Shalom Parents!
Our week began with a meeting with the culture committee about the final night of the semester. The students are excited about it and they are doing a lot of planning for the final evening. On Monday the Chinese students returned (those who came back from the trip to China) and we were happy to see the group together again as a whole.
Tuesday started with a tour called “TLV the Center of the Start-Up Nation” The tour was designed to expose the students to the entrepreneurship aspect of Tel Aviv. The tour took place on Rothschild Street, a 5 minutes’ walk from the Aardvark office. We started the tour at a place called the Library. The Library is part public library part start up hub used by young entrepreneurs. This institution was established and funded by the municipality of Tel Aviv to provide a supportive and convenient environment for young startups to build their businesses. After learning about The Library the group continued to visit Alef, an investment office which every year chooses a few startups to invest in, develop and promote them to become self-sustaining businesses. The last stop was at a social startup that is operated by the municipality – the youth house, a dynamic establishment for ideas and activities of the young and creative residents of Tel Aviv. Across four floors it contains a subsidized working hub for social entrepreneurs, spaces for young artists, affordable art exhibitions, a housing center, a career advice center, study spaces and bookable rooms for rehearsals. This tour really showed why Tel Aviv is the home of so many innovative and successful new businesses.
After a relaxed break for lunch the students met at the Beach for the “Traditional Apartments Olympic”. The Olympics were created several years ago in order to indicate and examine the impact of what we call “Living Together”. Every task is related to a different aspect of the daily challenges of living together. The Madrichim were checking the students’ skills of working together as an team, their instincts, strength etc. Some apartments were highly skilled and successful and some were less so. Romy Mickelson showed her extra ordinary ability to cooperate with her roommates. They were given associative sentences and she needed to explain the sentence to them without talking.
In the evening, the Madrichim took the students to a Salsa activity! They met at the office to prepare themselves for the cool activity. The students traveled 15 minutes by bus to a Salsa club called “Havana Club”. They started with a short warm-up and then learned the basic steps of Salsa. Gilles Bilfeld showed a great natural ability! He was amazing!
On Wednesday Natali, the Jerusalem’s coordinator, came to explain the second semester – activities, apartments, volunteering etc. Afterwards she sent them some forms to complete: 1. rooming request forms 2. volunteering selection forms and 3. academic classes
It is important that the students complete these forms as soon as possible so that the Jerusalem staff will be able to provide them with their requests on time. That’s all for now!
Shabbat Shalom!
