Young Judaea Year Course:

Year Course is a gap year program in Israel for teens who just graduated high school before entering college. Our nine months are divided into three sections. I start off the Year in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv, where we volunteer in the community. In the winter, we head down to the Negev (Israel's desert) hopefully to do outdoor work. Finally, we end the year in Jerusalem studying and also volunteering. Throughout the year, we study hebrew and live in apartments with fellow Year Course participants.

I am participating in the Social Action track of Year Course, traveling to Rwanda for the entire month of February. We are living at a youth village (made by Year Course alumni) working with orphaned children.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Hero Day- Feb 1

Breakfast this morning was mandatory and at 7 AM. We ate one bread roll and a cup of pourage, which was actually pretty good. After breakfast, we hopped on a bus to Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, to visit the Kigali Memorial. The memorial gave good information and ended with a few bangs. The last big room of the Rwandan Genocide memorial had three exhibits; 1. donated photographs of people that were murdered, 2. clothing from the genocide and finally a room full of human bones. I tried to go in twice and failed both times. The first time I started to walk in by myself and quickly turned around when I realized I couldn't take the emotions. One of my friends was walking a bit behind me so we decided to go in together holding hands. The minute she saw the skulls, she broke out in tears we had to leave and sit down. The second part of the museum that stuck out to me was the exhibit on other genocides around the world or mass murders that are not considered genocides by the United Nations. As we were waiting for everyone to finish walking through the museum, a man came up to a few of us because he noticed Hebrew on one of our shirts. He told us he feels a connection to the Jewish people because of the Holocaust and hopes one day he can visit Israel because he has friends from there.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial was opened just for us today because it is a national holiday in Rwanda, Hero Day. I think it is quite perfect to learn about the genocide and the heroes that tried to fight against it on this holiday.

Next we went to a mall for the supermarket to stash up on more food and gifts for our families who we will be meeting after dinner tonight. Then back to the village for lunch.As I walked into lunch, a heard a girl call my name. It must of been a girl I sat with during a previous meal and she remembered me! It was so nice to feel like someone remembers me and someone will remember me. Because of the holiday, music was playing during lunch about different heroes in Rwanda. We left lunch early because we had a meeting back at our lounge at 2 then a sports at 3. Since today is a holiday, the students didn't have school and at 3 there was a basketball and soccer game against a local school. We won basketball and left before soccer was over for some free time before another meeting then dinner.

Some of us, including me, still haven't showered but thats ok, we don't smell that bad, I promise you.

My blogging will be spotty because of the amount of time I will have with a computer.
Also, I finally got my cell phone to work! The Rwandan country code is 250 and my number is 784021577. To call my, I think it will be +250784021577 but I am not 100% sure.

Until next time (hopefully tomorrow),
Tamar
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