Today we went to Toledo. We saw two of the ten remaining Sephardic synagogues in Spain (Sephardic Jews are Jews from Spain or North Africa). One of the synagogues that we saw had been turned into a museum. The other was left as a tourist site, where we bought tickets to walk through the building. Cristina, our tour guide for the day, told us that after the Inquisition all synagogues had been turned into churches.

Antes del viaje (before the trip)...
During my month in Costa Rica I often visualized the maps of El Salvador and Guatemala, the Diego Rivera posters, the five-foot weaving of yarn and playground grasses, and the dozens of colorful tapestries woven by my fourth grade class. It was in this classroom of bright rugs and cluttered cubbies that I made crafts to sell in our Mercado, a marketplace whose proceeds went to a small, recovering village in El Salvador.

As I watch the television displaying horrific and gruesome scenes of bombings and killings in Israel, I pack and plan for the two months I will spend in our unstable homeland. On February 5th, I will depart from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport; my destination: Tel Aviv, Israel. My best friend, Rivka, and I will live on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel campus located in Hod Ha'Sharon, twenty minutes from Tel Aviv.

Read the first text, Time of Trouble, Time to travel, and the second text, My Life Changing Israel Experience by Jaclyn.

Hey, it's Harris from the Holy Land again. Don't worry, I am still alive despite the fact that you might see in the media that Israel is in a state of war. Actually, Israel really isn't in a war like it looks on TV. No, Israel is a safe place where people live their day to day lives with no real interference, unless you happen to be living in Gilo outside of Jerusalem.

March was a pretty dreary month for me, with the exception of one week, which I spent in the homeland of Mad Cow Disease. Although I ate no beef while there, I nevertheless had a great time touring England, taking part in an exchange program between my school, The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, and the King Solomon School on London.