Last days in Bat Yam

So, this week's siyyur was really fun- I went to this set of underground caves and tunnels where the people involved in the Bar Cochva rebellion hid- It was alot of fun, and I had to crawl on my hands and knees for most of it, and the rest I had to crawl on my stomach. We needed to use flashlights (as our tour guide said: torches). I loved crawling around in the dark and small tunnels :)

For the rest of the week, we didn't really do much- we cleaned ALOT and had a few talks about what Arad will look like. Tomorrow at 7 in the morning, we are all leaving Bat Yam and moing down to Arad, located in te Negev, or the Southern desert of Israel. It's supposed to be a small town, but with a beautiful veiw of montains, although with not much else to speak of. I'm not worried because I plan to join the Marva program, which is an army program (through the Israeli army) for the last 2 months of nixt semester, and the first month will be dedicated to my classes (from 9-6 every day but shabbat). So I wont really be spending much time in Arad itself.

I'm excited to move into a new lace, and to explore and such, I'm ready for a change of surroundings :) But at the same time, I'm sorta sad to see Bat Yam go. I'm going to have a much smaller aptt in Arad (only 3 of us in total) so I'm gonna miss the others that I won't be living with anymore :( And I'm gonna miss our apt itself, it's been my home away from home for 3 months now and now I gotta move into a new apt...

It's for the better, though, since I know that I would not enjoy having to live here for too much longer- it's just that the moving process is painful as well as difficult.


Some fun facts about my first semester in Bat Yam:

• There is an elementary school half a block from our apt and every school day we heard its bells through the windows: "Row your boat", "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", and "Dear old Clementine" were some of the tunes used
• Maddie made us pasta nearly every day :)
• there are millions of cats that hang in our courtyard, and I saw some of them grow from being kittens to beng adults in our stay
• It takes 30-45 minutes to get to Tel-Aviv from here by bus
• There is a wonderful bakery right net to the bus stop that I always use in the mornings to get to volunteering where I buy either breadsticks or a Sufgania (doughnut) in the morning for breakfast
• The laundramat and the little food store across the street each know me by name, since I go ther often enough (it's wonderful, I'm gonna miss them)
• We have seperate shower and toilet rooms- one with just a toilet ant the other with the sink and a shower
• We didn't know that we had to flip a switch to get how water for the first month... which means we had a month of cold showers
• We always had various horrible songs playing over and over again from Maddie's computer ("Sexy Bitch", anyone), now it's lots of Jewish songs.. slightly better
• We run out of tolet paper very quickly... and we ran out a week ago- too late to but any more, it would be wasteful, so instead, we just stole from the Ulpan and from the shul and from the Gym and other kids' apartments to last us :)
• Stipe was always running away, or not working
• I have an awesome apartment and I'm gonna miss it!! (both people and the building)

Love you guys, and I'l next talk to you from my new (and supposedly bigger- but with fewer people) place in Arad :)

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