jerusalem and such

On Tuesday, I went to Jerusalem for the day with my friend Alex. We took the bus from Tel Aviv, its a short 50 minute busride. We arrived in Jerusalem and it was raining, so we took a cab to the Old City. The cab driver dropped us off at the Christian Quarter, so we walked through their saw David's Tower, then through the Armenian Quarter and finally into the Jewish Quarter. When we arrived in the Jewish Quarter some old guy, showed us where we needed to go and dropped us at David's Tomb. We went inside and there were MANY tour groups so we kept trying to follow them but they stopped every two feet. While walking around, in the ruins, there was a huge mouse and a cat trying to eat it. We watched for about 15 minutes and it was a pretty cool sight. When we finally found our way to the Western Wall, it was gorgeous and breathtaking and sunny for about 10 minutes. Being in Jerusalem was a very different feeling than being in Tel Aviv. Much more spiritual and 1000 times more religious. After the Wall, we went to a cafe for lunch and then to the Ben Yehuda Market. This market was so much cleaner and bigger than our shook but all the same stuff. We decided it was starting to rain so we would trek our way back to the bus station. Alex had a map and circled what she thought was the station. We were following her map and walking our way through Jerusalem and were so proud of ourselves that we thought we found it but ended up in a tribeca-ish type area and when we asked where the bus station was, they stated that we needed to take a bus or a cab back to where we basically started our walk from. So we got in a cab and just felt that we had a nice little stroll through Jerusalem.

Then on Thursday, we were all invited to MASA IDF day. In which any MASA sponsored group, which is Oranim, Career Israel, Israel Government Program, and others came together and we had 3 lectures in the morning, 1 with Professer Asa Kasher, who is a Israeli linguist and philosopher who wrote the IDF Code of Conduct. Then there was a panel that consisted of Nahman Shai, who is an Israeli Journalist who is currently serving as a member of Knesset, Alon Ben-David, who is a journalist and news anchor who has been covering Israeli Military affairs for over 10 years. And the 3rd member being Benzi Gruber, who is a commanding officer for the IDF. After the morning session we re-boarded the buses and went to an Army base in Beer Sheva. Once we arrived on the base we had a question and answer session with 4 soldiers and then a tour of the base. It was overall a really awesome day.