Year Course #1

Hello Hello

The other day I had little writers block, mainly because I was a little bored, of doing the same posts over and over, and I don’t know, maybe that’s what is required from a “Beauty Blog”? Maybe it’s not, I’m not sure however I don’t think there is a  rulebook that a blogger has to follow, and after all I just want to use this place to share. So as I suffered from this block, my sister suggested I write a post on my gap year, and the program that I did. I liked this idea so I thought I would start a weekly feature, writing about my gap year. Unfortunately due to ill health I left my gap year early, so I may get a friend to write a post on the last few months of the program, we’ll see.

Taking a gap year was always something that I wanted to do, however it never really became something that I was definitely going to do. That was until my final A-level year a school was a massive disaster, and just wanted to get away. I didn’t get into the University I had applied for, and to be honest I didn’t feel ready to go to University, so my efforts to get a place to start the year we extremely minimal, in fact more non-existent.

Instead of staying in Leeds, I decided I wanted to go away for the year, and Year Course was a program run by my youth movement FZY, which I had heard about before, and had known others that had taken part.

Year Course, is a 9month gap year program run by the British Youth Movement FZY, and the American Youth Movement, Young Judea. The participants are flown to Israel for 9 months, to live, learn, volunteer and experience the Israeli culture.

In my year due to the rise in university fees, there was only 6 Brits on the program. There was around 240 Americans, 2 Israeli's and 3 French speaking participants.

The Program is split into 3 sections, and each section rotates at the end of roughly 3 months. My section was Section 1 (also known as section Wonderful / Weird) and we began our journey taking classes and volunteering in the capital Jerusalem. Next up was Bat Yam, a city next to Tel Aviv, which we spent volunteering, but carrying on with our Hebrew lessons. Finally, we were based in Arad, which is in the desert. In these three months you got to choose whether to volunteer in Arad, live on a Kibbutz (A communal settlement in Israel, typically a farm,) or take part in a program call Marva, -a program in the Israel Defence Forces that allows young Jews to learn and experience the basics of IDF and Israeli life. Unfortunately I left in the middle of the second section due to illness, but I would have taken part in the Marva aspect of the program. Hopefully I may be able to get a friend who took part in Marva to write a post about it for my blog.

I just wanted to use this post to introduce you Year Course, and in the sequential posts I want to share with you some of my experiences in Israel.

Until Next Time