Friday May 2 by Molly

Friday started out with goodbyes. After spending five days with our pen pals on the Mifgash, it was time for us to begin the next leg of our journey. It was sad to leave them, because it had been really great to spend all of that time with them and their families, and to see the way a typical Israeli family lives. I also found it really nice to be in a proper house for a bit, and have a bit of time to relax because despite being busy with activities during the day, the majority of our evenings were free. I enjoyed meeting many of my pen pal Noya's friends, and seeing how they usually spend their free time. After leaving them behind, we drove to the mystical city of Tzfat, a centre for Kabbalah. We began with a short tour through the narrow streets of the old city, pausing for Dafna to explain a bit about Kabbalah and also to listen to a man playing various instruments. One of them was an ancestor of the piano, and the other was drum-like and looked like a UFO. We visited a candle factory, where they have every kind of candles you can possibly imagine, such as my favourite, Harry Potter broomstick Havdallah candles. They also had crazy sculptures made from candles, such as a Noah's Ark with different Disney animals on board. We got to see a demonstration of how they make the candles which was really neat. Then, because of course food is one of the most important things, we had lunch. I ate at this really good Yemenite place where I had what was like a grilled cheese sandwich on pita, with three different types of cheese. It was delicious! Unfortunately, the synagogue we were scheduled to visit was closed, so we went to see a Kabbalah artist. His English name was Robert, but he explained to us about how important and spiritually significant our Hebrew names are, and said that this was the reason he started to have people call him by his Hebrew name, Avraham. He reminded me of a hippy. Then we saw the March of the Living kids and helped them eat the food that had been prepared for them. After that, we drove to the Kibbutz Farrod guest house, our accommodations for the next three nights. After our previous hotels, I wasn't expecting anything fantastic, but the rooms were really nice! We have these cute little cabins with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room. We finally had a few hours to relax, and we all made the most of this opportunity. We then met up for Shabbat services with a new addition to the group; a yellow lab! He followed us for a while. Shabbat was bittersweet, because while Shabbat with the group is always really fun, it was our last Shabbat together as a group. We were joined by Dafna's husband Ido for the night. After dinner, everyone congregated in the multi-purpose room that can serve as anything from a classroom to a bomb shelter. We played a crazy game that was sort of like charades. Ari wrote down a bunch of words on pieces of paper. The first round we had to guess the word based on a description, the second round we had to act, and the third we could only say one word. Then we got crazy and tried to figure out the words by humming, which didn't work all that well. I can't wait for our next adventures together!

The pictures:  the poyke, Tzfat, dressing up for Shabbat, our beautiful Shabbat candles from Tzfat