THURSDAY:
On Thursday I woke up and packed up for the weekend. Rach and I walked to the wrong place, but on the way we bumped into Katie and some others walking towards us. The bus ended up being right in front of the mall, which is right across the street from my apartment. The bus ride was nice-chilling and napping. We drove to Kfar Chabad, which is close to tel aviv. Our shevet madrich is alex. He is really funny and chill, just like the rest of them. So we got a history of the place and how this place is a replica of the rebbe's house in New York. There are dozens of replicas of his house (the structure) all over the world. Luckily I wore a skirt that day because we were around chabaniks. It was so hot out. After some movies about the rebbe, we left the house whose address was 770-and i don't think it is a coincidence. We then got a tour of the orchard. A little pointless. There were fruits that look like oranges, but they were SO sour. omg omg omg. We also learned how wool and linen can't be grown together and what precautions they take. We were all sweaty and it was a bit hard to focus. We then went to the matzah making factory. It was really, really cool. Not sure if it was cool because I have never seen a factory line at work or if it was because of how they were doing the matzah. I also thought that the 18 minutes was the time the matzah bakes for...but it is actually the amount of time the water can be mixed with the flour before it gets cooked for 30 seconds. These religious men are at work and are jumping to get the dough right and then there are a line of men cutting the dough and then taking a piece of it to make a circle. There are guys who time it when the water first gets mixed in. Also, they make thousands of matzahs per hour-i forget how much. One guy asked where we were from. I was happy that I understood what he asked. I no longer freak out when someone starts to speak to me in hebrew-i take the time to try and understand them.

After trying some of the fresh matzah, which was really good, another rabbi talked to us and told us to enjoy our time in the Land of Israel. We were on the bus for a bit and katie and I had fun singing and dying of laughter. Alex put us on the loud speaker so everyone could hear. Oyyy. When we got to the CBS in Tel aviv, the security wouldn't let our bus through, so we had to drive around and get off on the main road. We were all tired and I was a bit craby. We then wait a bit and take the 405 to Jerusalem. The bus was really crowded and we got seperate seats in the back. I sat next to this one girl and there were so many bread crumbs on my seat :( I slept for some of the ride, but at the end I noticed that Naomi and Katie were talking to the girls and so i joined in. We tried teaching them what the lyrics for different songs mean. We small talked with them and just practicing our hebrew. When we got off the bus, my phone dropped. The back no longer stays on. Katie talked to some random girl wearing a bathing suit. Then we walked to katie's apartment. We napped for about 30 minutes and then after some more chilling and getting ready, we headed off to emek refiem for dinner at kaffit. I got the salad with the sweet potato. So good. We were all so tired and goofy. We could not finish all of our food-I took some of mine to go. Then we walked to bar alley and Katie, Rach, and I talked with mike (madrich from j-ru) for a bit!! It was nice to see him. Boaz called me earlier telling me that he is going to be home, so we met up in town and split off to hang out with our friends for a little. I hung out with nathan and miki for a bit and some old j-ru friends before going with boaz on a bus home. We both dozed in and out on the bus. When we got to his place we both just crashed and fell right asleep.