August 29th

Today we got up and packed nice and early again to leave Har'el. (Anybody seeing a theme?) Afterwards we all met for a lecture on Israeli Politics entitled Middle East Overview with Neil Lazarus. Neil is an amazing person to have lectures with because you don't feel like you are in a lecture, but you still pick up some really interesting information along the way. The lecture did not last very long, but we did learn a few things, such as how to learn Hebrew in a country where they hear your accent and immediately switch to English, and all English speakers are automatically American. He also handed out really neat business cards that double as a "5-shekel" piece for the grocery carts. (Think Aldi style grocery carts in the States.)
After the lecture we got our rooming assignments for Ashkelon. Turns out my roommate will be Becca, whom I have shared hostel rooms with for this whole past week. Awesome! Since we already knew our assignments for where we would be living once we move onto Part 2 of the year (my federation town Arad!) we all made our way onto the bus without further ado. We stopped for lunch in a "forest", which is really a hand planted area that is now a park, to have a picnic with our Federation representatives from the towns will be in. Jason and I got to know our rep who told us a little more about Arad - a town of roughly 27,000 people, located on the edge of the Negev and home to a fairly large Russian population. She also let us know that we will be living in a 2-bedroom house, and that they have bikes for us. Yay!

View from the overlook in Arad

Finally we all said goodbye and once again got onto our bus - really a home away from home at this point! As usual I fell asleep, so it felt like no time at all before we were in Ashkelon, my home for the next 2 months. We moved our bags into our apartments and started to unpack before the welcome celebration down in the plaza area. We did not have any idea what to expect at the party, but what we did see was wonderful!

Kids! There is a very large Ethiopian group currently living here, and approximately 100 of them are children. There was a dance by 5 of the girls - all around the ages of 8-10, and then a lot of playing with balloons and stickers. All of our guys ended up with little boys riding on their shoulders throughout the afternoon as well. All in all a pretty awesome welcome to Ashkelon.