TL-48-23 Update 2

Today was an incredible and jam-packed day, and I’m not just saying that because it was my birthday!  We started out waking up earlier than we did yesterday, and took a beautiful bus ride to the Golan Heights for our Jeep tour!  The terrain ended up being a lot more rough than I expected but it made the ride  a more fun experience, almost feeling like a rollercoaster!  Once we made it to the final destination, we learned about some of the geopolitics in Israel, and were able to visit some now unused bunkers that soldiers would utilize.  After some tea, we headed back to the bus and departed towards our rafting experience!  On the way, we stopped for some food and I had my first experience with Israeli falafel, it was way better than I could have imagined!  Once we arrived to rafting, we had a little dance party with some Israelis on the bus ride to the starting point and got into groups.  Turns out, it ended up being a lot more extreme than I thought it would, with us having to navigate around lots of sharp turns and almost flipping a few times!  We were all exhausted after this, so we headed back to the Kibbutz and got ice cream bars from Hillel for my birthday!  It was awesome to celebrate on such a jam-packed day.  We ended the night with some delicious dinner and a very insightful geopolitics lecture, learning a bit deeper about not only what is going on in Israel, but in the Middle East as a whole.  It was a very interactive talk, and a safe space to ask whatever questions we wanted.  Overall today exceeded all of my hopes for an awesome birthday, and I’m glad I got to spend it here!

– Phillip —