ישראל איפה היית כל חיי: Without Method or Conscious Decision

Hello everyone!

The title of this posting is a description of how I feel about Israel haha... I love it but there is the most random, strange, crazy things that happen here which is part of what makes it great, there is NEVER a dull moment. Literally as I am typing this a lady in a crazy outfit and on stilts is teetering by me... No joke. I can tell Purim is coming (crazy Jewish holiday, enough said).

This week has been full of ups and downs!! I'll start with the downs because as much I like to crack jokes and keep it light this is the reality of studying in Israel.

A few days ago a rabbi's house was broken into at night and him, his wife, his 3 month old, 4 year old, and 11 year old child were all stabbed to death, 3 other children were not harmed. To send a message about this horrible tragedy Israel actually posted the pictures of the murder victims- quite disturbing. Their shiva was yesterday in Jerusalem and so it was crazy busy and the president was all over town back and forth so there were alot of police escorts.

On a happier note I had some great experiences at the school where I teach the other day. I was assigned to a class with a very shy and troubled little girl, probably one of the most extreme children I've gotten to work with. According to other teachers she hardly ever interacts with anyone or cracks a smile. After just 20 minutes I had her laughing and smiling and coloring and saying a few words here and there to me, it was so rewarding and I will be working with her weekly from now on. Those are my favorite kinds of kids! I also had an ADORABLE 1st grader who spoke 5 languages! After just 10 min she said, "I love you" it was the cutest thing ever!! I would let her take some breaks from english and teach me Italian words because...........................................................................................................................................

I AM GOING TO VISIT MY AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL SORORITY SISTER

HANNAH SCHNEIDER IN ITALY!!!!

Needless to say I am bursting with excitement and everytime we get online and discuss it I get more and more excited!! It will be so much fun to see her and explore Italia!

I know I am going to overdo the Italy excitement so I am going to stop here for now... :-)

Thursday I had a lovely dinner party at my apartment with Andrea, Dana, and Shiri and those of you who know me well know what I made... After we went to Zack and Cody's apartment (yes I know that is the name of a disney show and yes we have joked about it). A few of us then headed out to Ben Yehuda and did karaoke!!! It reminded me of the AOII girls, BUT Ashlee was not there to drown me out with her rockstar voice. Despite the tone deaf singing, someone who worked there kept signing me up for songs so every other song they would announce "Brittany and friends" it was kind of hilarious.... especially when the mystery person picked songs that we didn't know... we are hoping the videos don't surface...

Friday despite getting only 2 hours of sleep Shiri and I dragged outselves out of bed and were ready for our western wall tunnel tour and the bus was no where to be found so we went back to bed and reunited later for shabbat dinner. It was amaaazingly fun and we met some great people, including an Italian man who gave me some great tips for my travels.

Saturday Laura and I went on a walk to the old city and while on the way we heard what sounded like a gun shot really close to us... we nearly dove to the ground when we realized it was just a car backfiring... we felt silly...

We had a great time and just sat and talked by the wall while the sun went down and shabbat ended. It was beautiful with the sunset here are two cool scenery pictures below. We couldnt take many more pictures because on shabbat it is rude and you will get in trouble if you take pictures there so we will have to go back not on a saturday.

For those of you who have been reading my facebook posts and are concerned, the bank has fixed the problem and I am being sent a new card... most of my posts have been exaggerations and while I say that I am living in "poverty", drinking coffee creamer, and starting a reality show with the premise being how long I can last on 50 Shekels, I am in fact being well taken care of until my real card arrives- which leads to my next story...

Yesterday I asked my teacher where a change station was so I could change some dollars into shekels, she told me it was in town and I told her the story of my card. She instantly offered in hebrew to lend me money which was sooo crazy because no teacher in the U.S. would just volunteer money like that. I of course declined and told her I was going to the change station later in the day.... the story continues

I went into town and worked on my independent study in a coffee shop until my professor came to meet with me. Afterward I had an hour to kill so I went to the change station and then got on bus 19. I purposely got on it going the opposite way because I had the time and wanted to sit and ride around for a bit. Everyone says the 19 goes in a circle and ends up back at campus, but what they failed to tell me is the circle is actually a LOOP AROUND THE WORLD and THEN it comes back so I ended up on this bus for 2 hours and missed all but 15 min of my class. Luckily my professor is awesome and didn't mind, he also invited a bunch of us to his house for shabbat dinner.

Today Shauna and I went to an did some excavating in an archeological site! Here is a picture of me on our way there.

Best part about Israel is even though I am so far from home I still manage to run into people I know! Emma and I worked at Herzl together and her and her family were excavating too... Herzl Camp reunion!

What was cool about the excavation was that the land that we were working with had been occupied by several different groups and had been destructed many times so depending on what is found you can tell what group it came from. We actually found many cool things but this was the coolest. It was a large piece of marble that was from the destruction of the temple as far back as 70 CE!!