We Like Grass

By Tamika Whitenack Appreciate this morning fog on a farm run! I love reading everyone's blogs! I think this is a first, everybody else has posted since the last time I posted! Yayayay. Hearing about your adventures is awesome, but I think part of why I like reading is because I can hear your voice through the way you write. Much love to all. There was a lot going on at campus this past week in not a good way for most students, so it was a long week. I don't really feel like talking about that right now though, because I am in a lovely mood. I don't mean for this post to be one of those "look at how great my life is" sorts of things, and I will say right now that while I am incredibly privileged to be here and do enjoy myself, it is far from perfect. However, today I feel like sharing happy things! I had an amazing morning! I woke up around 8:45, which was probably not enough sleep considering when I went to bed last night, but I did not feel tired, I f...

Argh. Aaarrrghh. It’s been a very long time since I last blogged. Actually, it’s been almost exactly four weeks. A whole month. Aaaaarrrghh. Anyhow, I shall try to make up for lost time here with a very long post. Maybe. We’ll see how it turns out. I remember all the way back from high school (ages ago, I know) how Keith always used to say at the beginning of each school year that we really hit the ground running. Here, things picked up so fast that it was more like I hit the ground on a jet-powered bike – not quite stable, a bit scary, and fast as hell. Actually, I’m not even sure if I touched the ground; things just blasted off (obligatory rocket joke now that I’m in Rocket Project). My RISE rocket design! Hopefully it doesn't blow up... Speaking of Rocket Project, Rocket Project! Rocket Project was one of the clubs that caught my eye at the club fair (if you’ll remember all the way back to my blog a month ago haha), and I have not been disappointed so far. ...

By Emma Regev I never know how to start these things!! ?? AH! Nationalism: This past Wednesday was a new holiday in Israel called yom aliyah. Aliyah literally means "rising up," but it's used in Judaism to refer to people moving to Israel. Aliyah is integral to Israel's existence as the state was built by people making aliyah to escape persecution in their home countries. The first few waves of aliyah to Palestine were in the late 1800s/early 1900s, mostly from Eastern Europe, followed years later by many other mass aliyot from places like Russia and Ethiopia. In celebration of this holiday, our program was invited to attend a big ceremony in Jerusalem as members of our sister youth movement, Hanoar Ha Oved ve Halomed (the working and learning youth). The event was, in simple terms, weird as fuck. As one would expect from an event solely celebrating the moving of people to your country, it was aggressively nationalist. There were a bunch of really-close-to-being...

By Cameron Rusin Hi friends! Exactly a week ago I embarked on a journey into the White Mountains of New Hampshire! I’m not really sure what to say about this trip, because (1) there weren’t too many huge moments to talk about and (2) the moments that I remember are the kind that make my heart feel good, but are hard to describe exactly why to others. Kind of like our backpacking trip this summer, it was just a generally wholesome nature experience with quality people. However, I will try to tell you guys about what I was up to, in my typical fashion of dividing it into days. Also I should tell you why I was there first (I’m adding this in after writing a fair amount, realizing that no one knows what I’m talking about…). The Tufts Mountain Club is a very large group that basically serves any outdoorsy need you could ever have, and they also own a lodge, called The Loj, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Usually they coordinate rides and individuals and small groups can g...

By Emma Regev the kibbutz's giant sukkah moooooo I planned a crazy rosh Hashanah role-play dinner where everyone was a character in a dysfunctional Jewish family. It was lots of fun and for some reason everyone ended up being gay! Wahoo!  Eliza and I ran a BLARP (biblical live-action role play) to celebrate simchat torah (when you finish reading the torah and start all over again). This is us being silly theatre teachers.  This dog is sometimes my friend and sometimes my enemy. A frenemy, you could say. Just a second before this picture was taken we were, in fact, getting along just fine. Tonight  while I was running with my friends the dog kept chasing us and it was terrifying. Oh, yes! I've been running a lot and I think I'm getting better at it :) The most I've run is 2-ish miles + hills which is more than I've ever done at home.  The ...

By Emma Regev Hi... it's been far too long! I did the thing that I do at school where I put something off for so long that instead of tackling it and being done, it becomes more and more stressful as time goes by. Oops.  It's currently 1:35 AM. I just made myself a bowl of tuna, and then a bowl of rice pudding. I really really like rice pudding and I question why I've waited until now to start making it.  I don't even know where to begin...  I guess I'll start with a brief schedule of each week: Sunday: (yeah, Sunday is the first day of the week here): A block of time in the morning about leadership/youth movements followed by lunch and many hours of educational discussions on Jewish history/Zionism/Israel. Then comes dinner, evening clean (an everyday occasion so I'll stop writing it in), and a fun night-time activity planned by our counselors that run the educational activities for this portion of workshop.  Monday:  Get out of the...

By Tamika Whitenack I'm inspired by the subject material and format of Cam's post (two posts ago, not the liberal arts one), so prepare for another bullet list :D My running here is going well, and I'm starting to increase mileage a bit, but I do miss my home runs. There is this really comforting feeling of running back on the Arlington or Colusa or Richmond and knowing that I'm home-headed, or anticipating Ganges, which I privately have considered "my hill" ever since I first made it up without walking and conditioned it into my life through countless loops to the Js house and back. Of course, I'm looking forward to seeing all you lovely people at home, too. Home is a good place. Home runs: -Out on Richmond to the Bart Station and back by going on Colusa above ECHS and taking a peek at the football field and reminiscing about morning XC practice -Going out on Colusa to Solano and Monterey Market and back on the BART trail, a classic loop from XC ...

By Cameron Rusin Hi Friends! I will put something up about this weekend at some point but I’m not really sure how to articulate my thoughts on that yet so stay tuned! But here are some thoughts I had just now while doing my Making Social Change Happen homework. Going into the college process, I knew that I wanted to go to a liberal arts school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted a flexible education for when I inevitably change my mind, and I enjoyed humanities classes too much to be done with them for forever. So yay! Here I am at a liberal arts university. Now that I am a liberal arts student, I sometimes wonder how productive this is. I am an intended STEM major, yet out of my five classes only one is a science class. I enjoy my other classes, but when will I use the skills I pick up in them beyond the class discussions? Sometimes I feel weird and anxious about how little science classes I am taking. However, I had a realization while writing a ...

By Cameron Rusin Hi friends! I apologize, as this isn't going to be a real blog post... life has been a little hectic but I hope to get something up about this coming weekend as I'm going to the White Mountains for 2 nights! Anyways, last Saturday was the cross country talent show, which was too weird to not share with you guys.  Some acts included: - eating 2 bananas, an orange, and multiple lemon slices with all peels/stickers on. This was very disturbing, but the poise of the performer was incredible. - 2 guys making a puzzle together - tap dancing to a "Wonderwall" remix - 2 renditions of hot cross buns, but one had the intro of "Despacito" - an a Capella rendition of "Longest Time" which wasn't anything special as it had been planned 15 min prior o show time, but they crammed all ~~30 of us their into a single stall bathroom ~~for the acoustics~~ - A pretend vape competition??? I don't really know - Italian...

By Tamika Whitenack I contemplated with making this post about sadness, because I've been thinking about that these past two days, but I think my adventures are more interesting so I'll just put the sadness part at the end. I didn't take quite as many pictures from the second half of October break, so I will actually write some stuff! And then include more pictures from the entirety of October break. On Tuesday we traveled down from Montreal to visit Mariko in Hanover. My mom and I stopped at Shelburne farms in Vermont and the Ben & Jerry's factory (pics in the last post). When we arrived in Hanover we made a stop at the co-op and then went to Mar's apartment! Personally, I think I would go a little crazy living in her space for an extended period of time because it definitely shows the neglect of busy college students in terms of cleanliness. But, she has lots of nice beds and her own (very small) kitchen (also technically everything is shared with roomm...