Birthright Trip Breakdown- Day 1

Day one of my birthright trip started on the wrong foot. I am a die-hard procrastinator. Therefore, I started packing that morning. I had to be at the airport to meet the group for 1pm. As i was running out the door (late of course) I couldn't find my jacket. Turns out my brother took my jacket to school with him and so I had to run to his school to get the jacket on the way to the airport. Not fun when this is all done by bus. This also caused me to miss my bus meaning I wasn't going to be able to eat at the airport before they arrived.

I arrived at the airport with plenty of time (Pre-Hanukkah miracle?) and met the Israelis in my group and one of our guides. We were then informed that we would be greeting the Americans with song and dance. When they came out of the doors into the main room we all started singing Heveinu Shalom Aleichem. Complete with guitar accompaniment. It was pretty embarrassing but I just chalked it up to the experience.

We all headed to the bus and started our journey down south to the Mitzpeh Ramon area. We did some ice-breaking activities when we got there. Including talking about ourselves and sitting on complete strangers' laps. The night ended off with a party in a room (naturally, with plenty of alcohol) that ended up spilling into the lobby. Everyone got to know one another a bit better, there were some guitars and everyone had a good time. At about 10:30 I headed back up to my room (I think the earliest night I had the whole trip) but then ended up having a three hour discussion on religion with my roommate from Yale. I really enjoyed it and plan to have many more drunken debates in the future.