This is officially our fifth week living in Israel. We have gone on many tiyuls to many different places all over Israel and these trips have all been extremely interactive. During these trips we always take a step back and they give us time to soak in the beautiful world around us. Having the country of Israel become our classroom has been absolutely life changing. An example of this would be when we hiked up Masada. We started the day at 4 am and drove to the bottom of the mountain. We filled our water bottles and began our journey.

The beginning of the hike was daunting because when you looked up all you saw was this huge mountain that we knew we would have to climb up. The first few minutes were easy, but after some time I started to become extremely tired and my legs started to burn. We kept climbing until we had eventually reached the top. When we did I had a great sense of accomplishment knowing that I had climbed all the way up the mountain.

At the top we learned the story of how the Jews were persecuted by the Romans on top of Masada. We learned about the many different things that Herod had built in order to give his life more luxury as well as how the Jews were conquered by the Romans. This was a very hard to hear about how brutal the people were taken over and how they felt the need to commit suicide. At the end of the trip we were shown a great cliff where the Romans had thrown the dead Jewish bodies off the mountain. We all yelled out names and heard the echo from the canyon below

This experience has greatly impacted me. And so has many other of the trips we take. Learning about your history by actually going there and seeing it is absolutely amazing. Whether it be going to Jerusalem to see the wailing wall, or going to the Bahai Gardens in Haifa, learning about your own history and actually going to the sites is completely different than sitting and learning in a classroom.