The past week

Wednesday-hike, sleep

Thursday- volunteering + ulpan + tel aviv bus

Friday + nemal in tel aviv

Saturday – beach and back to kibbutz

Sunday – Chinuch session (rabbi benji), asefah, lunch, asefah, ulpan, dinner, peula, asefah

Monday – ulpan, volunteering (ill), progressive Judaism peula

Wednesday was our most epic hike yet. What began as a gentle amble along a mountain turned into an epic 7 hour hike. I’m not going to lie, mountains can only be beautiful for so many hours, then they just become boring (clearly it was a good decision for me not to do shvil). Having said that it was an exhausting but rewarding day which ended with a potter around Eilat and me accompanying (someone else!) to the doctor that evening. On returning from the hike I literally collapsed into bed (at about 8.30) and slept solidly till the next morning.

Kyla, Sophie and I

From left clockwise: Emily, Relf, Sofi, Zara, Tamara, Ayla, Rachel, Tanya, Sarah, Lizzie, Fred, Me

Thursday was a somewhat more stressful volunteering experience. Not only did I wake up in the foulest mood known to man, we arrived at the date bag site to discover half the group wasn't coming. This was apparently due to a decision made by our madricha because the kibbutz said it needed some volunteers in the kitchen and in the tourism area. On discovering this we were naturally, as is the way on shnat, livid. We decided it was totally undemocratic and contradictory of the long and heated debate we had had at a previous asefah about peoples commitment and slacking in volunteering. Particularly interestingly that some of the people who had taken up other jobs were the specific people who had been so adamant that working on the date bags wasn’t that bad and even if it was we were doing it as a group experience and it was important for the moral of the group that we all did it together. We struggled through and by the end of Ulpan that afternoon we couldn’t wait to get on the bus to Tel Aviv just to get a bit of a break and relax. We had the interesting experience of having five shirut drivers almost having a fist fight over who got to take us to herzliya pituach. We arrived at the house exhausted and promptly conked out for the night.

Sophie, Me, Tamara, Miriam and Kyla at Herzliya Beach

Sophie, Kyla, Me, Tamara and Miriam before going out

Friday morning disappeared as we all blissfully slept through the morning due to the miracle shutters on the windows in the house. We spent the day at the beach and pottering round the mall a bit before heading into Tel-Aviv for a rather chilled night out. On Saturday we chilled at the beach again (very producitve I know) and then heading into tel aviv for the 4 and a half hour coach ride home. We did make a feeble attempt to go to a kab shab service on Friday night but it involved too many taxis for our poor shnat budgets.

Sunday started with a Chinuch session that was actually fairly interesting but I don't have my notes on me/can't really be bothered to write about it. Our day pretty much consisted of 3 veryveryvery long asephot as nothing got decided and everyone got very agitated with lots of heated discussions and debates. The topics ranged from one of the boys being intimidated by all the girls to where and the reason we were volunteering to people taking things too personally-it was epic.

Monday was very uneventful. It consisted of Ulpan, volunteering and a progressive Judaism peula but I slept through most of volunteering as i got a bit dizzy and headachy during Ulpan. Most of my evening consisted of planning the Sikkum Seminar which is the last weekend we are all together on Kibbutz. I got more than a little agitated to the say the least. I have also had an interesting evening of looking up Netzer and RSY fun facts and ideological choices. Riveting stuff.

Off to bed now as have got volunteering tomorrow morn.

Pictures to follow soon

Lots of love

S x