MONDAY:
We all woke up at 6:30ish to get dressed and to be at breakfast by 7. It is kind of nice to wear the same thing every day and not really have to worry about how things work. Earlier that morning we heard girls cleaning everything-their rooms, floors of the building, along with the bathrooms and showers. Breakfast was pretty lame and then after chilling outside until it was 8:15, we had the morning news. We all got into a chet and we found out that U.S. said that Israel will freeze building for at elast 2 years in an attempt to make peace. Then we went to volunteering where we took poles for tents and put them on the ground to tie them up. We needed 180 of one kind and more of another kind. We started to joke around with one of the guys we worked with. His name is Arthur. Then the girls were given the job to check to see if flashlights worked. Michal and I joked about doing a Tik Tok dance with the flashlights. The whole time loud American hip-hop/club music was playing. It was fun to dance to when no one was looking. Arthur came at one point and gave us pastries. Right when we were supposed to sort metal things from each other outside (so hot), luckily, we had our lunch break. It was at 12 and we had to be back at 1. When we came back, we had to sort the metal things from each other. If they were straight, especially the tip, then it would go in one pile. Broken or bad metal things would go in another pile. I was saved by Boaz’s phone call, so I got to be in the shade for a little. It was funny how my phone could be on and I could answer it whenever. After taking out the trash and Arthur leaving us, we met another guy who works in the warehouse. He has an A scar on his shoulder. Earlier, him and Arthur did a hand war and Arthur won! He is so much smaller than the guy with the A scar. We had to roll up tents. At first, the guy got kind of annoyed with us because we sucked at tying them together. To be fair, we had no idea how to tie it good and he wouldn’t show us!! Fnally, we figured it out and did a big tent really, really good. Props to Rach for making beautiful knots. When it was time for us to go, A-scar didn’t want us to. The girl working at the warehouse was telling us how she works here and she doesn’t even have to do this type of work and that we shouldn’t listen to him. So then we left!

We went to our favorite place where we began our new trend. We decided for each day, someone would pay for 2 ice creams and the 3 of us would just pass them back and forth to each other. We would each pay for one day. The first day we got 2 nok-outs one that was dark chocolate and the other one with white chocolate and strawberry. Good combo. Then we had dinner. Right after dinner was our night activity. That night it was “Army Experience.” We were all in a Chet and then saw 4 officers come up to us with a straight face and told us the rules. We cannot smile or laugh. We must always answer them with saying “Mefaked” at the end. Some people laughed and when they got called out on it, they laughed even harder, so they either had to do push-ups or run. We then all had to do push- ups after a girl did not do good push-ups. Joe had to put paint all over our faces in 30 seconds. We also had to run around. I always got a good start and so I was always in the very front. I was in the mood to run. Then they told us we had to come up with a good song that we would all know and we had to scream while we ran. We needed to be loud enough so people would hear us. They also said it needed to be good. If it was good, we would run faster. When we were choosing, people wanted to do Tik Tok, but I was thinking about doing a nice Jewish/Israeli song. Hahaha. We ended up dong Tik Tok. Then after running we went back into a Chet and after some push ups and more running, the 4 mefakeds took off their hats and then started to smile and said “hey, what’s up.”

After getting blue things to go on our shoulders that said “mtnadev sar-el,” we then went inside and learned about the soldiers and got to ask them questions. One of them had escaped from Iran and we couldn’t take pictures with him or take pictures of him. All of them are training to be officers. It was funny to see them be so strict and then so chill and acting like their age-around 21. After we took pictures and stuff, we showered and sat on benches new the cheder ohel. Some soldiers came up to Rach and me and asked who we were, etc. It was all in Hebrew! Then we had a 9:25 snack in place of a midnight one. Once we got kicked out of the cheder ohel, we went back to our room and all of us just talked for a while.