Josh's Israel Adventure: Closed Shabbat in Yerucham

Hey everyone-

I'm sitting in Silicon right now. Adam and I will soon be presenting our proposal to bring Build-A-Bear Workshop to Israel. Sounds good right?

Lets talk Yerucham (or as they spelled it Yeroham). We (the Kehilah track) woke up early on Friday morning. We departed base in Jerusalem around 10:30, and arrived in Yerucham around 12. Right after arriving, we dropped all our stuff off in our rooms at the hostel and loaded the bus again. We got to choose our rooms, and I roomed with Seffi, Joey and Tyler. Solid room. The bus took us to the Yerucham forest. There's a forest in Yerucham, aka the middle of the desert. Crazy, right? The forest was really nice. We enjoyed lunch there. The staff bought Holy Bagel for us back in Jerusalem. After eating, Tyler took out his frisbee and we played catch. Adam, Asaf and Noah quickly joined us. After lunch, our tour guide led us to the Yerucham pond. (now back at Beit Nativ). The pond was reallyyy cool. I hope that our houses/apartments aren't that far away from it because it would be a really cool hang out spot when we are there. The bus driver decided not to come back for us, so the staff got a mini-bus which took 12 people at a time to shuttle us back to get ready for Shabbat. We arrived with about an hour to prepare.

Shabbat was pretty boring, honestly. We had a lot of sessions with random important people that were talking a lot about Yerucham. They told us stories of how Yerucham got started. What I realized is that Yerucham is basically a top-notch developmental town in the negev. There are stores (a falafel store, a pizza store, a super sol, and a store called "Ha Makom" aka "The Place." I think they could have come up with a more inventive name), streets (there's one main street) and a bunch of parks (the slides are HUGE). I'm excited. On Saturday, we walked around Yerucham and saw one of the houses that we could potentially live in. It was a pretty run down house, but it also fits 10 people and looked pretty spacious. There also was a electric piano just sitting on the porch in front of it. So hopefully Tyler and I can get it to work. That would be great to play when we record the album. That night, we went to a community concert. At first, I wasn't liking the concert because the band was really bad. But then I realized that this concert wasn't for good music. It was supposed to bring the community together. I was sitting with Adam in the middle, and about halfway though the first part of the concert, we got up and started to dance. Nativ was about 1/3 of everyone in the concert hall. At first it was a little awkward, but during the second half when we were all expecting the bad music, Adina, Jonny, Jesse and Asaf joined in the fun. Adam and I went up to the back row to dance with them. Check the picture below.

The next day, we checked out of the hostel and said goodbye to Yerucham. We then visited the Ben Gurion museum. That was pretty boring, and most people fell asleep during the lecturer. We finished off the day with a great but short hike. The trip to Yerucham was really fun!

I also happened to work on the video on both bus rides (2 hours both ways). Speaking of that, we showed it at erev Nativ the other night and everyone really liked it! I'll post it soon, probably closer to when IC starts because I don't want people seeing it before then...

I'll post some pics from the weekend.

OK I think I'm actually all caught up now. Talk soon!

Josh