November 8, 2013

Have I ever mentioned that I love Tel Aviv? Just in case, I do LOVE it here! Today was a nice, relaxing day and was the definition of Israeli life and living in Israel. I woke up this morning, early and had to take my midterm :(. It wasn't that bad thought and I was expecting the test to be much worse. After sitting in the classroom for two and a half hours, taking the test, I came back to my room and got ready for the gym. Paige and I went to the pool to sit outside and relax for a bit and then we went to teh gym. I had a great workout and felt amazing afterward. Once I left the gym, I came back to the dorms and got ready for dinner. One of my friends, Gabrielle, invited me and another friends and her roommate to her family friend's Shabbat dinner. The family is from the US and they made Aliyah four years ago, so everyone at dinner was luckily speaking in English! This family lived in the Neged Tzedek, which is a really nice and fancy area of the city. It was apparently the oldest and first neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Their house was so nice, when we walked in, there was a courtyard and then inside was all new and modern and clean and nice. There was a lot of fancy artwork on the walls and the house was three floors. It was so nice to be "adopted" into someones house, when you are so far away from home and family. Also, the food was so good and homemade; we had curry cauliflower, a salad, teriyaki glazed salmon, and veggie lasagna, and great red wine. I normally do not like red wine but this was delicious! It was a traditional Shabbat dinner, we read from the torah and sand a few songs and had to wash our hands the special way (I did not know this and did it wrong), and say a blessing over the wine and Challah. It was a really nice Shabbat dinner. We were all so full after dinner, so we decided to go for a nice walk. Once we figured out where we were, we realized that we were really close to the beach. We then spent the next hour or so walking in the sand and the Mediterranean Sea. It was so relaxing and nice and the weather was incredible! It was about seventy five degrees or so at night, with a warm breeze blowing in our faces. During the whole walk, I just kept thinking about how lucky I was to be studying abroad in Tel Aviv. I know for sure I chose the PERFECT place to study abroad; I could not have been happier anywhere else!