picture 1- first day of classes looking quite smart and prepared with my roommate hillary!
picture 2- on shabbat on saturday with my friends vicky and rochelle
picture 3- shabbat friday night at the kotel with my friend maddy!
friday we did a very fun archaeological dig! we dug for artifacts, got lost in underground caves, and toured ancient burial sites! then we got dressed up and went to the kotel (western wall) for kabbalat shabbat services. after services behind the wall, we went to the wall for a little bit. There were so many people there! There were male soldiers dancing around so we joined in, but then they yelled at us because we were girls. It was interesting to see all the different types of Jews there. My favorite was the ultra-orthodox Jews with the big fury hats- they were really funny-looking.
saturday was very relaxing, we had services in the morning and then a lot of free time during the day to hang out. I got to meet to new friends and we ended up walking around outside and talking for a while! It was really nice. Later that night we were supposed to go to Ben Yehuda Street, but it was raining so we went to a really big mall in Jerusalem. I ate really good falafel! I also met up with some people from my camp that are studying at Hebrew U for the semester! I'm pretty sure I was at this mall the last time I was in Israel, and I love it! Even though it's ery close to American malls, it's still really cool to see a lot of stores in hebrew! As a group of girls and I passed by a shoe store, a man working there said hello! I stopped and asked him how he knew we were American (because he said hello not hebrew). He said you can tell because our presence is very different from Israelis (not in a bad way). We dress differently and the way we walk and the expressions on our faces are different. I thought this was very interesting.
Today (Sunday) was our first full day of classes! We started at 8:30 am with Jewish Studies for nearly 3 hours! It actually went by very fast because we were all very engaged and wanted to learn! Then I had Hebrew for about an hour and a half which was actually not that bad! After that I had lunch and then General Studies classes (physics, calculus, english, french) until 7 pm! But I had a couple of free periods in between so it wasn't that bad... Im alone in my math class which is kind of awkward but good one on one with the teacher. I have 3 other kids in my physics class and 2 in my french class, and we only have english monday/thursday so i'll see how that goes tomorrow! We had dinner at 7 and then started our loads of homework. It wasn't that bad and it's fun because we can all do our homework together!
Since I will be having a regular school day a lot, I won't write a blog for those days but probably for when we have Tiyuls (trips) which is a couple times a week. Our first one is on Tuesday!
love, paige
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