Emma Tries to Blog Again!

Dictionary: 

Kvutza: a group (but used in Habo settings to mean people of the same age living collectively and intentionally shaping their culture) 

Peula: activity (in this blog it means an educational activity in the classic Habo style of circle/discussion/various methods geared toward different types of learners) 

machaneh: camp

rikkud: dancing 

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Hello again! A lot has changed since the last time I posted! I now live in a different country (Israel) with 27 other crazy, passionate, idealistic, beautiful, rad people my age. I’m far away from my family, my pets, my friends from school, and my favorite food, but I am slowly building a home here with my kvutza. 

I guess I’ll just run through the whole week? 

Sunday: after two long, sweaty flights and an annoying wait in the passport control line (I was very calm. They didn’t suspect a thing) I finally arrived at the Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, where I was enthusiastically greeted by Shira and her mom. I spent that night and the next day with their family and then returned to the airport the next day to greet the rest of the arriving kvutza. 

Monday - Thursday: 

This past week has been the orientation seminar for the program so we’re not staying at the kibbutz that we’ll be at for the next few months, but instead at a movement kibbutz in the north east right near the Kinneret (sea of Galilee). 

Most of my days look like this: 

• breakfast at 8:30
• Peulot until 1:30 (there’s a little 10 minute break in there)
• Lunch!
• active/fun time until 4-ish
• Peula until dinner 
• free time 
• fun night activity 
• sleep! I’ve been pretty good about going to sleep early. Except for tonight, oops. But I have to finish this. 

We’ve had peulot about things like creating vs. consuming experiences, informal education and engaging with life as a learning experience, living collectively, movement work and ideology, and so much more! Natasha has been playing with my hair a lot which makes the time pass a bit faster. 

Some of the fun stuff we’ve done includes wacky games with water balloons, an awesome just-dance-turned-karaoke party in which I actually participated in just dance (I’ve always been too embarrassed), a nice get-to-know-you speed dating/36 questions to fall in love activity, and an Oscar’s themed night where we split into groups and had to make short movies based on a title, theme, and genre that we pulled out of a hat. As you can imagine, some of them were pretty weird… I played a nice youth who happened upon some dead bodies in the bathroom. 

Today is Friday AKA the start of shabbat! Shabbat is a special time at machaneh and in the movement, so in order to try and bring that special feeling to workshop we split up into little groups to plan different parts of the weekend. Tonight was musicale which is a time in which different people and groups perform nice songs/play music for the group. I played my recorder as usual — first through my mouth, and then through my nose. It’s a thing. Other people went up and sang or played instruments and it was lovely. We sat on the grass overlooking the hills where you can only see clumps of city lights in a sea of darkness. I don’t know how to describe it but it’s beautiful. Next we did rikkud which kind of sucked because it wasn’t at camp, but it’s okay :) 

It’s past 12:30 AM now on Friday night so I must be on my way to sleep. Tomorrow I get to sleep in a little! 

I haven’t gotten a chance to take many pictures because I’m not often with my phone (which is a good thing). I’ll try to pull a Tamika and post only pictures someday soon. 

That’s all for now :) 

Any questions?