Shabbat Shalom from Kibbutz Afik

!שלום

Shabbat Shalom!

I'm on a computer in the reception office of Kibbutz Afik in the Golan Heights. It's beautiful here, and I hardly know where to begin to describe the experiences I've been having so far.

Unfortunately, my laptop is having serious and inexplicable issues, so most of the time it is unusable--and I have no diagnostic tools here to check it out. On the plus side, I've been able to upload some of the fantastic pictures I've taken to it, so I have space to take lots more pictures.

Briefly, so far, I have...
Walked around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Hiked in the Golan and the hills of Jerusalem
Gone swimming in the Mediterranean
Tried lots and lots of falafel
Learned more about the Palestinian conflict and gained a lot of insight and perspective about it
Touched the Kotel, the Western Wall
Explored Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial
Explored an Israeli bunker used in the Yom Kippur War
Gotten to know several Israelis, making friends with soldiers (they're awesome)
Learned about (and bought) some really excellent Israeli music
Looked across minefields at Syria
Gone out in Tel Aviv and tried Israeli beer
Experienced Shabbat
Touched ruins from thirty, four hundred, a thousand, and two thousand years ago

Also, it seems like Obama is following my moves. I was in LA when he was in LA, I was in New York when he was in New York, and now I'm in Israel while he's on his current Middle East Tour. On a related note, I've been learning a lot about the "situation in the Middle East" and I'm sure I will come back much better able to discuss it all intelligently.

Also, I've started learning Hebrew. It's a lot of fun to speak!

I'm having an incredible time here. I hope that my laptop becomes more usable soon so that I can update this more easily and put up some pictures of this amazing place. I want to extend my trip here after the Russia program is over so that I can visit more places--I'll look into that as soon as I can.