Day 10- Shabbat #2 and Dance Party!!!
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. Luckily a five hour free-time break lay ahead of us, a rare chance for us Taglits to relax from the physical and emotional strain of the trip. Some of us went to the pool where we swam together for a few hours, some of us watched The Weakest Link on channel 4, and some of us took a nice afternoon nap. At six in the afternoon we all gathered in the meeting room for the second time of the day and prepared ourselves for the most deadly topic of all: politics. Now for those reading this blog who don’t know, Jews lovvvvve talking about what they think. Jews also lovvvvve talking about politics. Put these two together and you have a conversation that could go on for days. Luckily after about three hours our hunger set in and once again we stopped talking to go eat. We all hopped on the bus and our lovely bus driver Moshe drove us to a mall we had been at before. For a little while we didn’t feel like tourists for we knew the layout of the mall. Popular eateries in the mall included grilled chicken sandwiches, pizza and Chinese food. There was also a great bakery where a number of people realized this may be their last opportunity to stock up on Israeli dessert and stocked up for the trip home. 10:30 came quickly and we were on our way to a convention center for our final dance party and to perform our group choreographed dances we had been practicing all week and ultimately dance the night away. We danced, we laughed, we sang and we ate. From Mombo #5 to Eich Af Hazman to YMCA we didn’t stick to just one type of dance. We did however stick to just one mood, the same mood we’d been on for the last 9 days, exhausted emotional happiness. We arrived back at the hotel at 3:30 in the morning and split into two groups: the weaker links and the stronger links. The weaker links went to bed right away and the stronger links met up in the lobby and talked. We reflected on our previous day, our previous week and a half and talked about how this trip had affected our lives; however, as all of this talking was at 4 in the morning it was spoken in groggy broken English. Although this was our last night together we didn’t treat it like such and ended up talking about the most random stuff until the sun came up. No goodbyes were needed. We were a family and we weren’t going anywhere.
