SH-22-270's blog

And God Said it was good and on the seventh day he rested. Or something like that. Well today we rested, and it was great. After a late night, we slept in to the nice hour of 10:00 am and gathered in the meeting room to talk about our stereotypes and expectations on the trip. A heated discussion followed for the next two hours which epitomized our group slogan: 47 Jews, 10,000 opinions. Israelis talked about Americans, Americans talked about Israelis and the Canadians just sat and watched. Just after 12 we Jews experienced our second favorite joy, second only to talking, eating.

Today marks the second half of our trip. Many of us began the day with a clean slate having taken advantage of a rare “down night”--few activities and no partying--to sleep. The writer of this blog slept clear through dinner and Israeli dancing, waking in the morning to find himself an astounding 14 hours older. Rip van Winkle is the story of a man who slept beneath a tree for 100 years and awoke an old man, I explained to Dvir, my Israeli roommate for the night. “It must have been after Birthright,” he reasoned with a nod. The extra strength was necessary.

Wake up to pound cake all over the place. Stuff your face and drown it in coffee and tea and talk about Brother Daniel. Brother D and the law of return and 1958 and can you be a Jew and a Catholic at the same time? Torah portions and 13-moon calendars and "Aviel will explain it when he gets there." The soldiers taught Hatikva. Nir "I have a televised puppet show" Winegerten led the way. Everyone was shocked that Brian Segal didn't do a back flip to one-up him. We were all out of pound cake and went for lunch and all the watermelon you could eat.

Everyone awakes bright and early after a long night of being introduced to Israeli Folk Dance. Our bones are not aching because our hearts are full of excitement. We had yummy breakfast and then walked to the Western Wall (Kotel). Before entering the Jewish Quarter, we sat near the entrance of Mount Zion and listened to the great Yossi speak of Jerusalem -The Old City- how it came to be and how it came to be again, the spiritual home of the Jewish people.

Shalom from Jerusalem! We had a long and exciting day. After the Americans and Canadians flew across the Atlantic, we all came together as a whole group for the first time in Ben Gurion airport, where the Israeli participants greeted their overseas counterparts with a rousing performance (especially given that it was 5:00 a.m.). All of us then did our first dancing together, right there in the airport... a dance called Od Lo Ahavti Dai. We boarded the bus and headed for the Haas Promenade.