A Bunch of Stuff

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 kibbutz day! On Mondays we travel to a city or historical site in Israel that is related to the educational module of the week. This Monday we went on a trip to Akko which is a city in the north west that is a "mixed" city, meaning that there are a lot of Arab-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis living in the same areas. My group was run all in Hebrew, so it was kind of hard to understand sometimes, but we talked a lot about sovereignty and the values that have to be at the center of a sovereign state/the importance of partnership with and a shared existence with Arabs to Israel's sovereignty. We are a little low on money this week because a bunch of people want to get piercings on Friday, so we packed our own lunches and then ate it in the shuk surrounded by delicious food. It was painful. Oh, and on Monday night we have Israeli movie night :)

Tuesday: 

On Tuesday mornings we have the last weekly educational activity about Jewish history, followed by lunch, followed by many hours of ulpan (learning Hebrew). I'm still working on being okay with making mistakes in Hebrew, but it's been really beneficial to be talking and learning in Hebrew. On Tuesday night we have a guest speaker who is also related to the module of the week. 

Wednesday: 

Wednesdays are pretty chill which is always nice after three exhausting days in a row. We have ulpan on Wednesday morning, but the rest of the day is time for planning the area of the program that you're in charge of (I'm on the group that plans things related to Judaism so what our shabbat and holidays look like), resting, and DEEP CLEAN! 

Thursday: 

Thursday is yom kvutza (group day) which means that our main counselors for the year come to see us and run programming about whatever they feel is relevant/important. It kind of sucks because I really like the counselors for the Jewish education activities, but I kind of hate the ones that are going to be with us for the whole year. Also I only see them once a week so it's hard to form a bond with them. 

Friday/Saturday:

Weeeeekeeeeennddd, baby!!!!! AKA sleep until 3 PM day :))))) The weekends are super important for catching up on sleep and doing some good self-care time. I try to get outside as much as I can on the weekend because I rarely have time to go outside during the week. The weekend also means shabbat! We've created our own google doc of songs and we're starting to develop a service that we'll do every week. We usually walk up to a beautiful lookout point at the top of the kibbutz and sing songs while the warm wind whips at our hair. Hehe alliteration. It's pretty damn lovely. 

Also drinking is a thing here since the legal drinking age is 18. We aren't actually allowed to drink that often but so far I have created some pretty funny memories such as running through sprinklers with Eliza and dabbing as I jumped over them, and doing Japanese duolingo over the speaker and thinking it was the funniest thing in the world. 

And here we are. Back to Sunday. 

This post has become really long so I'll do a separate one with pictures :) 

Other random things: 

- It's the anniversary of Itzchak Rabin's death in the beginning of November (he was a prime minister of Israel who got us the closest to a two-state solution that we've ever been, but he was murdered 22 years ago by another religious Jew who thought he was a traitor to the Jewish people). Anyway, the entire movement spends this time talking about Rabin and democracy and whether Israel can be Jewish and democratic. We had a seminar last weekend with the south African gap year kids in which we talked a lot about those ideas. They said we were too clean looking. 

- it was the 68th birthday of the kibbutz last week so I gave a toast in Hebrew in front of so many people! I was really nervous but it was fun in the end :)

- I really really miss cats :( There are a lot of them here but my friend Molly is really allergic so I can't touch them and then be in her presence. It's especially problematic because I sleep like 2 feet away from her. 

errr there's probably more that I could say, but I'll stop here. Hopefully I'll write more often so these will be much shorter :)