I am now starting my second full week of HSI and it has been a really great experience so far. I am getting more used to the schedule and workload. I was worried about the frequency of our tiuls and the limited class time, but everyone kind of just goes with the flow and it works itself out. We have been on three off-campus trips so far. Our first trip was to Tel Gezer. The second trip was to Mount Gilboa and Jerusalem. We got back from our third trip last night, Tel Aviv. Our first two tiulim were more educational and focused on our Israeli-history class. Our trip to Tel Aviv was just for Friday afternoon and Saturday, as a weekend to explore and have fun. I have never been to Tel Aviv before, and I really enjoyed my time there. We went to the street market on Friday and had time to walk around and go shopping with our friends. Then, we started off shabbat next to the beach at sunset, which was beautiful. On Saturday, we went to the Tel Aviv Beach, which we all loved. The water was not too cold, the people were fun and energetic, and the waves, even close to shore were like ten feet tall. Everyone was body surfing and jumping the waves, which was a little hectic, but a lot of fun. I went with a few of my friends on a walk around the area to see the shops and American stores that were there. They had some American stores like Adidas and Under Armour, which was cool to see. Then, we started kicking around the soccer ball on the boardwalk. We played a game where we basically all stood in a circle and we just need to keep the ball from hitting the ground. While we’re playing, this old man walks over and asks us if we could join. We were all like chuckling, but we said sure, and made room for him in the circle. One of the kids passed it to him carefully, to make sure he didn’t get hurt, and then he starts juggling the ball with extreme precision. He kicks the ball up like twenty times and kicks it over his shoulder, and we all couldn’t believe it. We all started laughing uncontrollably; it seemed like it was straight from Ms. Doubtfire. It turns out that this random old guy on the beach actually played professional soccer on the Ajax team for three years with one of the best players ever, Yohan Kroef. He was so nice and told us about himself. These are the types of things that Israel is full of. Being on this trip for another sixteen weeks, I’m sure I’ll meet more people like this and have more experiences like this. I have loved exploring Israel these past couple of weeks with my friends, and I can’t wait to keep seeing new places and experiencing new things.