Current action

Keeping a currently updated blog was a little more difficult than I thought. I will attempt to backtrack and give you a brief description of what I have been up to! I wish I knew how to include pictures with all of these updates so you could see what I was talking about. Oh well.

10/27 Women’s Day in Ashkelon
Today most of the OTZMA girls volunteered at this event in Ashkelon called Women Go Far. We were split up: some walked with the women participating, encouraging them; the other groups met at the beach where the walk ended and help encourage the women in kickboxing, spinning, aerobics, etc. It was a lot of fun and it felt amazing to be a part of this event.


10/28 Run in Jerusalem
Jason and I traveled to Jerusalem for the day to participate in the first ever Susan G Komen 5k run for the Cure in Israel! It was the first event to take place in Israel. The founded of the Susan G Komen foundation, (Susan’s G Komen’s sister) was there! It was a fantastic turn out and I was amazed at all of the young Judea there supporting the cause. Jason and I were the only OTZMAnikim there but we ended up meeting up with our Madrich Noah, who told us about it. It seemed to be a little disorganized since it was the first event here. They didn’t acknowledge the individual runners like us. So we got stuck in the middle of nearly 30 different groups at the start. It took a little while to get to a place to where we could start running. But overall it was a great turn out and I was glad to be a part of it! When Jason and I tried to get back to the main street, of course we got lost. Once we found out where we needed to be everything was fine. At least now I can say I walked all over Jerusalem.

Inbetween this and now: I left Ashkelon to finally start the main program- teaching. All of us in Ashkelon had a going away party for us ITC'ers leaving the lovely absorption center. 2 of us moved to Arad and live in a house, 2 of us (Shauna and me) moved to Yerucham and live in an apartment. Definite step up from the absorption center I say. I do miss those in Ashkelon, I have met some pretty amazing people. Our last night we spent chilling on the beach, it was the perfect way to end it all.

FLASHFORWARD: 11/5/10
I am in Yerucham now. I moved 3 days ago and we are just about all settled in. Yerucham is a tiny town in the middle of the Negev Desert. There isn’t too much to do, well at least we haven’t found things to do yet. This is almost a good thing: fewer distractions from what I am actually supposed to be doing out here. I will begin teaching English on Sunday (oh yeah, if I haven’t told you before: the work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday due to the Sabbath occurring on Friday night to Saturday night). So I will be volunteering in the local high school in various grades 7th through 12th. I have already met the teachers and some students and actually started helping out when we went to just observe. It is apparent that they need our help, so this feels right. We will also be working in the girls religious school twice a week. Along with teaching all week, we are supposed to do some volunteer work outside of the school so I am looking into helping out with the local gymnastics center! That would make me so happy to be back in that realm of my childhood. So now it’s the weekend, Shauna-my roommate- and I have made plans to be with the student village tonight for Shabbat dinner. I am excited to start meeting new people here.

More updates to come- Israeli politics education day which was a few days ago will take a while to write up!