Rosh HaShana

There are no words that can explain how amazing this whole last week was. Last Sunday I began Sar-El, a one week opportunity to volunteer in the Israeli Army. We started every day with breakfast at 7:30, flag raising at 8:15, and scrubbing the floors until 9. The majority of the rest of the day, we spend working out in the field on tanks, trucks, and helping out with the daily jobs that soldiers have during their service. The first night we had curfew and lights out at 11 and so we all fell asleep thinking we were going to have a good 8 hours of sleep. We were so wrong... At about 2:30 in the morning, commanders came banging on all of our doors screaming for us to get up, put our uniforms on, and get outside all within 2 minutes. When we got outside, we were told to do push ups. People started laughing so they made us do more push ups. We were also told to run to a staircase 30 feet away and back within 10 seconds and when we failed each time because it was impossible, they'd make us do it again. Then they took us to the field and taught us a position that you are supposed to jump into if a grenade is thrown, but they didn't check that there were thorns in the field so we got a bunch of thorns stuck in our uniforms. It was a painful, but great experience, and I hope the Israelis had a laugh from it. The following nights, they took us on night activities which included games, learning about the different ranks and forces, and meeting soldiers in service right now to talk to us about their experience in the army. They also took us to a place I am not allowed to speak about, but let's just say that it was pretty awesome.

Thursday night, my cousins and I all drove up to the Sea of Galilee to an apartment my cousins own up north. We spent the nights making food on the grill, and blasting Israeli music so that everyone at the neighboring hotel could hear it too. While there, we went swimming in the sea, drove up north to go kayaking in the Jordan River during which we kept shoving each other into the water, and ate so much food.  Rosh HaShana dinner was delicious and I spent the rest of the weekend swimming in the Mediterranean and going to see the movie Ted. I have to thank my cousins for one of the best weekends I ever had.