This past week has been amazing! We started it by studying different Zionist leaders from the beginning of the 20th century for our Zionist Seminar. For this activity we had to create a poster, a skit, a biography and a song about our groups assigned Zionist. My group was in charge of studying Ahod Ha’am, the man who started Cultural Zionism. This project helped me learn so much about early Zionism and the fight for a Jewish state. My group got to present second and we had a very good presentation ending with our ‘Hamilton’ parody. After our presentations on Tuesday, Talia, one of our madrichot brought us to Nachalat Binyamin in Tel Aviv where we made purchases from the arts and crafts fair. This was our first time in Tel Aviv as a group.

The next day we went up north. After a two and a half hour drive, we ended up in Kiryat Shmona named after the 8 people fighting to protect Israel including Joseph Trumpeldor. We then hiked by the Dan River. After hiking, Benjy told us that it is the coldest water in Israel and then encouraged us to step in. Me being the person I am, decided to walk right in! It was freezing but we had fun while doing it! After this we were surprised by our visit to Kibbutz Degania Bet. We went to the chocolate factory. I got a hot cappuccino with a chocolate spoon and it was amazing! We got back to our bus after our short but sweet visit to Degania. Our bus took us to the Kineret Cemetery. Here we talked about the zionists and what they contributed to Israel. One that stuck out was Rachel the Poetess. Yossi told us about her inspiring story. After DOTS, we made our way back to campus.

The next day we were down in Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv we started at the beach. We were surprised by Benjy running up to the giant jungle gym. We all raced to the top and then took a picture. For the next hour we learned about the first pioneers of Tel Aviv in the beginning of the 20th century. We were taken around the area of the city where the original schools were. In this portion of the trip Benjy and Yossi let us stop and get ice-cream, at 9 in the morning! The next part of the day, we went to the Shuk. In the general area of the Shuk, we were given an assignment where we had to interview a modern Israeli, an Orthodox Israeli, an immigrant, a soldier, and a senior citizen. This was a very interesting assignment that allowed me to see the Israeli culture up close. This experience let me view Israeli people for who they are and not the image of them that I had in my head. I’ve always been told that Israelis can be very cut and dry, not showing any emotion. This was very wrong as I saw when I interviewed a few soldiers. They were all very nice and told me about there life in the army as well as personal experiences in Israel. This week was very interesting as we went further into modern Israel and Zionism. This week we started the Holocaust and We will be going to Poland next week.