SUNDAY:

On Sunday, we were supposed to have an apartment meeting at 9, but Noa texted us saying she wasn’t feeling well, so we just got to sleep in. Woo hoo! I had to get up at 11 though for Zman Shevet. Zman Shevet was really good…a scriber came and he taught us how to write. At first I was so confused and couldn’t do it because I realized after a little that for lefties there is a different way you write letters. Luckily, he gave us all sheets on how to write, on one side it is for lefties and on the other side there is one for righties. While learning how to write different letters, we learned different meaning of letters. Also, a lot of the letters have letters within them.

After this, a couple of us wanted to go to the beach for lunch, but once we got to our apartment stop, we realized we wouldn’t have enough time, so we just went back to eat lunch at home. At 1:30 we had our classes. While walking from the bus stop to the ulpan, 3 boys were running and looking back. It seemed like they were running from cops. One of the guys bumped into me hard! Welcome to Bat Yam. When we got closer to the ulpan there is this area where kids play football (omg I cannot believe I said football when I mean to say soccer. Oy.) There were 2 police officers walking away from there back from their car. Weird! Anyway, my first class wasn’t too interesting. We are still having an introduction before we go into philosophy. Israel Advocacy was really good and we learned about refugees. One thing we talked about was the forgotten refugees. I really like this class, it makes me have a strong position on Israel. This class is helping me answer the question that I have been trying to answer (Why should students come here to study, rather than a different country?) Along with Israel being a Jewish state, so it is almost impossible to not feel something religious, Israel really is an unbelievable place as a country in the middle of her enemies…

Then when we got back from classes, Rach, Katie, Michal, and I all went running. It was a nice run to the beach. Then we walked on the boardwalk and Katie and I reenacted Lori and were on the ground, literally. When we pulled ourselves together we saw everyone else talking to Israeli girl soldiers, so we went over to see what was up. Apparently the soldiers were laughing at Katie and me and then we found out that they were scouts from last years year course group! We talked to them for a bit, and then said bye and walked home. We had dinner and just hung out before going to bed at a semi-decent hour.