1,000 Days

 Today marks the 1,000h day that Gilat Shalit was captured on the Israeli/Syrian border in 2006.

     Well, I haven't written a blog in forever! It has been quite some time (12 days in fact), and it is probably due to a whole SLEW of things thats been going on. Of what I can remember (which isn't much), we have been on a few tiyuls, one of which was a Christian and Islam Tiyul. We visited a church and a mosque. We talked about the history of the religions and some of the religious aspects of their daily lives. I found the other religion tiyuls very important to understand anti-semitism and the major conflicts of war.

     What else has been new since then? I have been talking to home and camp friends more than usual, and it reminds me how much I love Israel.. but also, how much I miss both my family and friends back in America. This leads into the point that, during the Parents' Pilgrimage this week, I have felt slightly more alone than before. 

     My Aunt and Uncle came which was REALLY exciting. I was very happy to see them, you know... just a familiar face. I am so happy they came but, with that, also quite sad because the week has came and gone, and they will be leaving tomorrow! The only thing I have to look forward to is the normalcy that has been absent with the parents here (especially because of the jumbled schedules).

      Shabbat, is another thing on my list of good-times in the last two weeks. This shabbas a woman came from America... and she was notorious at my camp as being the crazy-lady. She lead a short jam-session, and we all had a blast. But what I can't get over is... well, the URJ camps are all similar in ways, but our traditions are very distinct. There is this small funny-feud going on between OSRUI and Eisner, because we both have a lot of our fellow-alumni attending EIE this spring. A major conflicts in traditions is while Eisner gets up and jumps, and dances, and makes a wild-crazy-fun time out of song sessions, OSRUI kids sit down during them and do hand motions and sing with ruach.. but nothing compared to the spirit of a dozen Eisnerites jumping in unison. But, with our small feud (in jest of course) we tend to split up during our EIE song sessions. This one, however, was just.. very, very.... it made me smile to no end. It started off with us all sitting down, and then the Eisnerites jumped to their feet to dance to our familiar songs... but those familiar to the OSURI kids, they sang just as loud as us and did their hand motions. But, something happened during the song session. We were yelling at each other to sit (if you were form OSRUI) or stand (if you were from Eisner) and then I just started to kid around and broke out into Bob Marley "Stand up for your rights" and when the other Eisner kids joined in, the OSRUI kids got up! We all then proceeded to celebrate and united we danced to these songs. Soon enough, it came to a song we didn't know, but the OSRUI kids did! We all sat down, and once again, united, did the hand motions the OSRUI kids taught us. This is when I believe the Eisner/OSURI feud ended... with the blending and compromise on our traditions that most of us have been taking part in since grade school. I finally felt like we were are apart of EIE, and we left behind our old affiliations to some major extent. Finally, it was a real EIE song session.

      The last two weeks, have been filled with a lot of things like birthdays and trips and adventures. I regret not taking time out of my busy day to write it down, but I came across a realization while walking to my room last night. Some one asked how I was and I looked up to the starry blue sky to realize I couldn't be any better.