I'm back!
It's hard to sum up the best month of your life into a blog entry, but I will try my hardest to keep it quick...but with a lot of pictures.
Basically, I am part of an Israeli Youth Movement called Hashomer Hatzair. This movement exists all around the world in over 15 countries. The North American part of the movement has a program for 15-16 year olds (people going into 11th grade) to travel around Israel for a month. This program has been taking place every year for 20 years or so. The kids are from two Hashomer Hatzair sleepover summer camps, one located in Canada, and one in America. There ended up being 33 of us in total, 21 Americans, 12 Canadians. The Americans and Canadians had only met once before, but within each group, everyone knew eachother very well, so it was like combining two big groups of friends to reach a common goal; touring Israel for a month and learning more about the movement.
Okay, okay. Lets get to the trip. Instead of telling the entire itinerary, I have chosen a few of the many (600) pictures I took while I was there and I will explain them. Then in my next entry I will show pictures of everything I bought and etc.
Click photos to enlarge, and I will always be describing the photo that is ABOVE the text =D
This is a view of Jerusalem from the other side of the Western Wall.
We went to this town called Sderot that was close enough to the Gaza strip that you could see the skyline of Gaza from a viewpoint. In that town they had bomb shelters everywhere because they get hit by at least one missile a day. These missiles hardly ever kill or injure people though because they generally miss populated areas, and there is a warning siren when one is coming.
These are pictures of a typical Israeli market. This particular one is in Tiberias, a city along the Kinneret (Sea of Gallilee). These markets are very very cheap! The exchange rate is 3.6 shekels for 1 american dollar, and you can get dresses for 25 shekels, which is basically 7-8 dollars. Jewelry was like 4 bangles for 5 shekels, 2 shekels for a ring, 10 for earrings, etc. They had a lot of Henna tattoos for 10 shekels each, and they last for 2 weeks. I got a Pikachu one on my ankle.
This is a view of an interesting Arab city where half of the city is in Israel, and the other half is in Palistine, which causes problems in the city.
This is a very bad blurry photo of my best friend Naomi and I in these dress-pants things (see next blog and I'll explain) that we got for 25 shekels.
This is me after hiking up Masada, (a 500meter hike but its very steep and over 100 degrees) an ancient fort with a view of the Dead Sea. I had to wake up at 4AM to hike it or else it would be too hot. It took only 40 minutes, but it was very tiring. I felt on top of the world when I got to the top, and we got to watch the sunrise!
This is me being artistic, lol. I am the V. The design on the back of our shirts is the Hashomer Hatzair symbol.More soon! Feel free to ask questions =D
