I guess I've been getting ready for R"H since arrival, as we came on Rosh Chodesh Elul, so I've heard the shofar with davening. In my Talmud class, we've been studying the laws for hearing the shofar.
On Monday, we had some short shiurim at Beit Nativ for all Nativers. For these, I studied a bit of Kabbalah, discussed life cycle and the ability to change, and analyzed the prevalence of the shoresh ayin-vet-resh in unetaneh tokef. These were interesting, but we did not have time to get do much in these classes. Tuesday morning, I woke up around 4 to join a few others for a slichot tour. We sat in at a Greek and then a Turkish synagogue. One had really beautifully painted walls, and at tea was passed around. It was great to see these Sephardi shuls. We wanted to visit more synagogues, but by the time we arrived they had finished slichot.
After the shiurim Monday, in celebration of HU students finishing finals and to help us relax (arguably getting us in a R"H mood), we have had a lot of fun activities. Monday night, we split up by track. We kfarmers went to a park to play Angry Birds with water balloons and then make s'mores, which was possibly the most fun we've had as a track all together.
Yesterday, we went to a water park, which I still can't believe is acceptable in Israel with the water shortage. Obviously this was a lot of fun. In the afternoon, we left the water park to go to the studio for The Voice- Israel! This was incredible! We all got to be in the audience, and might be on national TV! Interesting to me, nearly everyone in the audience was our age or younger. I happened to sit in the first row by stage right, next to their website's editor, who I was able to talk to throughout the non-filming moments. The contestants all had great voices, as did the judges (they sang a little too). I also now know some secrets, such as after judges finished talking with contestants, they would refilm judges pressing the buttons to turn around and make us cheer again. When they had breaks, we were kept entertained by a host; some audience members got to sing for us the by their seats, including Tehilla and Zach of Nativ who sang "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." We also all sang "Hayom yom huledet" to my roommate Suzanne, who turned 18.
Today we've been getting ready for R"H more, but with the option of sleeping much more. I still woke up early, so I went for a run, then got desserts for the families hosting me for meals over the next 2 days. The 2 washers and dryers here probably haven't had breaks all day. Although, about 10 people went to the zoo too.
4 more hours!
Trivia: Why do they have camera's at the water park by the indoor slide entrances showing where people leave the slide? I don't know, because I most definitely had a collision with people in the middle of a certain slide.
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