Sunday morning, the first day of chol hamoed, I woke up early to go to a massive Birkat Kohanim at the kotel. Whenever there's something big going on at the kotel, I prefer not to get too close. Instead, I find a spot higher up where I can see everything that's going on. I had no real plans for that day so I kinda just hung around until my friend Noga, who goes to Nishmat, called me and said that I should come visit her. So, I went there to hang out for a few hours. There were a bunch of people there and we decided to go check out some museum. In this "museum" were a bunch of model succot that people made and we were able to vote for the one that we liked the best. After a few hours, I went back to my dorm and then my friend Giselle and I went to Sha'alvim where we were staying for the night. I stayed in my friend Penina's dorm and Giselle stayed in her friend Ariella's dorm.
We woke up the next morning and got ready to go to Bet Shemesh for the day. In Bet Shemesh we met up with a bunch of people from Moshava and then went on a hike. A few people didn't want to go on the hike and since it was a pretty short hike, we left them behind. We started out with about fifteen people going on the hike at about 3:30. We were hiking up a mountain and the higher we went, the more people decided that they were too tired so they began hiking back. At the end of the hike only seven of us were left. At the top of the mountain was this huge monastery, but we couldn't stay long because there was only about half an hour left of sunlight. We basically had to run down this mountain that we just hiked up so we wouldn't get caught stranded in darkness. After we rested for a few minutes, we then went to the Shemesh Festival. At the Shemesh Fest there were lots of bands playing and a bunch of different stands with food. We were there really early so we got to see my friend's brother play in one of the first bands that were up. As I was walking around the festival, I saw so many people that I knew. I was really excited because I got to see some people that I haven't seen in a few years. Almost every person that I knew in seminary was at this festival which was a lot of fun. Finally, at the end of the night, Moshav, the band that everybody was waiting for began to play. Once they finished everyone started going home. There was only one main bus out of Bet Shemesh, the 417, that hundreds of people needed to get on. We were "lucky" and got on the third bus that came, but even that bus was packed with people. I went with my friend, Brenda, to go sleep at her dorm in Nishmat. She had a bunch of people sleeping over because they all went to the Shemesh Fest but we pretty much all fell asleep right when we got there.
The next morning, I was the first one up and since they didn't have any milk in their fridge for my cereal, I went down the block to go buy some. Nishmat is one of the schools that each dorm has their own kitchen. Harova dorms don't even get a fridge, but we don't have to make our own meals like the Nishmat girls do. After I finished my cereal, I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was lunch time and since the Nishmat girls don't seem to actually cook in their kitchen, I decided to make macaroni and cheese for them which they all appreciated very much. That night everyone in Harova split up into about six groups and each group went to visit a different teacher's succah. It was a really nice get together and everyone really enjoyed being together again.
The next day, Wednesday, I went with Penina to her aunt's house for the end of Succot and Shabbat. Her aunt and uncle live with two out of her eight kids in an apartment in Jerusalem. The first night that we were there, we went to Yeshivat Mercaz Harav to see the men dancing with the torahs. Most shuls have the women's section in a balcony that way we could see everything that was happening. It was really nice to see everybody so happy and dancing together. The days that we were there were very relaxing. We didn't do much and we slept a lot. On Friday I found out that they had the first Harry Potter book... in Hebrew. It was my first time reading a real Hebrew book and I finished it in two days. It was really hard to get through and I only figured out what some of the words meant because I had already read the book in English, but I was very proud of myself when I finished the book Saturday afternoon. Reading it took up most of my time, but we weren't really doing much else anyway.
Now that Succot is over, hopefully the Rova will quiet down a bit and we won't have as many tourist groups passing through. Classes start again soon so there won't be as many adventures for a while. Shalom V'lehitraot!
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