Yom Sport...

...was fun, even though team Noa Cohen's chanichim (us) lost every single game we played.  At least we got free t-shirts, which are the first legitimate Year Course shirts we've received (I don't count the super crappy "Year Course Orientation 2009" shirts we got, because I would rather not wear a shirt than wear one of those).

I and some others spent a bit of time in the country club after we played the sports there, just hanging out in the pool.  We then went home for 5-shekel falafel and I took a short nap.

At around 5, Nathan, Emilie, Cera and I met at the bus stop to go into Tel Aviv and see Yossein, the leader of the Darfuri organization that we want to work with, B'nei Barak Darfur.  He took us to meet the two families whose kids we are going to be teaching English on certain nights.  Seeing their smiles and surprised expressions at our seemingly random offer to help was very satisfying, but I still have mixed feelings about the entire situation.  The kids speak Hebrew and need help with English, but the parents know neither very well at all, and some of them wanted us to teach them English.  The entire time we were there I am pretty sure they were speaking Arabic amongst themselves, and, in the background, they were watching Al Jazeera TV, a huge Arabic media station.  Of course, I had realized before this that many of the Darfuris are Muslim, it is just something strange to think about.

One of the kids we met with, whose name I think was Fa'iz, told me that he moved to Israel from the Darfur region only 3 years ago.  He is now 11, and I asked him if he still remembers the trip over: "Yes, somewhat."  And I asked him if it was a hard trip: "Yes, at least 4 hours of walking."  And I asked him if he liked it better in Darfur or Israel :"I'm not sure yet."  I suspect he doesn't remember most of the trip, because it is much more than 4 hours of walking--it is supposed to be a hellish nightmare to get all the way from the Darfur region of Sudan to Israel.  Still, I found it incredible that he only moved to Israel three years ago--he speaks almost impeccable Hebrew, and, in a couple of years, will probably speak much better Hebrew than I can.

After our  meetings, the four of us went out to dinner.  We wanted to go to "24 Rupees," an Indian restaurant that was supposed to be close to where the Darfuris lived (Har Tzion Street).  We asked some people on the street and they had no idea, so eventually we called Noah Berman, but he told us to go to "Rupin Street."  We got to tachanat merkazit (the central bus station) and called Lior, who told us to take the number 4 bus to get to Rupin Street.  Turns out, Rupin Street is on the other side of Tel Aviv, and it is a domestic street full of apartment buildings--no food, no 24 rupee Indian dinner.  We called Michal, who had initially told us about the restaurant, and she said it was not at all on Rupin Street, but, as we suspected, near the Har Tzion neighborhood.  We gave up on this and eventually went to a place called Mexicana, where we all ate some pizza.  It was a fairly nice sit-down place that wasn't too expensive.  Afterwards, we went to "Ice Gelato," an ice cream place near the beach in Tel Aviv.  I was fairly skeptical at first, but it ended up being the second best ice cream experience I've had in Israel so far (aside, of course, from Arlekino, which I will have to go more in-depth on in some other post).

We went back to Cera's apartment to watch Wet Hot American Summer, but ended up all falling asleep about 45 minutes in, so we decided to go to our respective homes and go to sleep (both Cera and Emilie had volunteering in the morning anyways).

This morning, I woke up at 11 and went to a meeting with Michal about the Garin and future plans, including trips and weekly peulot.  I then helped Cera, Emilie, and Jess sell food in between classes, saw Adam Leinwand at Cera's apartment, went home to do dishes, and went on a run.  Tonight there is a speaker at Ulpan about Gilad Shalit who should be fairly interesting, and later on I may be playing a poker game with my apartment and Eli Cohen 24 (previously known as Simon's/Ohad's/Nathan's/BenJirik's/Scott's/Aaron's apartment).

Actually, the speaker starts fairly soon, so I should go--take it easy, have a good one!