מעלות, Harry Potter, and a Walking Tour

MA'ALOT
Last weekend was a closed Shabbat which means we couldn't have the freedom of going wherever we wanted. So the Be'er Sheva group went to Ma'alot which is 6 kilometers from the Lebanon border. I was paired up with Nava Jacknis. We were both very fortunate because on Monday, we had a presentation due for Israeli Literature . The family was so nice. When we walked in, for some strange reason, they thought we were Russian, but were relieved when they found out we were American. The father was from South Africa and the mother was from New York. They had 5 kids (2 of whom no longer lived at home). The eldest boy there, Oorit, is probably about 17. Nechama, the oldest girl, is 15 and such a sweet girl. Hodaya, the baby, is 4 and was slightly obssesed with our presence. The family had a rule for the weekend, only speak in English. It was so that the kids would get better at English and so that we would feel comfortable. We had our own room on our own floor, and it was a big room. Apparently, the 2 older boys shared that room. When we sat down and unpacked what we needed for the night, we started to read the story and take notes on what we were going to talk about in our presentation. Then, Hodaya comes in, while she knows English she refuses to speak it. She asks us if she likes her crocs and then she proceeds to bring in her flip flops, her slippers, her jewelry, etc. We then went upstairs to go to shul. The way to get to there is: go up a slightly hidden pathway with a couple of stairs (which, once it was dark outside, you couldn't see the steps very well), take a right, go up a monster hill (which was a lot of fun to go down), take a left and there's the shul. After shul, we came back for an amazing home cooked meal. At dinner, the family made us feel welcome. They didn't ask us the uncomfortable questions of our personal lives. They asked us where we were from, what the program is, where we are going to college next year, what we will do in Be'er Sheva next semester, and that was it. It was nice to feel like a part of a conversation. They didn't assume anything about us either. After dinner, Nava and I walked back to shul for Tisch (a Yiddish word meaning Friday night singing session). When that ended, our assistant director, Elkana, told us what time shul started the next morning, what time we had to meet up at shul and said good night to us. We got back home and went to sleep. The next morning, we woke up to Hodaya knocking on the door asking why it was locked. Would you want a 4 year old waking you up by jumping on your bed if you're not related? I didn't think so. We got up, got dressed, and sat outside enjoying the view drinking tea and coffee before lunch. Lunch was equally as tasty as dinner. We had a great lasagna. We even tried beer shandy (2/3 Sprite [or 7 UP] and 1/3 Goldstar [or some other dark beer). For dessert, they had the most amazing cookies I've ever tasted. We had the whole afternoon to ourselves. We got to shul to meet up with everyone. Then we all headed down to Elkana's parents' house for Se'uda Shlishit (the 3rd meal of the day). After that we went to Mincha at shul. We all came back to their house for Ma'ariv and Havdalah. After that, we were told what time to meet at the shul so we could get on the buses to head back to Jerusalem. We went back to our host family's house, packed up. We thanked our hosts for everything. We got the recipe for the cookies, and their phone numbers to stay with them again. The mother even gave us cookies for the ride back. We got to shul, got on the bus, and headed back.

HARRY POTTER
In Israel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out on November 18th. (We knew it came out in the States and Canada on the 19th). So I went with Wendy, Sarah L, Kayla, Allie, Elana P, Aviva, Jason, and Alex. In Israel, there are reserved tickets for the movie theater, so the only row they had to fit the 9 of us was the 2nd row (which actually was still a good view). The movie was amazing (I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it yet.) In Israel, they have an intermission in the middle of the movie. The idea being so you'll get up and buy something. After the intermission, we continued to watch the movie.

WALKING TOUR
Almost every Friday morning, Achi has a walking tour around Jerusalem. She goes to places really close by to where we live to show us things we didn't even know was in our own backyard or the history of places we were familiar with. On Friday, I went on the tour with Daniel and Dave (we were triple D). We went to the Russian colony to learn that the jail and court house used to be a hostel. When we were at the museum of the jail, which used to be the women's hostel, we saw police taking handcuffed people out of their car. It was such a fun experience to see the things that were there.