Gezer

First couple days have been busy. The room is small, four people in a space the size of my room at home. The kids are great and we have great staff. The campus is nice with lots of trees, birds, and cats. The food is sub-par, but there's a little restaurant on campus with pita and humus for nineteen shekels. Good stuff

Our first trip today was to Gezer. It's the remains of an excavation thats a couple decades old. There's a bunch of ancient ruins from the Solomon era. It was incredibly hot and we all had to sit in the sun and reenact a human sacrifice, which actually turned out to be kind of funny and not morbid. We saw a couple huge idols that people worshipped. We also saw the ancient gates that were used to defend the town, and I was amazed at the type of battle strategy that must have been used at the time. I imagined people living in these towns, with no communication to anybody else except for messengers sent back and forth.

Today was Yom Hazekaron, which is the day that Israel mourns its fallen soldiers. We went to the center of Hod Hasharon and saw a presentation. Even our instructor Tomer admitted that it was kind of a rambling and disorganized ceremony, not to mention that it was all in Hebrew, but nonetheless interesting and emotional. The cool part was when everyone stood silent while sirens rang out through the town. Israelies, who I've noticed are pretty loud and talkative, managed to be completely silent for about two minutes. It was a touching experience, and a very sad one.