Sunday, 14 April 2013

Day Seven, Saturday 13th April


Hi, this is Emily and right now I’m going to tell you all about Saturday. 
On Saturday it was Shabbat so we all went to shul. Most of us went to Shira Hadasha shul, but Debbie decided to be different and went to the Masorti shul.  The shul that we went to was different to ours because there was a lady singing at the bimah and other ladies were called up and a girl did Anim Zemirot.  The mechiza was dangling from the ceiling and went straight through the middle of the shul and the bimah. They kept opening it and closing it and at one point they passed the Sefer Torah to the women’s section and then back to the men’s section.  Shira Hadasha means a new song and the service was definitely very tuneful.
Once the shul service had finished we went outside for Kiddush but unfortunately there was none left. 
 Then we walked towards the hotel that we were having lunch at.  We sat on the terrace for a bit because the shul service finishes at 11.15!  Once we had decided that we were hungry enough to go to lunch, we found a table of 6 and a table of 7. As usual, the kids’ table was very noisy! Once we had our delicious dessert, we decided to choose desserts for our mothers.  Then we had a bit of a competition with another family to see who could the loudest benching.  Obviously, we won!   
 
Once we had finished our benching, a woman came up to us and told us that our singing was really good.  She was from California and had been on the March of the Living in Poland to Auschwitz to remember the Holocaust.

Then we walked back to the hotel and we made our songs up, decided our funny names and agreed the mums' awards.  We practised our routine for the songs and then we just chilled, relaxing in the sunshine.  Once al the mums had come down from their packing, we had a meeting, known as a sikkum. This was where we discussed everything we did in our week.  This included drawing on the map where we had been and we also discussed what our favourite things had been each day and why.   For the first day, my favourite part was going to Hana Senesh's house and learning how she lived.  On the Tuesday, it was the Palmach Museum and learning how hard they had to fight for Israel to be a state. On the Wednesday my favourite part was being with the Ethiopian Bat Mitzvah girls and singing the same song at the end.  On Thursday, I enjoyed picking the turnips and finding out that we were going to feed 400 families for a week.  On Friday, I loved going to the Wall and doing Israeli dancing with all my friends.  And finally, today I liked visiting Shira Hadasha.
 
At the end of the meeting, the mums all gave us certificates and awards.  Mine was for being the hardest working agricultural worker.  Then we gave the mums their awards.  My mum was the best restaurant finder and the best video-er.

Then we did a game where we had to write our name at the bottom of a sheet of paper we passed it around.  Each girl had to write something they had learnt about us and a quality they liked about us and then cover it up and pass it onto someone new to write. 

 After the game, we showed the mums our songs that we had written.  This was very funny as we were in groups of three or four and we didn't really know what the other group were going to do. 

 As it was getting dark, it was time to go out for supper.  We went to a pasta place and I ordered spaghetti. Once we had all finished our meal, we decided to go out for ice cream at Aldo's.  I had Oreo Cookie ice cream.  It was very cold. But to warm us up, we saw an interesting display of someone throwing, spinning and catching a stick with fire on both ends.

 It was very sad as we were going to walk to the hotel.  This was because our trip was officially over.

No comments:

Post a Comment