Ariel's Adventures Abroad: Orienation and Arriving in Jerusalem

This is the introductory post to what will hopefully be a year long blog.

For the next 8 months I will be in Israel, studying and learning with a gap year program called KIVUNIM.
It is a program founded for the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding of the social conflict between Jews and Arabs, as well as experiencing Jewish life in Israel and by traveling to a variety of other countries including; Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, India and more.

We arrived in Israel on October 1st, and then went to the desert for Orientation.
An overview of the next ten days is as follows.
Day 1: Hike, and tour and old synagogue as well as meet an woman who crafted things from Lulav leaves. She had made a hut entirely out of parts of the tree as well many baskets, rugs and other useful items. She helped us to make bracelets out of the reeds. The synagogue wasn't quite as cool, but it had a mosaic floor which was interesting. That evening was our first Shabbat together, and we had services and dinner, and we ate in the Sukkah at the youth hostel.
Day 2: Shabbats on this program are very low key, because while, the trip does not associate with one particular denomination of Judaism, it respects all beliefs, and there are many Modern Orthodox students on the trip. So we got to sleep late, and hang out. That evening there was Havdalah, and then later that evening we went on a Night Hike.
Day 2/3: Day 2 finished with a 6 hour hike through a canyon near Ein Gedi. We were led by this man names Yisrael, who was very spiritual and had spent a lot of time in the desert. We began the hike at about 11, and the plan was to climb out of the canyon in time to see the sunrise. Unfortunately, we didn't quite make it out in time to do that, and we were still walking when the sun rose, but we did get out by about 6, and were able to appreciate the early morning.
Day 3: We went back to the hostel for time to sleep and eat and then later that day we went to the dead sea spa, where we had time to spend in the sea.
Day 4: We left Ein Gedi, and headed to a Kibbutz called Stay Boker. Along the way we went to the Bedouin museum, to gain a little bit of knowledge about the culture and then we went to an unrecognized Bedouin village and met a woman named Amal (which means Hope in Arabic), who had been born into the Bedouin lifestyle and was unhappy with the roles that women were given. She has since spent much of her life trying to further women's roles in the culture, helping them to gain jobs and open their own businesses, all in a effort to make them feel more equal in society. We also met a man named Clinton Bailey who is the world's leading expert on Bedouin culture, and who knew Amal. Hearing about the Bedouin culture was incredibly fascinating; especially to hear Amal talk about all she's done, and how from an early age she didn't feel women's roles were correct was inspiring. After leaving the village we headed to Ben Gurion's home to tour it, and to learn a little bit about him. Then we went to the Kibbutz.