An Emotional Journey

Hey there friends of Bus 165! Today was such an emotional but yet enlightening day. We woke up in our hotel in Jerusalem (which is thus far my FAVORITE city in Israel) and had a lovely breakfast before we took off for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. We got to the museum where we met our tour guide and started our trip though one of the many exhibitions located in Yad Vashem. I thought that since I was a Holocaust and Genocide studies major at college I wouldn’t be too surprised or emotional by anything I was learning or seeing but let me tell you, Yad Vashem is life changing. My favorite part of the museum was the Children’s Memorial, which is just a dark room full of mirrors, which create an optical illusion making it seem like the room is filled with millions of candles. When we were leaving the museum I ran into two camp friends and it was so weird to see 2 girls I haven’t seen in years, but in Israel!!! Everyone on the trip seemed really moved by our experience at Yad Vashem and when we got back on the bus, the mood was definitely shaped by our time in the museum. After that we took a trip down south, to an indoor playground in Sderot. Sderot is one of the most bombed cities in Israel and we got to learn about the playground and play with the Israeli children that were there. Most of the playground acts as a bomb shelter so that if the city is under attack, the children and their families have a safe space to be children. I think we all got choked up by both the experiences today but now we are in another Kibbutz, this one in the desert, and we are about to join our new Israeli friends for an activity they created for us!

Tess Bettman!