The North & New Years Eve

I decided to go to bed at around 230AM even though we had to be up at 6AM yet again. I figured I would be able to get some rest on the bus, and I could survive the day with only 3 and a half hours of sleep (also taking into account another night of partying for new years eve). Half an hour into my sleep, I get woken up by one of my roommates puking his guts out. Long story short, this continued until well after we left the hotel - he ended up catching a bug or something. Needless to say the 3 and a half hours of sleep I was hoping to get turned into half an hour of sleep, and a headache from listening to my roommate puke for 3 straight hours.

From the hotel we went to the Golan Heights to overlook the site of yet another battle; The battle was at the "Valley of Tears" and was during the Yom Kippur War in October of 1973. From the mountain, we were able to see down below to where the battle took place, and off in the distance we were able to see Syria. At our lookout point, we were in the trenches dug by Israel, and the turret of a destroyed tank. We learnt about the Yom Kippur war, and how Israel was miraculously able to defend itself after a surprise attack on Yom Kippur - the holiest day of the year for Jews. We saw a movie about the Valley of Tears, and the battle that occurred there. The Israeli tanks were outnumbered 10 to one, and somehow managed to hold off the Syrians for 3 days until reinforcements arrived.

After learning about the Yom Kippur War we headed to Tzfat to do some humanitarian work. They gave us hard hats and work gloves and we helped to move rocks and dirt. This was in effort to excavate old homes that had been demolished and rebuilt on its own rubble for over 500 years. We then headed to Tel Aviv for our New Years Eve night off.

At the hotel, I bumped into a bunch of AEPi guys that that had just arrived in Israel on the second half of their Hasbara trip (they spent almost a week traveling Poland). I had met them before on roadtrips and at convention. We bumped into each other a number of times during the rest of the trip in Jerusalem.

New Years was great - we went to a club which was right across from the beach, and then followed that up with exploring the boardwalk at the early hours of 2008.