Biking in the Hula and Visiting Safed-6/8!

We started our day with another very early morning breakfast and got on the bus to head towards our first morning activity...bike riding!

We took part in a beautiful bike ride through the Hula Nature preserve where we saw beautiful birds that migrated to Israel from as far away as Africa! Between the heat and the exercise, you can imagine the appetite we worked up, so it was off to the mystical city of Safed for lunch and touring.

After indulging in Falafel and Shwarma, our groups gathered back together to tour the mystical Artist City of Safed. We saw the sky blue color that wards away the evil eye everywhere and saw students studying Kabbalah all around us. The group strolled in and out of some of the synagogues in Safed and saw the beautiful arks and murals around them, including one that still has a bullet hole in the bimah from the 6 Day War! And we finally got a chance to do some shopping! We got some beautiful jewelry, art, candles from the candle factory, and Judaica that we can't wait to share with you!


After a short hike on Mt. Meron we went on to visit a Druze Village of Beit Jahn and see how the Druze live and learn more about them. After learning the way of the Druze, we enjoyed a delicious Druze dinner and with our full stomachs we gathered around our Israeli Mifgash to take part in our first conversation "How I Relate to Israel-How Israel Relates to Me". It was very moving to have the Israeli's involved in this conversation and it was just as moving to the Israeli's to be able to hear what Israel means to those students who are (many of them) just visiting for the first time. After a very long day, bus 531 loaded up to head back to our Guest House to try to catch up on some sleep before starting another very early day.

On tomorrows agenda is:
Heading to Tel Aviv, Independence Hall (no, not the one in Philadelphia!), some more shopping!, Rabin Square, and checking into our new hotel and preparing for Shabbat. This will be big for us. For some it will be our first Shabbat, for others it will be our first Shabbat in Israel and for still others it will be there first Shabbat in a group atmosphere. There will be many options for the students to chose from and best of all, they will be celebrating Shabbat in Israel with their new friends on their bus!