Currently I'm sitting in Silicon Wadi class, everyone is giving presentations about Israeli startups that they researched over the week. I researched a company called Mind360, its a pretty cool company, it's one of those 'play brain games to make you smarter' companies. Fun stuff.
Friday morning, October 23rd, Seth and I board a bus from the central bus station en route to Bat Yam. Bat Yam is a suburb of Tel-Aviv. One of my good friends from back home, Arielle Rosenberg, a girl that I met through USY, is currently on Young Judea Yearcourse. Unlike Nativ, YC is split up in 3 different locations, and she is currently in Bat Yam. They live in apartments spread out around the city, similar to what I'll be doing second semester in Yerucham. (Just did my presentation, went well. I think he liked my choice of company and analysis of it.) Unlike the cities that I am familiar with- Jerusalem, Kiryat Gat, Tiberous- Bat Yam doesn't have a central bus station, aka a place where everyone on the bus gets off the bus and from there walks/takes a taxi to their final destination. In Bat Yam, you just need to get off at one of the stops in town. We got off at a random stop, called Arielle, and eventually made it to her apartment. She wasn't there when we arrived, so Seth and I hung out with her roommates until she got there. Her friends Ben and Andrew came over, and after about an hour I decided that I wanted to go on a walk and see the town. We walked around Bat Yam, a pretty nice city that is on the Mediterranean Sea. Her apartment is about 20 minutes walking from the sea. We walked there and sat along the beach for about an hour. It was so beautiful to see the sun setting over the sea, and at least for me, being able to see a body of water. We don't get to see that much water in Jerusalem.
We walked back to the apartment after Shabbat started, and then went to a Yearcourse Ulpan dinner. Seth, Arielle, Marissa (Arielle's roommate) and I walked towards the Ulpan dinner. We picked up one of the "tzofim," Yoni, along the way. Tzofim are Israel's that live with Yearcourers, just graduated high school, and basically are taking a gap year before the army in Israel. One tzfoim lives in each apartment. Yoni is a really cool guy, he cooked the Challah for the dinner. There was about 20 people at this dinner. We did the blessings, ate, and played some games as a group. This was a cool experience for me because it gave me a little insight into what being on Yearcourse is like. Apparently, this not only was my first official yearcourse dinner, but Arielle's too. She said they don't really do the whole "communal meals" too often.
After a great dinner, meeting lots of new people and having a great time, we made our way back to change into bathing suits. We were going to take a little night swim in the sea. We met up with a bunch of other Yearcoursers when we got there. We didn't end up swimming, but just ended up talking and hanging out with them for a while. There was about 25 of us on the beach. Around midnight, we made our way back to the apartment for a good nights sleep.
The next day, we woke up around 11:30. Marissa and I went to Ben and Andrew's apartment to get some eggs and bread so we could make french toast. and by we I mean Arielle made French toast. It was super yummy. After breakfast/lunch we hung out in the apartment and took a nap.
After the nap I took the lead and said "time to go swimming!" I was not going to Bat Yam and not swim. We got to the sea just in time to swim, and eventually see the sun set again. It was sooo beautiful a second time. After a good swimming/body surfing session we retured a final time to the apartment, made some pizza/pasta dinner and said goodbye. It was a very fun weekend.
Class is starting again. Time to learn. Talk soon!
Josh
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