This Weekend + Yom Hazikaron

This past Friday Elana and I went down to the Kibbutz for a visit. When we arrived our friend Tova wasn't there yet to greet us, which was fine, because we dropped our stuff off in front of her room and hung out with the volunteers. Finally Tova came and I gave her a huge hug and helped her get her stuff to bring to her room. After that I changed into my swim suite and headed to the pool. It was so hot out that day and the pool was so nice I loved it. I stayed in the shallow though. That night Elana and I went to Erica's (our host mom from when we lived on the kibbutz) and had drinks and cookies with her and then we went to services. Following services was dinner and then sleepy time. The next day I woke up and 10 and went to Saturday morning services, followed by kiddush with chips and cookies and wine. Once that ended I got Elana and we went to lunch and brought back lunch for Tova because she still wasn't feeling well. Not to long later I went back to the pool and actually went into the deep water!!! I swam!!!! It was awesome, I think I might try to be a deep swimmer this summer at camp. That night we went to Pub which wasn't a whole lot of fun, but it was alright. Sunday we got up early and left at 7:30 a.m. to get back to Jerusalem. I sat next to a really cute Israeli Soldier, Yoav. He started to talk to me because he noticed that I came from Kibbutz Ketura and asked me if I was a volunteer and it just led us to a long and good conversation. He is from Kibbutz Yotvateh, which is not far from Ketura. We got home and Elana and I weren't feeling well. I didn't go to classes or the ceremony for Yom Hazikaron. But today I felt a lot better and I got to go to Mt. Herzl again where a lot of people were and a few of us went to small tekkes ( ceremony) there were these brothers that had crazy mustaches that spoke and did a few prayers. We came back to and had a peula about specific soldiers that have fallen and what their story was. All were really interesting. Tonight I'm going out and I will talk about it tomorrow. I almost forgot to mention I met up with Alaina from 2nd grade. I saw her once and we got each others numbers and met up again, its so crazy we haven't really seen each other since 2nd grade.