Israel Today Seminar and Southern Tiyul

We had a seminar for 3 days called the Israel Today Seminar. We got to choose a topic that sparked our interest and have activities based on that theme. The first day of the seminar was on Sunday. I chose a tour of the separation fence and a tour of the Begin Museum. It was pretty interesting, especially the part about the fence. After the museum, we quickly had dinner then headed to Yafo for a play. It was called the "Please Touch Theatre." It was blind, deaf, and or mute people putting on a show. They started off making bread, and by the end of the show, bread was made and the audience could come up to the stage, meet the actors and eat the bread. It was such a touching show. Monday, I chose the option to do arts and culture in Israel. We went to the Islam Museum. After that, we went to the dance studio where the Horah Jerusalem Dance Company trains. We got to watch 2 dancers perform, and we got to dance a bit ourselves. Then we went to a museum called Jerusalem Quality of Life. It was pretty interesting because it was basically a house for artists to work. Tuesday, I decided to choose the option of going to Tel-Aviv. That was a lot of fun. I decided that when I move to Israel, Tel-Aviv is where I'll live. We walked around Nachlat Benyamin and since it was a Tuesday, there was the arts market (or something like that) going on, and I bought really good smelling soap. After the short shopping, we headed over to the Olympic Experience Museum. It was so exciting. It was a virtual tour, but it didn't feel rushed at all. Then we went to Holon where the Blind Museum is located. It's called Dialogue in the Dark. It's so cool. The whole exhibition is in the dark and our tour guides through the exhibition were either completely blind or visually impaired. We were taken through 7 different rooms, some of them were representations of our everyday mundane lives (like going to the grocery store) and we got to experience for a few minutes what it was like to not be able to see and it was a whole new experience. Wednesday, we had our orientation for second semester. It was a long and boring day. Thursday was the first day of Tiyul. We had the option everyday of tiyul to choose either the easy or the hard hike. I chose easy everyday except for one. The first day, the easy hike went to the Ein Gedi Nature Preserve and did a bit of hiking there. After the hike, we went to a Bedouin Tent. We got to the tent and rode on camels. When the people who did the hard hike came, they rode on camels. Then we all shmoozed a bit, had an excellent Bedouin meal, had a taste of Bedouin culture, then we had a bonfire. Instead of marshmallows, they gave us potatos. The next morning, I chose the easy hike option. This was going to colored sands. It was so cool there. The sands were naturally colored. We collected sand, put it in a bottle, then chilled out. After lunch, we headed to Kibbtuz Keturah to get ready for Shabbat. It was a relaxing Shabbat. Motze Shabbat (Saturday night after Shabbas is over), I did the activity with the Garin (kids about to go into the army) and we did a mini scavenger hunt then had a bonfire. It was fun. The next day, I chose the easy hike option which was the Desert Arts Workshop. I did the film portion of it. We made a funny movie. It was called Lost At Dune. We had our madricha (Achi) as our Israeli tour guide who had a thick Israeli accent and bad English. She took our stuff and left us stranded in the desert. Then one of the boys did the "NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" scream. Another kid threw water on him, and I grabbed the water bottle yelling about how it was our last little bit of water. Then we had the sleep scene where we were all having the same nightmare. Then, we did a spin-off of the Blair Witch Project. Then we referenced The Lord of the Rings with how hungry we were and how we "could still taste the strawberries...and cream." We had a tribal council where we voted someone off the island and we decided to eat him. But right before we got to kill him, one of the guys stood up and gave us a pep talk about how we're all in this together (and yes we did sing that song a number of times throughout the film) and how we need to stick together and how the kibbutz was very close by to us. Then we referenced The Lion King a bit with some slow motion running, but we spoofed it a bit because we were falling and helping each other up. At one point I fall, and the boys just left me there until one of them noticed. It was so funny. As soon as we got to the gate, we were welcomed to Kibbutz Keturah, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Harry Potter reference). We walk up to the tour guide, exhausted and she asks us how our time in the desert was for 10 minutes. We made quite the comedy. The next day, I chose the hard hike option because the easy hike was in Timna, and I had been to Timna before this trip. After the hike, we went to Eilat. Eilat is a great vacation spot. We had a boat ride on a party boat, then some free time around the city. The last day of the hiking was either Har Shlomo (the highest mountain in the region) or the Red Canyon (literally right next to the border with Egypt). I had originally chosen to do the hard hike at Har Shlomo (until I learned that I couldn't do it because of my fear of heights). So I did the Red Canyon, which was so cool anyways. After that, we had lunch at the Halleluyah restaurant. Then we went to the beach for watersports. I did banana boating, kayaking, paddle boating, and tubing. It was a lot of fun. We had dinner, then had the night off. A couple of us went out for a couple of drinks. Especially those of us going to Karmiel. It was going to be a 7 hour bus ride, so we figured we'd sleep off the hangovers. Surprsingly enough, no one got extremely smashed and none of us had a hangover.