Chag Purim week!

They definitely know how to celebrate here...the key is starting on Wednesday and not stopping. And a load of alcohol.

Sunday and Monday were standard volunteer days, Tuesday was the parades and parties at the schools (which unfortunately we were late for and arrived just as the kiddies were pouring out of school - still one of the highlights was a kid who dressed up as 'dinner' and was wearing an enormous box with plates, cutlery, bread, etc glued to the top). Here's me and some of the girls I work with at the Arab Center, which I love:

Wednesday we had an extra long Ulpan session then 3 hours of enrichment in the afternoon - Rabbi Eli, who also talked to my group during Birthright, came to talk to us about Purim and told us about all the festivities going on in Jerusalem for the weekend and told everyone to come and hang out. He lives in the Old City about a 10 minute walk from the Kotel and introduced us to the Heritage House which is maybe 5 minutes away from his house, a hostel where Jewish travelers can come and stay for free. So I went Friday night, and they fed us and gave us drinks basically from when we got there until we left. There was supposed to be another meal on Saturday at 6, but we left instead of going to it because I literally couldn't sit down for more food.

Thursday my program took my group as well as the Ashdod volunteer group on a walking tour around Jaffa and then to the Palmach museum (kind of an interactive walk through with scenery and videos about the beginning of the Palmach and how they were able to survive with such few provisions and negligible training time). We also went to supposedly one of the best hummus places in Israel, but when we got there they told us all their most popular dish was this hummus with egg dish, so we all got it and it was grossssss. Highlights from Jaffa:

Jerusalem and Purim (which I couldn't stop calling Halloween) pictures: