lessons from a star

Its 10.3oam and I've been awake for six hours. Basically, I haven't had a full nights sleep in a week, but all for a good reason. So last Friday morning about half of my schools Americans (84 of us) started our sea to sea hike. We left the student village (dorms) at a little past six. That means I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before. The entire weekend was amazing. We hiked some of the worlds most beautiful mountains; spoke with a member of the Druz nationality/religion, a small little-known group whose religion is conducted almost entirely in secret; visited a number of very holy and historical sites and over all had an amazing four days. Of course, I got almost no sleep any of the nights. I have decided that I need to redo the hike within the next few years, and this time the real way. Let me explain. sea to sea is generally done in 3 days, entirely by foot and with real camping. Because of our number of people that wasn't feasible. We spent our nights in hotels and did a considerable amount of the journey by bus. If you had to move 84 Americans (with numerous JAPS) you would, too. I'll have photos on facebook in the next few days. You know I'm slow with all that. Of course, with all this excitement none of slept. When i got back to town I needed to clean my apartment for passover and, when I had basically finished with mine, went over to my Uncle Dannys house to help them over there.
Last night I got back from them, having joined them for dinner as well, and met up with Tova and Aaron, a bing friend who is spending the semester in Belgium and is here in Israel for passover. After a late night of registering Aaron for courses back home, doing some final cleaning and just hanging out, we went our separate ways in order to get up by 4.30 so that we'd be able to make it to the Blessing on the Sun at the Western Wall by 6.30, sunrise. We left at 5.oo and in doing so bumped into numerous people we knew who were also heading in the same direction. When we finally got to the western wall it was packed. Beautiful, but packed. I'll be posting photos of that online soon as well. I have no words to describe it other then inspiring and crazy, but as I'm falling asleep I'm gonna take a nap. Photos on facebook later.
S