חתימה טובה(chatima tova, easy fasting)

It's Yom Kippur tomorrow, but it officially starts on the night before when the sun goes down. Yom Kippur is the day of repentance. It's very typical on Yom Kippur to fast for a 25 hour period, and the more orthodox spend many hours in the synagogue services. The prayers are considered very intense, as they ask god for forgiveness as we atone for our sins. I tried going to services about an hour ago, but it was not my cup of tea ( I never was good at apologizing). I am however attempting to fast. So far I'm an hour and a half into my fast, and I could really go for a jug of water. This ain't gunna be easy. Right now I'm in Haifa with Jeremy and Mike; we're staying at Nitzan's house. Haifa is the third biggest city in Israel and is located on a mountain ( I'll have some sweet pics comin up). Nitzan's house is really nice, as is his family. Tonight we're going to some sort of center where thousands of people from Haifa goes on Yom Kippur. Basically, it's a huge party where there's no music or drinking.





On monday we had hebrew class.....snnooooooze. It stinx. Although my hebrew is getting better rapidly. It's primarily due to Jeremy and Mike. The three of us are always trying to speak in Hebrew and learn new words. It's getting to be a lot of fun to learn, and I think our plan is to try to get an intense learning session tomorrow, considering we're not suppose to be doing anything. After Ulpan I chilled before going to volunteering. Volunteering on monday was special because Peace Players invited the American International School to play a game versus their combined Israeli/Arab teams. They played two games, and they were both a definate success. Mike and I just chilled, helping with the scoreboard, warmup music and whatnot. OH MY GOD IM SO THIRSTY. I had no time after volunteering because I had to immediately had to get ready for my night trip to the Old City in Jerusalem.

The Western Wall



Jeremy, Jonathan (Kunis) and me


I had visited the Old city on my first trip to Israel when I was six, and also in the first week of Year Course, but the atmosphere this time was like nothing I had ever seen. The 10 day gap between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called the 10 days of repentance, so even though it wasn't Yom Kippur, there were Sephardic Jews atoning a plenty.
Our tour started by visiting a couple historical sites, most notable King David's Tomb, and above it where the last supper took place. Afterwards, we got an hour of free time before we left, which was largely given to vistit the wall. Jeremy and I hung around the center of the hoopla before venturing to the wall. It was pretty captivating to see such such a variety of routines of intense pray. I didn't really have any praying in me, so I just closed my eyes and tried to just be in the moment. Jeremy wrote a note and put it in the wall, a common tradition. I kissed the wall, also a tradition. Ok, im about to go out into the Haifa night life, I'll update on Tuesday later. An extremely interesting event transpired...........................................