Hi,

I have been mostly just in class these past few weeks. I haven’t been doing so much touring, not taking enough advantage of the country. But I’ll fill you in what I have been doing.

I got the opportunity to go to my first wedding in Israel, and it was beautiful. It’s not as much of a “show” like American weddings. There are no bridesmaids; only the bride and groom, who walk down the aisle with their parents. There was so much happiness that it engulfed everyone in attendance. Israeli weddings aren’t as fancy as American weddings, this was clearly shown as many of the men were wearing jeans. However, it was still so beautiful and I truly enjoyed the experience.

I also went to the botanical gardens this past week.They were gorgeous. Even though the gardens in Israel aren’t a large as the ones in Saint Louis, they still had flowers displayed from many different countries from all over the world. Many of the plants had signs that quoted the place in the Torah, the Jewish bible, where the particular plant appeared.

Saturday night I went to cinema city, which is a huge movie theatre with restaurants and stores. I had wanted to see hunger games but it was sold out, so I went to Big Hero 6, the new Disney movie, instead. It was very funny, most of the movies are actually in English and have Hebrew subtitles. I find that quite amazing, I don’t know if I would want to pay $10 to see a movie in another language only being able to read the subtitles. However, so many Israelis do it all the time. In fact, many of my Israeli friends say they learned English from watching movies and T.V.

My Hebrew is getting a bit better! Although sometimes when I speak in Hebrew, the Israelis will answer me in English. I clearly still have to work on my accent.

All the bakeries around town have started to sell donuts for Hannukah! They look amazing, I’m going to try to wait till Hanukah starts to have my first one, we’ll see how that goes.

Shira