Saturday.

So, here Nathan and I are at the end of the day, sitting inside my room.  Tomer has gone out with the scouts to celebrate his birthday, and hopefully to buy a new shirt--he lost a very classy Castro white T at the beach last night.

Today I woke up early and went to Ulpan for (mandatory) services, I and a couple of others did YJ traditional.  Then I slobbed around Simon's apartment for most of the afternoon before going back to Ulpan for a "whose line is it anyway" type peulah and then an Israel update. 

The Israel update was particularly interesting--we were asked to choose what we thought the three most discussed topics are in Israeli news.  I said the water shortage and the Kinneret, Olim and Aliyah, and Orthodox Jewish controversy, but then was reminded of some other things that are much more in focus right now--Gilad Shalit and the Iran threat.  We looked at an Israeli newspaper as we talked about it, and I think I may want to see about starting to read one every day--it's a good way for me to practice reading and an interesting method to catch up on the news.  I've always tried to read about Israel through Israeli sources (eg jpost, arutz7, haaretz), but getting the information through an Israeli newspaper is quite different.  It was an intriguing conversation, all told.

Then seuda shlishit, then Havdala, which our madricha asked us to lead, and now back here.

Just found out that we don't have to be up until 11 or so tomorrow, so we'll probably go to the beach again tonight...if you'd like to give me a call sometime, I use skype and gchat, and my Israeli phone number is 052-552-4516 (although if you are calling from America you first have to dial 011-972, and then skip the first 0 in my number--hence, 011-972-52-552-4516.  Keep in mind that I'm 7 hours ahead of you, though. :P)

Shavuah tov, chevrei!