The AEPi Jerusalem road trip concluded on the weekend after spending another Shabbat in the Old City. Some of the other things we did that I did not blog about were:
- Go Karting
- Western Wall tunnel tours for a 4th time.
- City of David tour (again - even though I had gone a week and a half earlier on my own. The tour guide this time was not as good, so I was glad that I had gone previously)
- Tour of the Golan Heights winery - including taste testing.
- Volunteering by picking onions for the charity. Not as delicious sounding as picking oranges, which I had done on my last trip. In about an hour and a half we had picked 2.5 tonnes of onions!
- Pre and post Shabbat concert with crazy hippie Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser
- Post shabbat dinner chills (twice) with one of the wealthiest guys in Jerusalem, and a newly initiated brother of AEPi! Hilarity ensued both times.
We also did a lot of hanging out in and around the old city, as we lived right outside the walls of the Old City. We lived in what was coined a compound - all 70 of us in the same complex where we had our own courtyard and picnic tables. It made the place a lot like a frat house minus the crazy parties (no guests allowed). Most of the rooms had about 10 people, with the room I was in being the largest with 18. The 3 downsides of living where we did were:
- Church bells ringing EVERY 15 minutes. I wish I was kidding.
- Waiting for showers: The water decided not to run on the 3rd floor, so those of us living on the 3rd floor went downstairs to shower, thus there were 6 showers for 70 people as opposed to 8.
- No internet access - I had to walk 10 minutes into the old city to get on the internet.
This was the best trip to Israel imaginable. There are no other trips to Israel through any organization as awesome and extreme as this one. Given the hiking that we did, its hard to believe that any regular group of tourists to Israel would ever go on such extreme and borderline insane excursions. For 3 weeks we had the chance to experience living in Jerusalem, being right outside the Old City and less than a 15 minute walk from the Kotel which was another amazing aspect of the trip. One of the highlights was being present for history in the making, where AEPi initiated the first group of fraternity men in Israel! I met a lot of awesome brothers from all over the US and definitely made a lot of lifelong friends over the past 3 weeks.
'AEPi Stands With Israel' at the Kotel!!!
'AEPi Stands With Israel' at the Kotel!!!
Sign me up for the next trip!
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