Up in the Golan

Hi everyone!
It's been a great couple of days. We started yesterday by hiking the Gilabun in the North, which was challenging but fun! We saw a lot of different nature, and a lot of other Birthright groups. It was beautiful and it finally sank in that we were in another country. We had a beautiful hike over the river with some helpers and it was incredible.

From there we went to Har Bental, where you can see Syria and Lebanon. There used to be an army base on top of the mountain and it was cool to go through the bunkers and see a real army experience. It was beautiful. We aalso went to another lookout, called Gadot. Gadot had memorials from three different wars. We learned that the Israeli army has a "back to the wall" attitude, and they always feel like they are the last line of defense. No one else is there to protect our families but the soldiers on the front line. We realized how close we are to destruction at every time. After we went back to the kibbutz for dinner and to rest.

This morning we went to Haifa, Boston's sister city. Haifa is different because it's more like a city than anywhere we have been so far. We did a scavenger hunt planned by our Israeli participants, and danced Hava Nagila in the streets with Israelis. We learned that everyone wants us to make Aliyah and we really saw what Haifa is like.

After we went to volunteer at an israeli elementary school. We did three activities with the kids--we played drums, danced, and did team building with the students. The drum teaher was amazing, he is a Christian Arab who plays amazing drums and is in the Israeli philharmonic orchesta. The kids greeted us with an incredible dance and we ended by all singing Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem. It was SO much fun.

Now we are on the way to Tel Aviv to go to independence hall. Tell you all about it later!