Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan

This is my second day being on Kibbutz. Since it is Shabbat, everyone will eat together in the dining hall tonight. From what I have heard, it is a meal not to miss...then again, if you miss it you're stuck with snacks from the supermarket and semi-warm water from a rustic water fountain. Moshe, a family friend, drove me up from where I was staying 2 nights ago in Herzliyyah to the Kibbutz. The Kibbutz is located about 20 km east of Haifa and about 2 km from the nearby town of Qiryat Atta. It's a very nice Kibbutz with the vast majority of its income coming from the plastic factory PalRam. The big news around here lately is that for the olympics a big shipment of PalRam's plastic was sent to Beijing. This yielded a huge payoff for the Kibbutz so it's a win-win situation for the Kibbutzniks who will be happy, and the Ulpanistim who will be happy since the Kibbutzniks will not be terse with us. Speaking of which, the kibbutzniks have not been bad. While they will not openly come up to us and start engaging in conversation, we have been able to speak with a few who have been fairly pleasant. At the moment there are about 10-15 kids with a total number expected at 48. The countries so far have been the US, England, Australia (my roommate who is 25), Germany, Argentina, and of course...Russia. Everyone seems to be pretty laid-back. While I would not say that we all fit together like hand-and-glove, for the most part the group seems somewhat cohesive. That's all for now. Proper shabbat attire (even on the Kibbutz) awaits me.

The Land of Soy Milk (I'm lactose-intolerant) and Honey

So I have landed here and it is great to be in Israel again! The stream of emotions that I have experienced over the past 24 hours have been wide-ranging and as a result I am exhausted. When I got to the airport, my bags weighed a grand total of 110 lbs together. The limit? 110 lbs. Finishing packing was stressful enough but then having to worry about whether I took enough clothing and supplies to last me for the next 4 years while staying under 110 lbs was enough to make my hair turn gray. So, to the teachers who I gave gray hair to over the past few years, we're even. I sat next to a nice guy on the plane who was about 30. He was going to Israel with an organization similar to birthright. We chatted for a while but ultimately I passed out in my aisle seat with a book still in my lap...traveling always wears me out. Much to my dismay, about 6 hours after I fell soundly asleep a group of orthodox males (about my age) started praying...RIGHT next to me! The whole swaying and mumbling and all that jazz. I figured it would have been rude to ask them to take their prayers elsewhere as I was trying to rest so I merely ignored them and scanned the plane to get an idea of who was traveling with me. Mostly Israelis, Yuppie Americans on birthright, the religious, or the in-betweens.

Just a bit about the content of my blog. I do not intend to censor myself in the language that I use so I advise that if you are sensitive toward harsh or graphic language...careful? At the same time, however, I recognize that some things are better left kept to ourselves so I will try to find a happy medium that will appease both parties (the prudes and the ludes). It's great to be back and more blogs to come!