Shabbat in Chevron!

Going to chevron on this shabbat was really special because it's the week that we read Chayei Sarah in the Torah where it talks about the actual buying of Me'arat Ha'machpela, Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah were buried.  I heard that there were 20,000 people there for the weekend.  It is also one of ten days that the section where Isaac and Rebecca are buried is open to the Jews.  The rest of the year it is a mosque where only Muslims are allowed to go. 

Since there were so many people there, they put us up in a school in Kiryat Arba where many other girl's schools were also staying.  Each of the classrooms had about thirty girls staying in each one.  After we got ourselves settled in, we walked about 15 minutes down to Chevron where the cave is located.  There were also so many soldiers there this weekend.  About every two minutes of our walk down, there was a soldier posted on either side of the road.  When we got there, it was packed with people but we somehow managed to get in. The building is beautiful.  The architecture is really nice and the vibrant colors of the paint on the walls are extraordinary.  

We went back to the school where we made our own dinner.  We had cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers so we made salad and we squeezed lemon on top.  We had some deli meats which we put out and lots of bagels.  For dessert, we made fruit salad and we had lots of rugelach.  We walked back to Chevron again in search of  some rabbi's house where everybody was meeting.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find it, but we did find some other rabbi's house that we were invited into where they fed us cookies and popcorn and brownies.

 We decided to go to sleep early so that we could wake up early to go down to Chevron before too many people were there.   I fell asleep at around 1:00 but I woke up again an hour later because there were at least three girls snoring and the room was freezing.  I found out later that someone left all the windows open and it was under 50 F outside.  I was up until the morning so I decided to wake everyone up so we could go to Chevron but nobody wanted to get up.  I finally fell asleep and woke up a couple of hours later.  

We had the same routine in the morning as we had the night before.  We went to Chevron and then came back where we made our own lunch.  We then hung out in our room for a little bit when a few of us decided to go for a walk.  We ended up exploring Me'arat Ha'machpela a little more because it was much more empty and then we found a cave where there were a bunch of men singing so we decided to stay and listen.  Before we knew it, it was time to go back.  

My friend Rebecca who likes to play mommy, says that I have to go to sleep early so I'm going to go now. I hope you all had a good weekend! Shalom V'lehitraot!