Wow… where yesterday was such an crazy active day – where to begin? Well, perhaps let’s begin with what we began with – Kever Rachel! We began the day with a spiritual experience, visiting the tomb of our fore mother Rachel. One of the amazing things about trips to Israel that you can’t get anywhere else is that you have a way to connect both to the modern State of Israel – the only Jewish country in the world, and also our heritage, as this is the land where our people and our spiritual heritage are from. We always say it, you’ve heard it before, and it sounds really nice, but when we actually are standing in the place where Rachel, or “Mamma Rochel,” as they say, is buried, those things that we say all the time actually come to life.
We then headed for Kfar Etzion, with a museum dedicated to preserving the history of Gush Etzion before its fall in the Israel War for Independence, and those who lost their lives defending our land. After that, we went to Givat Oz V’Gaon, a new development being put together in honor of and named after the three boys who were kidnapped and murdered by terrorists just over a month ago. We cleared rocks and brush in order to make way for the foundations to be laid for a new Beit Knesset in their honor and memory. Our whole group got to take part in actually building up the land of Israel.
Then, it was time for a little fun, so we went to Deerland Ranch Adventure Park for some ZIP LINING!!! It was a lot of fun – we zip lined over a valley and got to have an off road jeep ride back to base! Back at base, we met Member of Knesset Uri Ariel, who joined us for Mincha!
We headed back to our hotel, but first had a “Pizur” dinner, then, for night activity, we had Battle of the Genders! There were crazy challenges and it was a lot of fun! Picture, if you will, a mix between Double Dare, relay races, and Color War! Things got so nuts, we got in juuust a little bit of trouble for making too much noise… see, BILT, we can be crazy too! 🙂
Finally, the winning team from Scavenger Stunt almost a month ago FINALLY got their ice cream party prize! We made a bit of a mess, but it was fun and we cleaned up – plus, we shared the leftovers with the hotel staff, so TECHNICALLY, it was their mess, too! 😉