For the first days of Succot, I went to Ma'ale Adumim which is a town right outside of Jerusalem with my friend Melissa, my roommate Hadassa, and a girl who was there for her second year Libby. This town is actually surrounded by the desert. You can walk probably walk the width in about 5 minutes and the length in about 30 minutes and you will see the mountains of desert on every side. It was actually a very nice landscape and the sky was always clear. The weather was really nice in the morning, it got pretty hot around the afternoon, and at night it was very windy and a bit chilly. Most of the people that live there are people who recently moved to Israel from America so we found that the majority of the people spoke English and they taught their kids English too.
On holidays and Fridays, Israeli buses stop running about an hour before the holiday starts. We were running pretty late and we actually caught the last bus that was running that day. We were staying with the Krakauer family. They all spoke English because they made aliyah six years ago. They were actually originally from New York and they lived in Brooklyn near Marine Park.
They have 8 kids. Tova, the oldest went to Harova when they first made aliyah. Uriel still lives in Brooklyn. Max was really quiet and he didn't really talk to us much. Chaim was our age and he also had a friend of his over from Brooklyn, Netanel. David is 15 and just liked hanging around and talking to us. Yoni is a crazy kid who thinks he's so cool and funny like all other 13 year old boys do. Shuli was a little bit obsessed with us and liked to follow us around wherever we went. Sarah Devora was the youngest who was born right before they moved to Israel. They all loved playing chess. I played against Chaim once and I lost. I played Yoni once and I won. I played Shuli three times, twice I won and once was a stalemate.
For the first night of succot, they had over 30 people in their succah. Nine of the people were the family itself, nine were people sleeping over because there was also another four girls sleeping over that we didn't know, and the rest were friends from the neighborhood. The next day, we had lunch with one of our Rabbis in school who lived in this town, Rab Susman. It was just his family and us in their succah. Him and his wife are very American but their kids are so Israeli. They mostly spoke Hebrew at the table but I was basically able to understand most of it. The food they served was also typical food that you would see in a Jewish American's home as opposed to the food that I've been eating at other Israeli's houses.
That night, when we got back to the house, the holiday was over for the family but we still weren't allowed to do anything. They are also a very musical family so we were listening to them play the piano and the guitar. We had pizza for dinner and then just hung out and talked for the rest of the night. We didn't do much the next day either. We sat around reading for a little bit and then we went for a walk around the neighborhood. Shabbat started at 4:30 so we didn't have much time to do anything on Friday. For Friday night dinner we split up. Hadassa and Libby went to one of our counselor's houses and Melissa and I went to her friend's house, the Zenilman's. It turns out that they are cousins with my friend, Dodi.
The next day, I woke up really late to two little girls screaming at me to wake up. I kinda started laughing a little bit and then Libby was kind enough to get them away from me. For lunch we split up again and Melissa and I went to the Foyer family for lunch. They also had another family over and I found out that the mother of the family lived in Brooklyn and went to Flatbush. For almost the whole meal we were talking about Flatbush and what it used to be like and how much it changed from when she used to go. When we got back to the house we played some games like Apples to Apples and by the time we finished Shabbat was over. We ate a light dinner afterwards of Honey Nut Cheerios and then we went back to school. It's been a crazy vacation so far with so many new people and experiences and many more to come. Shalom V'lehitraot!
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