Jerusalem City of Gold

I would like to first apoligize for the length between the last post and now... as we have been very busy on our Klita Seminar, or week of orientation. I arrived in Jerusalem on Tuesday afternoon with all of the American and a German, where we met half of the English participants. We immediately hit it off, and it was really cool to have an automatic relationship with these people because 1: were all Jewish teens and 2: we all come from very similar  Jewish youth movements. So we spent the evening relaxing and getting to know each other, but went to bed with time to sleep because we had to be ready to go at 6 am! Nothing like trying to force the jet-lag out of us. So at 6 we met up with the other British participants who arrived at 4 and had an opening ceremony for the year at a lookout point over Jerusalem. Despite the time, it was very exciting. We all joined in songs and it was amazing to see how other than some slight pronunciation difference, we all sang the same tunes and songs in our different youth movements.

So we went back to the hostel and were given some time to sleep, and after lunch, we started orientation sessions. They have continued all throughout today, and we have gone over things such as Netzer and Judaism, Israel, Security Protocol, Technical procedures, and more, and we all feel ready to actually start. Tonight, we had a chance to hear from and present to each other about our youth movements. It was really cool, and everybody was blown away to hear that NFTY (from the USA) had over 8000 participants every year. This was especially wild to Netzer Barcelona participants who have never had more than 80 (but they are very new, and partially on this program to learn how to go back and grow).

So tomorrow, we have a tiyul, or trip into the Old City of Jerusalem with some former Shnat Netzer participants, and this should be fun... and then we have shabbat. We will be going to the largest reform congregation in Israel, so it should be quite an adventure. Ill have much free time in the next two days (shabbat) so I will hopefully update you with more, and pictures, so check back soon.

Out-
Ethan