Today, we met Nero/Sweetie/Taffy/Schnitzel/Baguette/Gal/Arthes, the black cat. She was very sweet but kept trying to get into our house! We all argued about the cat’s name for the past three days before settling on Gal.
In the morning, we visited a Druze village in Beit Jaan and got to see a second high school. It is the highest-ranked high school in Israel. We could clearly see that they emphasized the importance of education to both students and parents. The facility seemed to be more centered around students and teachers. We got to talk to a few of the students and all of them had close-to-perfect English! It was surprising to learn that they did not have a music program or sports teams and neither schools had lockers or a cafeteria. Starting in 10th grade, their first year of high school, they are required to take core classes such as Math, Arabic, English, and Hebrew; however, they can take two additional classes of their choosing. In order to help those students that need more support, they have tutors come in for every class and go over all the material so that no one gets more and more lost in class. Some teachers even stay after school without pay to ensure their student’s success. Before heading back to the village, we stopped by to eat pita covered in za’atar, a spice blend made of salt, oregano, and sesame seeds. For lunch, we had shawarma, a pita sandwich that can be filled with lamb, turkey, veal, and other meats and toppings.
We had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves since the children in the village went back home to their families for the holiday of Purim. To wrap our evening, we headed to the Karmiel version of the waterfront and ate some burgers for dinner. At night, we packed our bags for our trip to the desert.