erev pitot and baby turtles make me smile

Judging from the dates my mom listed, it's been a bit over a week since my last update. For the most part, it's been a lot of same old, but there has been some excitement around the kibbutz. We've gotten 3 new students. 2 of them came together last week after volunteering on a different kibbutz - and they have become 2 of my closest friends. James is from San Diego, and Rebecca is from Sweden. And just yesterday we got another student from Venezuela. She's fairly quiet, but that's to be somewhat expected of someone jumping into a program 3 weeks old with a fairly established dynamic. We've also lost 2 people. One of them was pretty quiet and has gone unnoticed. But we scared Hunter (the Mormon) away pretty quickly. He was definitely missed at first. As for events: We had a refet dinner on Sunday that was amazing. For those of you who forget, the refet is where I work - where the cows are. I'd love if anyone could let me know if there's an English word for this. You know, the horses are in the stables, the cows are in the ____? Dinner was AMAZING! First and foremost, as I've already stated, the people that work there are fantastic. They're all really kind and funny people. Secondly, it was 2 hours of meat continually coming off the grill while drinking beers - and man oh man the meat it was! We had kebabs, and like 4 different cuts of meat, including a full slap on a skewer rotating over the coals. I felt guilty with every bite I took, but it was delicious! I think my bosses love for cows transferred to his preparation of the animal... I'll take pictures of the refet next week. This week I'm working early mornings so it's still dark out. When I bring my camera to work, I'll also be sure to capture the calves. New calves are being born every day or two - we even got twins the other day! Oh so adorable :) Also, the last night, we had an erev pitot (night of pitas). We made our own pitas, and sat around all night enjoying each others company. I think the photos speak for themselves...

 

And, I mean, living on the beach isn't so bad either. I takes me about 10 minutes to walk from my room to the beach... and sometimes, I come across cute little creatures such as this adorable turtle. He was about half the size of the palm of my hand... and for a half hour, we were best friends.

Other beach activities include smoking nargila (hookah), reading, kicking around a soccer ball, watching the sunset, taking naps, etc. Life here is tough :-P


Yesterday, we went to a place just outside of Tel Aviv, in Rehovot, called Machon Ayalon. Turns out the people that founded this kibbutz actually first worked underground in Machon Ayalon secretly making bullets to help the war of independence... After 3 1/2 years, the war was won, and they finally founded the kibbutz about 40 km south of Haifa. Here's a link to the cliff notes: http://www.shimur.org/english/article.php?id=28 but I can't seem to find a more thurough site...

That pretty much sums it up for now! I'm heading to Tel Aviv for the weekend. See some family, hit the beach, party up, it'll be a grand ol' time. I have a long weekend due to Purim, so I'm gonna enjoy myself. (FYI, weekends here are Fri and Sat, so long weekend means I get Sunday off, too)

I'd love to hear from you all!

Much love.