Day 1

We have only been in Israel for a few hours, but it has been an incredibly intense and fulfilling day. It has been a day peppered with sad, happy and exciting moments. Of course, as soon as we arrived at Ben Gurion we celebrated Julia’s 14^th birthday with balloons and a very public (and pretty out of tune) happy birthday song in Hebrew.

We found our Ramah staff, Yonit, Roni and Avi, but where was our madrich? Where was Dudu? Well, he had a flat tire, and basically walked to the bus, leaving his car we don't’ know where! Yonit is a very lively tour guide, who is passionate about the Land and is extremely engaging. Roni is our bus driver who even let us finish our breakfasts on the bus, and Avi is our medic/guard, who keeps a watchful eye out for all of us.

We began the day at a beach called “The Palmach Beach. The Tefillah Committee members led tefillah and did a wonderful job. Yoni, Yaakov and Ben did us proud as we stood on the shores of the Mediterranean, listening to the waves lapping at the sand while we faced east to Jerusalem. After tefillah, the students had a few minutes to wet their feet in the ocean, and then we ate our second breakfast of the day J

At exactly 10 AM while we drove to Beer Sheva, a siren went off in commemoration of Yom Hashoah VeHaGvurah and everyone moved off to the side of the highway and got out of their cars for two minutes of silence. It was a sobering moment. In Beer Sheva we had a very meaningful service for the victims of the Holocaust, in which everyone participated.

This all sounds pretty serious-and it was at times. But, there have been some lighter, fun moments. Morah Amalya and I pranked the kids at JFK by saying that they had to have another vocabulary test, which they took, even though they didn’t have to! Unfortunately for all of us, Yaakov bought a joke book in the airport, which we fully regret already. On the plane we definitely made our presence known, and there was a lot of socializing and moving seats in the 10 hour flight. It was extremely cool to fly over Spain and see the outline of the coast, not to mention the fact that we witnessed both a sunset and a sunrise.

We began our hike of Ayn Ovdat at 3 PM and although it was warm, it wasn’t awful and it was an easy hiking experience, which was a good thing since some of us clearly needed to sleep. We saw lots of Ibex on the rocks, lizards and a crab that took a particular interest in Tatiana!

We are at the Ramon Hotel right now, where the rooms are lovely, clean and bright. Of course, Morah Amalya and I needed Yoni to get down the remote controls from the wall for the AC and he needed to get down my towels!  Otherwise, it seems like a wonderful place to lay our heads for these two nights.

This evening we played some bonding games with Yonit and Dudu. It turns out that Zachary is very good at talking with a full mouth of water! Who knew? Everyone participated in a theatre game that required them to have a conversation about a topic that the “audience” chose, but they could only ask questions. It felt very much like seeing a scene from Waiting For Godot. There were some hysterical moments, and we all stayed awake for just a bit longer. Everyone is tucked into bed and we are going to sleep soon!

Layla Tov,

Amanda, Amalya and the 8th Graders