Rivka

Hi! My name is Rivki and I'm sixteen years old. I love listening to music, hanging out with friends, swimming, ice skating and going on vacation with my family. I'm on the swim team for Gush Etzyon and I'm training to become a lifeguard.

My family is made up of six people- my parents, then me, then my sister in 9th grade, after her comes my other sister in 6th grade, and last is my brother in 4th grade. I also have a dog named Pretzel (don't ask why that's his name). He's really cute and is always very energetic!

In my free time… well actually I don't really have any free time. If I think I'm done with homework there's always a test to study for or a project to work on. If I'm not doing any school- related work, I'm either swimming, at my volunteer work, or training to become a lifeguard. I swim twice a week for my swim team, and twice a week I have my lifeguard course. In my school- Neveh Chana, the 9th and 10th grades do volunteer work. Everyone chooses from a variety of options of what they want to volunteer as. I chose to be assigned a child that I help with homework and play with. This girl that I was assigned to moved to Israel this year so I help her with Hebrew. If for some reason I do have some free time, I like to relax and either hang out with friends or watch TV. 

I made Aliyah from Teaneck, New Jersey when I was twelve years old and since then I've lived in Efrat- a settlement near Jerusalem. I really didn't want to move here when I was twelve, but now I'm happy I did. It's hard to move from a place you've lived in for almost thirteen years, the place you grew up in, and move to a totally different country. You have to make all new friends, learn to speak a different language, and pretty much just start all over again. The first year I was here in seventh grade was probably the hardest year of my life but eventually I got through it. I've made amazing new friends, and I've really grown to love Efrat and Israel.

My favorite thing to do is ice skate. When I was four years old I started ice skating lessons and I continued until I was twelve. Moving to Israel also meant that I would have to stop ice skating on a regular basis. It was really hard to leave something that I love so much. There are ice skating rinks here, but not close to where I live. Once I moved here I started swimming. I swam a little in America, but now I swim more seriously. Although I like swimming, I like ice skating a lot more.

I believe that it's important to travel Israel and learn about the different historical and biblical places here. When I go on hikes and trips to places from the Tanach, it really amazes me to think that this is the exact place where this specific event happened hundreds and thousands of years ago. I can really appreciate going to these places because when I lived in America<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small;"> I couldn't go to places like Ma'arat Hamachpaela, and now most of the trips I go on have some sort of meaningful history behind them!