Monday April 19--- Yom Hazikaron

Today is Yom Hazikaron, Israels memorial day. We have off from school both today and tomorrow. There wasnt really a ton to do today. The school had 0 planned which I was really suprised about. They are usually good about programs and things especially for holidays but they had nothing. The spring in Jerusalem program, the honors program, had a special program where they took them to all these places today--- cemeteries, memorial sites, special places where wars were fought etc... and did a special program for them but there wasnt anything for anyone else. They had a ceremony at mount hertzel but you needed tickets or to be an immediate family member of someone that died so that was out. Since most of my friends are in spring in Jerusalem, most of them were gone. Hailey and I decided to go to the Kotel in the morning. Theres another siren that rings at 11 am on this day for a moment of silence so we wanted to be somewhere special for it so we went to the kotel. It was a beautiful day out-- sunny and in the high 80's. There were tons of people at the kotel, especially toursits. All the march of the living trips are here so theres tons of kids everywhere and tons of tourists. We wee there for the siren which was really special because there were tons of soldiers there too. They have 2 soldiers standing by this memorial fire pit that burns all day, and every hour they change so we got to see the changing of the soldiers which was cool. Then we went up to the wall and touched it and sat and watched the people. We walked around the old city for a while. We were told that everything is closed today for this holiday but I was shocked that everything was open!!! Couldnt believe it-- stores, restarants,e evrything. We went into hadaya, we got orange juice, it was all open! Then we walked to ben yehuda street and went into the jewelery stores and got lunch at one of the best falafel places. It was a good afternoon. Then came back, unpacked, did some work and got rested up for tonight!!! At sundown the holiday switches from pure sadness of the memorial day (esepcially because the whole entire country is affected by it) to the happiest day of the year Yom Ha'atzmaut--- INDEPENDENCE DAYYYYY!!!! Its the best day of the year here!!! They sent us out a facebook messages with about 20 different party locations that we can go to in Jerusalem. The twins were with their parents so rosie and I went to laurens apartment where we pregamed. Then we went to this party at the Shuk. Hebrew U, my school, has their party at the shuk every year. Its soooo coool!! They turn the whole shuk into this giant giant party. Theres a huge bar in the middle, this giant stage with a huge band, and all the shuk owners come and open up their stands to sell food. It was wildddddddddd... It was soooo crowded! Everyone was crazy. There were isralei flags everywhere, everyone was wearing blue and white. People were crazyyyy drunk everywhereeeeeeeeeeeeeeee which made everyone so friendly. Random people were popping up in our pictures. It was reallly fun. All this craZY israeli music, people wer egoing wild. We stayed there most of the time, then at like 130 we walked to Ben Yehuda street which was coveredddddddddd with people. There were parties everywhereeeeeeeeee you walked-- random dance floors in the street, israeli dancers-- everywhere!!! We had a really fun night. I wish we went to more places though and didnt spend all our time at the shuk, I wanted to see what more places were like but we still had fun. Everyone took tons of pictures and there were tons of people from our program there. It was packeddd