So my time has come, its the end of my three months in my Partnership city Rehovot. It is pretty sad but I think it was the perfect amount of time. I got to say goodbye to the babies in the gan I work in as well as the second graders at the afterschool program and as well as the special needs teens that I saw twice a week. It was my second shabbat in Rehovot, just how times played out I was traveling all the time this track which was nice (tiring though). We got our last shabbat sponsered by [View Full Entry]

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Over this past year some of my friends on Otzma have been lucky like myself to have family and friends just go in and out of Israel like a revolving door. Tx has had 2 people so far and myself well lets just say my entire family not so much friends. I have friends here who have made aliah but my friends from the states are still in school and are either on their semester abroad else where other than Israel or just still taking a regular semester of classes. So there has been a build up to this visitor fox [View Full Entry]

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It has been many years since I have dressed up for purim. I didnt even dress up when I was running my youth groups purim carnival. This year was a little different. i was in israel and every single person doesnt matter on your age I have noticed gets in the spirit of dressing up. So I was innovative, and decided to dress up as a twister board. The front of the tshirt was the spinner, and the back was the board. A lot of Otzmanikim decided to go into Ta and go to flourintine and have a good time. This [View Full Entry]

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It is official I am going on vacation. I thought it was not going to happen this year, since I had a petor from the Israeli army saying that if I leave Israel I have to leave for 160 days. But that no longer applies to me since I just have been discharged. It is so exciting. Tx and I were throwing around a couple ideas for vacation.. cruise, Croatia, Greece, turkey going some where and we finally sat down with a travel agent last night and booked our flights and packages. We wanted to go to two different place, and [View Full Entry]

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My aunt Roz is here again but this time for work. She works for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. She is here planning the logistics of the trip for the constituents and I get to help out a little. She invited me to hear Ehud Olmert and dinner, then as well as hear Tzipi Livini and Bibi Netanyahu. It is very interesting time to have all these high political speakers come talk because elections just took place and we have no government yet. I was able to help by volunteering and helping get thing prepared for each [View Full Entry]

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So today tali took us to the Blind Museum. She used to work there and wanted us to have the experience of going to a Museum which is completely in the dark and the tour guide it either blind or seeing impaired. So we get to the Museum and they tell us you can not bring any bags in with you and also if you wear glasses you can no wear them. Someone from NY started to freak but since my prescription is not that strong I felt comfortable to walk around without my glasses. We were given a walking stick [View Full Entry]

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This part we only had two seminars.. one which was a mifgash (encounter) with israeli young adults our age as well as a conflict and hope seminar. The mifgash was a lot of fun, I was in a group with past Ramah counselors and we got to reminisce about our time staffing there and what not. Nothing has changed in Ramah Berkshires it is kinda sad, but I heard Rabbi Resnick is leaving and for this coming summer 2009 there will be a new director. That should be interesting. It seemed very forced nature and some Israelis didn't feel comfortable to [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday night I got the chills and did not feel so good. I ended up having a fever and chills all day and couldnt function on thursday. I didnt go to volunteering because I was so sick and couldnt be around 2 2 1/2 year olds. My body ached and I didnt know what to do. I just decided suck it up you will feel better and mom will take care of me. My entire family is in Israel (minus my dad :-( ). This is going to be out of control. Thursday 1/15 I am meeting my great uncle at [View Full Entry]

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Part two is finally beginning. I was extremely ready to move here from Beer Sheva and to see what is too come. We moved here Jan 4th and had a week of touring our different volunteer places. My schedule got switched a bunch of times, and this is the final version. I am working in a kindergarten and a couple matnasim. In the afternoon in one I work with an after school program for kids with special needs, and then the evening with at risk teens. The other night that I work is an evening program for kids with special needs [View Full Entry]

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I was finishing the GA with a metting with the New York Federation and the CEO said, I just want to let you know that I think that you your Otzma group will be here for the net war. Low and behold we were. Was this an operation or War? For awhile the Israeli govt kept saying that it was not a war and that it was just the fault of the media for calling it that. It was just after Shabbat Channukkah and my entire family was together when we heard that war broke out. I was not surprised ebcause [View Full Entry]

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