Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia

I woke up today and still wasn’t feeling very well. I had taken some night time cold medication that Pnina gave me yesterday, so at least I got some sleep and wasn’t completely exhausted. Lee and I had a tentative plan to go to Tel Aviv today, but since I wasn’t feeling well and today is the start of the Sabbath, we decided to put that on hold until Sunday. We would have had to leave Tel Aviv by about 4pm to make sure we got a bus coming back, and a lot of the shops would have been shut anyway. Sunday is like a Monday to us in the US and Britain, so at least I know everything will be open then.

We spent most of today at Marta’s house with Pnina and Marta just hanging out. We were fed very well, and often, and just had a nice relaxing day. I took a walk into the center of Hod HaSharon on my own which from Marta’s house is only about 20 minutes. I was hoping to find an open pharmacy, but it had already shut by 3pm.

We came back to Gillad and Kinaret’s house at about 6:30pm for a big family Sabbath dinner. There were 14 of us there (Gillad, Kinerit, Ori, Eitan, Emitai, Amir, Gabrielle (Ori’s boyfriend), Pnina, Marta, Dikla, Mark, Noam, Lee and me). It was really nice. They said a traditional prayer before lighting some candles and then we had a huge meal. It was really nice. It reminded me a little bit of Thanksgiving, just on a smaller scale. We sat around and chatted for a while but this cold is still making me pretty tired, so I’m going to hit the hay pretty early. We are going up north for a Bar Mitzvah tomorrow with ALL the family, so I want to be well rested for that!