To Suburbia we go

Returning on Monday morning our whole room literally passed out for the whole day! The following week (March 15-20) was pretty slow since I was sick :(

- A semi regular trip to the shook including shopping in a cute fun area around Sheinkin and King George. I found the cutest shoes ever - silver ankle boots that are airy and were only 90 sheckles!
- Thurs in honor of Tel Aviv's 100th birthday MASA in cooperation with TAU took us on minitours of tel aviv
* there were a couple options including Yafo and Neve Tzedek. Me and a couple other people optedto see the "American Colony" which was an interesting but forgotton part of Yafo.
* basically before Tel Aviv was really settled, a bunch of Americans came on a boat to settle the area. Unfort they built camp on an area where all the sick people were buried so almost all of them died. Luckily in the next few years they moved camp to a new area and built pretty houses. We saw that alot of the homes were being rebuilt and restored. Theres a huge hotel with a big park and tree and lots of artists work in teh area: soon it will be up and coming but we saw it in its originality
* theres a famous old church that the german pope or something requested that they build
* a restored meusuem featuring the original settlers. one of the original settlers pioneered the tel aviv and israel travel industry - the first man to take his carriage (brought from the us) down the road to jlem!
*turns out our tour guide is an artist living in the restored museum and we saw his showroom with some beautiful thigns!!
*after they fed us and took us to some club where gaya was playing. too loud.

WEEKEND!
Friday-
My roomate Shaina and I decided to take Rachel and Shimy (who drove me from Jlem to the Eilat busstation) up on their shabbat dinner offer. We stayed at Shimy's and had a delicious Yemenite dinner cooked by his mom! It was a soup with like vegetables and meat, fish and homemade dipping sauces. Everything in the hosue is HOMEMADE - including the pita and matzah..wow! He even had a parrot that spoke hebrew. It would bob up and down and say "lircode..lircode!" (dance! dance!) sooo cute! We got to watch TV And saw videos of Shimy's nephew (Rachel's son) dancing - he was amazing!

Sat-
After services we walked the couple block trail to Rachel's for shabbos kidish. she is also a fantastic cook and me and shaina were so well fed! Lots of people came over and it was really intersting meeting all of their freidns and learning what they had to say about Israel, travel and America. Later Rachel drove us home from Hertziliay which is only like 10 minutes away!

Upon getting home, I ran very quickly to the train station to hop an express train to Ashkelon. The train is so nice! Its comfy and fast and I learned how to navigate there allby myself! I was met at the station by my family friends and got another nice tour of the area. It was so great to be with a family that felt like my own..we were all so happy to see eachother! There are 4 kids - 22, 20, 17 and 12 and a dog ..so it was a croweded, busy house that reminds me of my own.

Sun-
Since Hadar, 17, didnt have school that day we wlaked around and explored attempting to fix my camear. We went to the mall, visited the shooky area and visited her older sister Netta at work at the bookstore. It was really relaxing and beautiful tehre - like any suburb. At night was Hadar's final exam dance performance. Its a small art school so all her classmates came to support her and the other 4 seniors. They did ballet and modern across the floor and bar excercises to piano music. And they did a repertory performance (did someone else's famous peice). All their tecniques and forms were very impressive and you could tell the whole family was so proud. After came the best part: Each girl choreographed a 4 minute routine featuring the other dance majors. Some were alittle creepy but they had costumes and a story line and it was intersting to see them dance with free range of creativity. All of them had a great vision.
Once we got back I hung out with all the kids, watching TV and hanging out - hearing about army life and Israel life etc etc. It felt super comfortable. Then at 6 am I went to the bus station and got home in time to make it to my 830 class :)