So last Thursday night was Lyla Lavan.  It literally means white night and is a celebration of Tel Aviv becoming a world heritage site in 2003.  They call it white night because the city does not get dark-all the stores,restaurants, and bars stay open until sunrise.  At around 8 o'clock our group of 15 living in beit leni (guest house in Tel Aviv) met up with about 20 other kids from our program who were at a friend's nearby apartment.  We celebrated at the apt, and then at around 11 decided to go out. Illan, one of the teachers of the training course, decided to take the reigns and we followed him to a "concert".  After about 55 minutes of walking against the crowds of thousands, we decided to ditch Illan and 8 of us took a cab to Banana Beach.  There were hundreds of thousands of people hanging around at the beach and a full concert for as far as the eye could see.  We actually managed to make it to the front row of the concert- I have a couple of pictures of an israeli rapper.  After the concert we walked to an outdoor bar on the beach names La Mer where we met some friends and watched the sun rise.  At about 6:15 we walked back to our apartment with the entire city of Tel Aviv ranging from 12 year olds to 75 year olds.  

I woke up Monday morning at 5 o'clock to be on time to my first shift which started at 6:45.  The bus in the afternoon usually takes about 45 minutes, but it only took 20 minutes, so I was quite early.  I met the "nahag" (driver) and the other chovesh (EMT).  We had 8 calls on my first shift, but none were too exciting.  A lot of older people including 2 hospice patients with difficulty breathing.  Israeli EMT protocol is very similar to the US's protocol except for the minimum usage of oxygen here.  We also responded to a 300 pound man with chest pains who of course lived on the 5th floor of a walk-up.  We had to chair carry him down to the ambulance.  Why is it that the bigger people always tend to live on the top floor?  We barely spent anytime at the station as we went from call to call.  The people who work at Bat Yam are very nice, although their English is as bad as my Hebrew.  We both need to work on it, because it was hard to communicate besides "take BP or pulse".