Gabe, Rose and Rachel
Today we had a packed day! We went to Masada, Ein Gedi, and the Dead Sea.

Masada: At Masada we hiked up the Roman Ramp, which took us about 15 minutes, which was much faster than we expected. Once we were at the top of Masada, we learned about the events that occurred on the top of the fortress. The story was told by six eighth grade volunteers (Max, Zach, Annabelle, Brit, Andrew, and A.J.) who took on the role of a character in the time of Masada and read monologues about a certain person’s life. They even had costumes! 

We ended our tour on Masada with shouting “Bernard Zell” to the cliffs of Masada and hearing it echo back. After that we took the snake path down Masada. The snake path was challenging and took us about an hour. 

We then went on a water hike at Ein Gedi National Park. We began by learning about the terrain of Israel from five volunteers, who stood in different poses to represent the different types of terrain Israel has. Each student represented a different kind of terrain. Our guide, Yonatan, showed us how rain clouds move in Israel, by pouring water on the heads of our friends! After that, we started the hike, which took us along a waterfall, two ponds, and a great view of the Dead Sea. During the hike, we stopped at the ponds and hopped in to refresh ourselves, as it was quite hot outside. The scenery was breathtaking!

After the Ein Gedi hike, we hopped on the bus and drove to the Dead Sea. While on the bus, our tour guide Yonatan explained that about 3 feet of water evaporates from the Dead Sea each year! He then explained that during this process, the soil creates holes in the ground called sinkholes. Sometimes these sinkholes are small, but they can also be big, and there have even been houses and resorts that have closed because they fell into the sinkholes! After we got off the bus, we ate lunch and changed into our swimsuits. Then we got in the water. We kept walking deeper and all of a sudden, our feet started floating up! It was so fun to see the beautiful view while floating. When we were swimming around, since we were floating on our backs, all we had to do was paddle with our arms! We dug for the mud and put it all over our bodies. It felt good at first and then it started burning when we got out of the sea and into the sun. After we washed off, our skin was so soft and smooth! 

On to Shabbat!