minutes because she was teaching a class. After some waiting, we finally meet her. Her name is Pamela and she is from Britain and was in FZY (young judaea year course for brits) in the 60s. I really like her. We then figured out with her what times we would be coming in and leaving. On two days we are going to start at 8 so we can get out earlier because we have ulpan at 1:30 those days. The other two days, though, we are gonna get there at 8:45. While she was helping someone with something all of the sudden i see my hebrew teacher from JAMD who moved back to jerusalem!!!! HOW CRAZY?! I thought about how funny it would be if i was to be in the same school as him but the chances of that happening were very slim to none! So we see each other and shake hands (I wanted to hug him but I wasnt sure if that would be appropriate...hes secular..but still). We then talk for a little and then i text some jamd people who are in israel to let them know. After doing some things, ashley and i get a mini tour of the school. We are then put to work.

After the holidays we will begin helping students one on one with their english. We will mostly help the 12th graders by just taking them out one by one and just talking with them in english for 10 minutes. They have a final test at the end of the year and one part of it is oral. We will also read passages from tests for people that have certain disabilities. So until after Yom Kippur..i think...ashley and i are organizing the English room. this room is really small and basically the size a large walk-in closet. Today we organized books from the shelves. These books are so old and used. They are also pretty outdated/boring! One problem Ashley and I noticed was the lack of hebrew-english dictionaries. We are thinking about buying some dictionaries for the school. If anyone would want to help us out that would be great!

After we finished the book shelves we decided that was enough for today. We ate lunch and then Shoshie called me. I went to ayal's office and they talked for a couple of minutes. Ashley and then decided to leave Pamala a note letting her know we were leaving. We decided to go explore the school for a little and ended up finding where Pamala was teaching. She was teaching a 12th grade class and she invited us in so she could introduce us. Apparently she told her students about us and they were excited to meet us. All of the boys kept on asking how old we were. They were funny. It is crazy how loud they can be!

It is going to be difficult to create some sort of boundary between us and the upperclass high schoolers. Some are only a grade younger than us and Ashley and I were both saying that we have good friends that are a year younger. We also have friends that are even younger than that. How are we going to make sure there is a boundary?! How am i going to be authoritative?! I am never authoritative...only to my sisters...sometimes!

When we left a lot of kids were yelling out our names. we are "the americans." I like working there though and i cant wait for my hebrew to be better and meet nice people! When we got on the bus back I was listening to my ipod and we ended up passing where we were supposed to go get off. We ended up being right by ben yehuda. So, we had to get off the bus and get on another one. When we finally got back i relaxed for a little..but not for too long because we made our own shofars! It was fun but super super smelly. YUCK. We all smelled after and my hands still smell bad even after i showered. We had to sand the ram's horn and make a hole at the bottom to blow out of.

After the shofar making we had some free time and then i had my Holocaust films class. We watched 2 movies made in the late 40's (right after the Holocaust). We got pizza and pop, too. The movies were slow and their endings always end so abruptly! After that class, I stole some toilet paper from the beit midrash with Katie because we have run out of 48 rolls. We are buying more tomorrow...hopefully! When we got back to the apartment, before our apartment meeting with our madrich (we have one every week), i got a missed call from David Levi (or is it levy??) We talked for a little and we plan on meeting up during sukkot. He's so nice and i cant wait to see him!

In our apartment meeting we talked about how we all need to clean our apartment, food, and we read an article about an Israeli soldier being stabbed to death yesterday. It is crazy how many stabbings happen in Israel. People who are in charge on YJ tell us to just walk away everytime...even if the other person starts it and you get punched-- never fight back. After the meeting some of us got ready to go to ben yehuda. I didnt drink for multiple of reasons, but still had a fun time. Everyone was staying out so late and when I was walking to the bus stop (because i wanted to catch the last bus) people were just getting the ben yehuda! I really enjoy taking the bus. I find it so relaxing and i feel so independent! While walking home from the bus, I was on the phone with Rachel, just to be safe. i got back, went on my computer and talked to a couple of people. Now it is 1:15 and I have to wake up at 6:45 tomorrow because i have to be at the school by 8. I'm excited though!

ps- i heard michigan won...GO BLUE :)