August 30th

Today we started out with a light breakfast (cakes... seriously, am I the only person who does not think chocolate should be included in breakfast?) and then went on a short tour of the מרכז קליטה (absorption center). Which consisted mostly of: this is a building, this is another building, and the computer room is over there... ok it was a lot more informative than that, but it was 7:15am and I don't have my bearings in the center yet.
After the whirlwind tour of the we מרכז קליטה got separated into our three groups of the day. We had 3 things to do, pack up boxes of food for the less fortunate for Rosh Hashana, go grocery shopping, and finish unpacking our rooms. I was put in charge of group 1 as the contact person - making sure we were all on the bus etc - totally unnecessary since our מדריך (kinda of like a guide/educator - it does not exactly translate) was with us for the majority of the time.
Anyhow, we got to the first place to pack up the boxes and found out they had already been packed and we would be going out to deliver them instead. I helped load up cars for the first hour or so, and worked on my numbers a little bit - I can confidently count up to 4 now! Finally I was placed in a car with 3 men... only one of whom spoke any English, and it was not very much. When we got to the first building the youngest man looked at me and started saying Lo, lo (no, no) when I tried to pick up a box. I finally convinced him that I could carry the box and he pointed to the building, said "arbah" (four) and handed me the small box of veggies. This apparently meant that we were going to the 4th floor. At the next apartment we repeated the same process again, only this time he said "shesh" (six) and we were on our way. When we got to the final building he pointed to the building and said something I did not understand (I was later told he probably said "shomonai" since I counted 8 floors) and then just started pointing to the roof which I took to mean the top floor - I was right. Now these things only matter since all of the buildings were walk-ups with little to no lighting in the stairways. Interesting to say the least.
Next we were off to the shopping center to do our grocery shopping. Along the way we saw some evidence of Israeli driving.

Remnants of an accident

Luckily all of my roommates were in my group, so 3 of the 4 of us were able to do some basic apartment shopping together - paper towels, toilet paper etc. Due to some odd mishaps and apparently being too efficient at the volunteering opportunity, the timing got a little messed up and group 1 ended up spending both our room setup and shopping time at the shopping center. 

Milk in a bag!

When we did finally get back to our apartment it was almost time to start cooking for the potluck dinner. We were making a pasta dish, but of course this is when we found out that our gas range is a little interesting to work with. Unless you hold the gas knob in the flame will go out, so finally we filled a pitcher with water and put in front of the knob to hold it in. 
Our pasta was loved by the group when we finally got downstairs, and we all enjoyed a nice meal together before retiring to our apartments for the evening.