21 Birthday???? Did it happen already?

Well Well Well, it was an interesting sort of week. First week back at classes, man was it hard to sit through those hour and half classes again. But I got a reprieve, on Tuesday my Archeology class took a field trip into the Old City. We learned about the history of Jerusalem during the First Temple period. We went into Ir David (City of David) which is where the first temple city of Jerusalem was located, it is not in the same place as the modern day old city location. Then at the end of the field trip we got to walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, which was and still a water tunnel and of course me being so short the water was up to my butt instead of my knees like everyone else. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon resting, I have been feeling very overtired this week. Wednesday was another class day but instead of having normal class for our archeology class we got to go to the archeology school building and play with artifacts and pieces of pottery for all of class, it was fun to learn how to tell where and when a piece of pottery came from and how you can put the pieces together. Thursday morning I went with a group of people to Yad V'shem for the Yom Hashoah ceremony there. The entire ceremony consisted of different people, representatives of organizations, bringing wreaths to the front. But it was cool to watch because most of the people carrying the wreaths were the survivors themselves and they had come to Israel from all over the world just for that purpose. Then we had to go back to school to go to Hebrew class, yuck! Thursday night I went out to birthday dinner with my parents at a great restaurant called Papagaio, all they have there is meat and it is an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ so all they do i just keep bringing you meat, there were like 12 different kinds of meat. At the restaurant was a group of Paratroopers and my dad obnoxiously asked them to take a picture with me, it was so embarrassing. Then my parents gave me my birthday present, it was 21 different birthday cards each with an increasing amount of money starting at $1 - $21. As you probably can figure out that some pretty good cash right there. Friday, was my actual birthday, we spent the morning looking at some apartments, and then in the evening my parents and I made great dinner at my apartment. That night we had the obligatory going out to a bar and drinking with the friends, which was nice, we were just being goofy and ridiculous. Saturday I spent the day in my room doing nothing, which was quite relaxing and that evening my parents and I ventured up to Herzeliya to visit with Doron. My parents know Doron because this summer Doron would come over to my house on our days off together. We had a great sushi dinner with him and then went back to his house where my parents met his parents, there was some minor communication problems but for the most part they understood each other and they actually got along really well. They had a lot in common. Sunday we left Doron's house and had breakfast at Max Brener's , boy was that delicious, and then Doron was our tour guide around Tel Aviv for the day. We had a ton of fun actually, my parents really like Doron and they get along really well with him so it was major fun. Sunday night we came back to Jerusalem and got to tour the Western Wall Tunnel Excavations, but when we got to the Kotel is was mad packed full of crazy Orthodox men, but not like normal, there were excessive amounts. We asked around and found out that some rabbi was visiting from Haifa and that he had brought a new Torah. But then this new rabbi had to go to the bathroom, so a car drove all the way down the plaza to the wall to pick him up and then masses of people gathered around the car trying to get a look or trying to touch this rabbi. These men event massed around the rabbi as he was entering the bathroom. The crazy orthodox men were also trying to get to the synagogue that is in the tunnel and there were pushing the security guards just to try to get it, it was a major balagan (chaos), it was like a mosh pit or a mob. Eventually things calmed down and we were able to start out tour. I had seen the tunnels before so it was not new to me but once again it was cool to see how much work went into the wall's of Herod's city of Jerusalem. The funniest part of our tour was that there was a huge group of literal Amish people from the US joining with us. Now if you know anything about Amish people you know that they don't use modern day technology including electricity. So the entire tour we kept wondering, firstly how they got to Israel by horse and buggy and secondly, why they were in Israel. At the end of the tour my father asked what looked like the leader/preacher of the Amish group and he said that for special occasions they can use technology so they had flown to Israel on airplane and that they had come here because Jesus dies here or something like that. Then Monday, I went to all my classes but between classes I spent the day looking at apartments and finally I found one, and not even one I found two great ones. We decided we are going to live in this really cut apartment in Baka (southern Jerusalem, many Anglo olim [immigrants] live there). Now with that weight off my back I can focus more on finding a summer job or internship. Thats it for now. Like the title reads, the 21 birthday really wasn't that big of a deal, pretty much a total kill-joy in Israel because I am legal here. Oh well. Thats all for now, stay tuned!