This morning we were blessed with late wake up!! 7:15AM!!! Yay!! Then we headed down for a nice davening and delicious breakfast spread. After that, we packed up the busses and headed off to Emek Tzurim. There we sifted through the ruins of the Beis Hamikdash. We learned about the different categories of stuff we found when sifting. The categories were beads, shells, pottery, glass, or special stones. It was so cool to see actual findings from our own Beis Hamikdash. After laborious work, we headed to Ammunition Hill. We watched an inspirational movie of what happened at the hill that we were standing on. Then we had a yummy lunch of sandwiches and muffins. Before heading back to the hotel for Shabbos, we stopped off at Rami Levi to pick up snacks for Shabbos!! Once we got back to the hotel we had a couple hours to get ready for Shabbos. Then we went outside to the beautiful landscape to take pictures. We then headed to the Old City for an inspirational and meaningful davening overlooking the Kotel. The davening and dancing created a sense of unity like no other. It was especially meaningful to be able to daven by the Kotel with Tisha b Av right around the corner. After we walked to an outside hall where we had a beautiful dinner. The zemiros and dvar Torah’s were great. Later we took a very long walk back to the hotel. Even though it was over an hour the conversations and friendship building done during that hour were incredible. Finally, we arrived back at the hotel and crashed. We were all pumped for an amazing Shabbos day.

Carley Kahn and Zachary Adler