Jerusalem, Israel

We started our morning with a wonderful lecture from Estee Yarmish, on acts of kindness- what an engaging and funny speaker she is! We are blessed to have her with us on most of trip, she had a special aura. Her story is remarkable she had 12 children and adopted 2 more! We spent a little bit of time at a nonprofit called Susan’s house at first I thought we were going to someone’s house! It’s a wonderful organization where they help delinquent teenagers by housing them and introducing them to art. They also have counselors to offer them some type of direction.We had the good fortune to see some of them work in their warehouse. Most of us bought some of their art. We then left for Tel Aviv and spent lunch time at the Sarona food court. We had a great lunch standing up eating fruits, pizza, humus and amazing halvah. I wish we had a food court like this in LA. The court is filled with small shops like, fruits and vegetables, ( they have the largest avocados and eggplants I’ve ever seen) Dead Sea health products, halvah and tahini, candies, French pastries and chocolate. I REALLY wanted that coffee eclair from Fauchon Paris. From there we left for a very unusual experience at the blind museum- a program called Dialogue in the Dark. So for over one hour a blind person guided us with his voice in total darkness to different life settings. We experienced the life of a blind person by using our other senses, with a cane and our hands. Somehow you learn to trust your other senses more and you come out of there with gratitude that you see the beautiful world we live in. Israel is quite small next to most of our states but the traffic is awful . So it takes us much longer than expected to get to Mea Shearim; a very orthodox area of Jerusalem. That day we had to be dressed very conservative, with a long skirt and long sleeve shirt. It’s a different world than the one most of us live in, Most older men have long beards with Tzitzit, big hats, long coats. The men are almost more fashionable than the women! We stopped at various bakeries, walked, shopped and ate pastries at the same time. The streets were bustling with orthodox people shopping and getting ready for the Shabbat tomorrow. Our last stop was at a young couples apartment in Jerusalem. I can’t believe they invited all 50 of us! The purpose was for each one of us to make a small challah bread. It was so much fun. We had our usual night gathering in the lobby with Esti bringing us her fabulous chocolate Rice Krispies treats and got to know each other a little more