Back in Israel!

It's Thursday now, and I got back on Tuesday from the US, surprisingly with very little jet lag. The trip home was very nice-I spent lots of time with my family, saw some friends (although I was upset that so many people were still at college), and I even went to my high school a few times (I know, ew).

It was great to come back to the mechina and see everybody! We missed each other a lot! Basically, during every single break we've had since I've been back, I've had a meeting with the trip committee to plan our trip to the Negev next week. It looks like it's going to be an AWESOME trip! I am in charge of one day with another person, and I still have to call a few places, but this is what it looks like may happen on our day:

1. We will visit a prison where they put Darfur refugees who have illegally immigrated to Israel (a controversial issue).
2. We'll visit a community of people who have moved to the Negev (the middle of the desert) from big cities like Tel Aviv and have made this decision with the intention of taking a stance against big-city living.
3. We'll go to some sand dunes!!!!
4. We'll go to another city where our Rosh Mechina, Zevik, will lecture. I need to look up more about this city-I'm not exactly sure about it yet.
5. At night, we are sleeping at Mechinat HaNegev, another mechina! It's always fun to meet people from other mechinot and compare (ours is obviously the best though).

So this should be pretty exciting! Other than that, we are starting work on giyusim (recruitment) for other Americans who may be interested in doing this program next year!

One thing I wanted to mention that happened before my trip to the States: I had my Shuir Chanich-my lesson that I gave by myself ALL IN HEBREW for a little over an hour. My subject was anti-Semitism on college campuses in the United States, and I started by taking a Palestinian side and telling them all about how Israel is a terrible place. After that, I took questions-they tried to defend Israel, and I responded to their defenses as a Palestinian. One person believed that I actually thought this way, which was pretty funny, but even though most people knew I wasn't being serious, they played along with it really well, and we had a good debate. After that, I showed a 6-minute clip about things that happen on college campuses with regards to Israel, and then I gave statistics and took questions. It was a successful shiur, and I'm proud of myself for doing it!