1st Week in Israel

We spent the first three days in Jerusalem, at a hotel. We were trying to get over jet lag, and adjust to being in a new country. On the first day we went to the Kotel, and briefly walked through the Old City. Then we went back to the hotel and (attempted) to sleep. The first couple of nights were horrible - I had trouble sleeping for more than 4 hours at a time, and would end up being awake from 1AM-4AM, which completely messed up the rest of my day. Thankfully, I got over jet lag after a couple of days. We also spent the time in the hotel doing group bonding activities and learning about the history, geography, culture, and media of Israel.

On our third day, we arrived in Ramla! Everything in Israel is so much closer than I thought it would be - Ramla to Jerusalem is like a 45 minute drive, Ramla to Tel Aviv is like 20 minutes. I was rooming with three other girls - one from Toronto, one from Connecticut, and one from California. We arrived in our apartment, and despite it being filthy, the first thing we all did was open our laptops and sit around the table. It was rather comical, but the funnier thing is that we still do that (like right now.) Then we cleaned the house, where we found maggots in the fridge. It was absolutely disgusting. We ended up having the City Coordinator, Daveed, clean it most of it.

The first day in Ramla we went adventuring and learned where important things in the city were (library, grocery store, falafel store, other people's apartments, etc.) The next day we painted a kindergarten and had a lecture on the history of Jerusalem. We also ended up moving apartments because we had sketchy upstairs neighbors. We also switched one of our roommates - the one from California moved into another house, and we got a lovely person from Seattle who had come into the program late. Our new apartment is much, much bigger and has a fully furnished kitchen, and has super nice neighbors who speak a little bit of English.

The mangoes here (actually all the fruits and veggies, except apples) are so much fresher here and taste so much better than in Boston! Everything tastes like it comes from a farmer's market. Also, I have to drink so much here! I go through several bottles of water a day here (the really big bottles) plus iced tea and juice. It's so hot!