A lot of things have happened since I last wrote, so I'll try to sum them up so that I don't leave out anything good! We had a 5-day break from the mechina for Rosh Hashanah, and I spent it with my grandparents in Jerusalem. I caught up A LOT on sleep, which I really needed, and I also went to services a bunch. I went to 3 synagougues in 2 days. It wasn't too bad though-I like services and they were all Reform, so it was pretty with the guitar and singing.We also went to Kfar Saba a few times to see my family there, and I got to see one of my Israeli friends from camp (Ofir) in Netanya one day. It was really nice.
The week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at the mechina went by really fast. The theme of the week was topography and navigation, which sometimes was really boring, but also was very cool. For the first few days, we spent all day in class, learning how to read a map and use "azimut" (I'm not sure how to say it in English, but it basically is using a compass and angles to know where to go). The conclusion of all these classes was a "nivut yom" and "nivut lilah." We spent all day in the desert near Beit Shemesh in groups with navigation experts who gave us tips and helped us to see how to use the map to know where to go on the actual land. This was much harder than I thought it would be. We took a 3 hour break in the afternoon before they sent us to go get lost in the middle of the desert with no maps or lights at night. That was an exaggeration, but it was the basic jist. The day before, they had given us a map and 5 coordinate points that we were supposed to reach. We had to decide the routes we would take. Everybody in my group of 7 had to memorize a certain part of the route, because we would have no maps at night. We memorized distance (which we would count by our number of steps) and the angles we would have to turn to get from point to point, which we would know by using our compass. It was very cool and fun, but it was also very hard for me. Thankfully, not everyone in my group was as directionally challenged as me, and we ended up reaching all our points and arriving at our final destination in time, which was the most important part. We had dinner at 10 pm, when we reached the final point, and then we went back to the mechina to sleep. We are doing another one of these navigation trips again this week, but this time it will be overnight. Ah! I'm kind of scared, but hopefully it will be alright.
I am staying at my friend Tali's house right now for Yom Kippur. I met her at the mechina, and she moved to Israel (Ra'anana, to be specific) 5 years ago, so her family is American and they speak English in the house. She is the oldest of four, with two sisters and a brother basically all the same age as my siblings, so I felt very at home. Yom Kippur in Israel was a great experience-the city completely shut down, and there were absolutely no cars on the streets. The fast wasn't too hard for us because we basically slept so much. We woke up late for services (around 10:45), took a nap from 1-4, and then went back to sleep at night. I am about to leave to go back to the mechina, where I will be for 3 days before sukkot.
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