Day Five, Thursday 11th April

Hi.  I'm Charlotte Urban reporting live from Jerusalem in the Harmony Hotel about Day Five of our trip.
 
Today we had a lot of driving around with our driver, Pessah.  We left the hotel in Tel Aviv early in the morning. We had a half hour journey to gleaning in the fields in Rehovot for Leket.  Leket is a charity that grows, collects and distributes food to the poor throughout Israel.  They get volunteers like us to pick crops.  On the way to gleaning we listened to Amy and Charlotte giving their lecture of how Sasha's poster falling on the floor had meaning.  I told everyone the story of Ruth and how Ruth gleaned for herself and her mother-in-law, Naomi, in the time of the Bible.

When we got to gleaning, we walked to the fields.  They were covered in turnip plants.  Our job was to pick the turnips and make sure the rows were empty.  I was partnered with Amy and we worked in a little process.  I would pick a turnip from the ground, hand it over to Amy.  She would twist the leaves off and drop it in a small crate.  When the crate was full, we would take it over to a much larger crate and empty it in.

All of us together filled two large crates, which makes 800 kilos of turnips and enough to supply 400 families for a week.  We are all very proud.

After we acted out a scene of 'The Great Big Enormous Turnip', which we discovered after Charlotte Sims had pulled a turnip out of the ground, wasn't so big after all.

Next we hopped on the bus for a long journey to Jerusalem.  Halfway there, we stopped at Latrun for lunch and then everyone apart from Holly, Amy and I ate at the restaurant.  We went to the shop next door for sandwiches.  I had a heated chocolate croissant as well as a sandwich.  One of our very brave members, Sasha, asked some Israeli army boys if we could have a photo with them. Lisa got really into it and decided to get all the boys up on their feet surrounding us.

They were preparing for Yom Hazikaron and bringing in lots of tanks and army vehicles. One of the soldiers caught Naomi's eye and Naomi decided to have a photo with him - not that the soldier realised Naomi was there or that the photo was being taken.

We then went back in the bus to Jerusalem.  The road climbed up the hills towards Jerusalem and it was really beautiful.  Pessah told us his life story and said a cheerful goodbye when he dropped us at the hotel.

We went to our rooms, unpacked for half an hour and then came back to the entrance ready to go on the Time Elevator.  When we got there, a bombard of kids went in front of us.  To be honest, we’re English so we know how to push in front of people.  We went in and I sat next to Holly and Emily.  Emily seemed to remember every single detail apart from she didn’t think to warn us about the water falling on us.  On the other hand, Holly looked scared to death and was holding on for dear life until I told her to calm down and she didn’t have to hold on.

The Time Elevator was a fun way of learning the history of Jerusalem.  It was a simulator.  When it ended, we did some mooching and shopping.  For dinner, Charlotte, Emily, Sasha, Sarah and Naomi went out to one place.  I’m not sure how their’s went but I’m sure Charlotte kept them occupied with her laughs and lectures, Emily with her giggles and jokes and Sasha with her stories.

At dinner, our waiter was literally a human giraffe.  Amy and I compared our height to him.  There was lots of jokes and high spirits but the service was really awful.  The human giraffe dropped a glass and broke it.  Someone else dropped another glass on the floor. The water took an hour to come.  But apart from that it was pretty much OK.

We all came back to the hotel for a nice evening and Rabbi Gideon came to join us for a while.  After he left, we went up to the rooms and had a very deep sleep.