Beginning of the Holidays

On Sunday night, we left the mercaz klitah (the absorption center) around midnight to drive to Sfat. There's this thing called Slichot which is right before the high holidays. I'm still a little confused but I think you basically just stay up all night and pray. We were theoretically doing Slichot but instead of praying we did a tour of Sfat at night. The city is made of stone and it looked kind of eerie to see it lit in the lamplight at night.
The following morning we were driven to Tel Aviv to begin our Rosh Hashanah break. I spent the few days with Neta and her family- a friend of mine from when I was younger who moved to Israel. We went down to Beer Sheva to see her dad's family for lunch and then went to Tel Aviv for dinner- for those of you who don't understand Israeli geography, I basically drove from the top of the country to the bottom and back all in one day. Neta and I have lost touch since she moved, but we were actually able to find things to talk about and got along pretty well. It was really nice to spend the holiday in Israel. The whole country is covered in signs saying "Shanah Tova" (happy new year). It is kind of like Christmas minus all the shopping. It was nice to see the whole country celebrating and being happy.
Everyone was really welcoming and interested that I had decided to move to Israel to do volunteer work for a year. I was actually really surprised by the reactions I received. People kept telling me how much respect they had for me for doing this. Everyone on this program knew we were coming here to do volunteer work but when we talk about why we're here, most people mention putting off grad school or finding some direction in life. Even as I'm playing with the kids in the center, building playgrounds, or collecting food for soup kitchens, it didn't really occur to me that I was helping to improve the country. I never thought about what Israelis would think about us coming to volunteer here for a year.