Long Time No Write

Howdy All,

So you may be asking yourselves, "What has Ethan been up to in the Holy Land?" But have no fear, because I will tell you. 

So, because I have a lot to talk about, I am not going into detail for some of the things. We have had two more Wednesday trips off of the kibbutz. First we went to Kibbutz Lotan (http://www.kibbutzlotan.com/), which is a Reform Kibbutz just down the road from Yahel where we learned about eco-living and were given the opportunity to help them out with some of their projects. Lotan is a really cool kibbutz who, aside from some farming and agriculture, has a whole branch of environmental work. We learned about their eco-huts made of mud, we learned how to make mud bricks and seed balls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball), which are a cool invention to cut down the waste of seeds in a region that doesn't get much rain. Karmiel was really fun and interesting, and they are definitely setting an example for how Israelis and Jews around the world should try to play their part in the world community.

Our last trip was into the Negev once again. We visited a huge crater at Mitzpe Ramon, which was really cool, but even cooler as we rappelled into it. We visited Sde Boker, where David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, is buried, had a beautiful hike, and got one last chance to soak in the beauty of Southern Israel while living there.

This past weekend, we had our Kibbutz Closing Seminar, which was exciting looking ahead, but also sad because the whole group will never be together for a long amount of time the whole year. We had lots of fun activities, educational sessions with some of the Netzer tzevet (staff), and had a lot of time to prepare for the next step of our journey through Israel. We ended the weekend with a big poike, which is a traditional Israeli cooking method on a fire. We sat around the bonfire for hours and enjoyed some relaxation before breaking off onto options. 

On Sunday, we had a long drive from Yahel to Jerusalem to drop off the group of people who are going to be hiking on the nation-wide Israel Trail, and then the rest of us made our way up North to Karmiel. We were all very excited to arrive to civilization and the first night, we met our program coordinator and went over some first night things. All 15 of us are living in one house, so we had a chance to move in and get situated, and make some group decisions about responsibilities in the house.

Monday morning, we got started with orientation. So far, we have met tons of people, visited many possible volunteer locations, and had a chance to set our bearings in Karmiel. It is a beautiful city with about 52,000 residents, many of whom are Russian immigrants. We visited a place called Kfar Yeledim (Children's Village), which is an incredible village for foster children, where families live with as many as ten foster children. We also went into the neighboring Arab Village, Madj el Krum, where we will be teaching English once a week in the schools. We have learned a lot about the city of Karmiel, its surrounding areas, and our volunteer options. I am very excited to actually get to volunteering and I will write more about my choices as soon as I figure them out.

Tonight, we had a very special opportunity. We attended a final ceremony for Gadna, which is a one week sampling of the army. Many of our host families' children were participating, so we drove out to a nearby army base to watch and support. It was really cool to watch, and it was very special, especially when everybody joined the soldiers-to-be in uniform in singing of Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem. It was a moment that I think I will remember for a long time, because, speaking for the whole group I think, we really felt part of the Israeli society and our connection with the Jewish people was dropped right in front of our eyes for those few minutes. It is hard to put into words what I felt, but it was special.

Things are going great in Karmiel. I love my host family already, they are so nice and welcoming. With just one visit to their home, I already feel comfortable asking them about anything and in our first meeting, we talked about A LOT... from serious topics such as Israeli politics to simple things such as curfew for kids. They are really nice, and I look forward to fostering an even better relationship with them in the next 3 months. I also really like my house mates from Netzer. While it could easily be a zoo living in a house with 15 people, we all get along nicely and keep up our responsibilities. We appreciate how well we work together, especially after hearing horror stories of the past.  

Thats it for now... as I do more here, I will go into better detail. I'll post some pictures, although more pictures of Karmiel will come in a few days.

-אתן

Learning how organic human waste is made into compost

The final result of our seed ball class

This is what went into seed balls

Seed ball directions

Making seed balls

The final result of making mud bricks

Two of the really cool mud houses on Lotan. These are where teen volunteers on their Eco Program live

Some Shnatties at Sde Boker

Mitzpe Ramon

Bus Security Guards Double as Rappelling Experts. Who Knew?

Our first group shot in Karmiel. Right before we met the Mayor

There is cool painting all over the city. This is just some windows along the street. 

Fun rooftop sculpture

Monkey's are strangely human when you feed them. This one was really nice... he likes peanut butter and chocolate sandwiches. (This was at a zoo where disabled people have a chance to work... and it is one of our volunteer options)

Two kids at the Children's Village preparatory school with their teaching aid.

View of the Rabin neighborhood in Karmiel on the left with Madj el Krum off in the distance on the right.

Just the main street which we live off of.

נס גדול היה פה - A Great Miracle Happened Here

You may be asking why I have used the Hanukkah saying as my title, since Hanukkah is a few weeks away...so I will explain.

Today, while working on the date bags, there were lots of clouds in the sky, which one, made for an incredible sunrise glow on the Jordanian Red Mountains, but also surprised us all. As we worked, it started to drizzle, and then actually started raining. While this may not be an actual miracle, it is very exciting because the Arava (where I am living... which is part of the Negev desert) very rarely gets rain. All of Shnat Netzer along with most everybody on the Kibbutz was very surprised by this desert phenomenon, but thankfully it didn't last long because once it stopped, we were able to keep working on the bags and FINISH!!!

The massive piles of date bags which we were given the task of folding/rolling, which we never thought we would see the bottom of, has been depleted. Everyone was so excited as we rolled the last stack of bags, and its just in time, because we only have one more day of volunteer on kibbutz. So thats it for the little check in today. I have a trip tomorrow, and we have a big surprise so we will see, and then I move up to Karmiel on Sunday... and I am very excited for that. I'll write again soon!

That's all folks!
Ethan

Egypt Pictures

so the photo is horrible... but here we are at the border!

Our hotel in Dahab

The restaurant at our hotel

Just some of the coral reefs

Aren't snorkels flattering?

Our hut where we ate in Abu Galum

The Bedouins dont really care about comfort on camels... just wanted  to get us there and back

The Abu Galum fisherman at sunset

Relaxing on the beach

The fish looked unreal

The sunset at our kibbutz when we got home

Trip to Egypt

Over the weekend, I decided to travel to Egypt (Sinai specifically) with two friends from my program. We took a bus to the border on Thursday evening, and we encountered our first luck of the weekend en route. We started talking to two Israelis who were also traveling to Sinai and they offered to share a cab with us once we crossed the border. We had no idea where we were going, so we gladly accepted. After walking over the border, it was clear that we were in Egypt. The atmosphere was totally different, which was quite a shock to us. We expected another mid-east country... but in comparison to Israel, Egypt is 40 years behind. So we crossed, and our Israeli friends, one of whom spoke fluent Arabic started bargaining with the cab driver. This was our first experience with Egypt's bargaining, which we heard was much different than Israel. You can bargain for ANYTHING in Egypt, even a bottle of water in a grocery store. It's crazy. So thirty minutes cab ride and our driver, Samy, whom we became friends with, pulls into a place called Paradise. He got out of the car to say hi to all his friends and they started showing us around the place and our room. All along the Red Sea coast of Sinai there are little bungalow villages that you can rent for a few nights like a hotel. They are all pretty gross, but we didnt know that before hand.

We had heard from many people back in Israel that there are nice places so we talked with the driver and decided to continue on to a city called Dahab. We arrived and he showed us to a nice hostel and things were good. We sat down for some dinner at the hostel and talked with the manager, who was a really nice 20 year old guy who we became friends with over the weekend. He told us all about Dahab and treated us to Bedouin Tea, which is the best tea I've ever had. We talked about things to do and decided that the next morning we would get up and go an a Jeep Safari/Camel Trip/Snorkeling Trip.

Friday morning, we were awoken by our "wakeup call", a knock on the door, and after we got ready, we were greeted and started on our trip. The jeep first took us to an incredible snorkel spot called The Blue Hole, where we first sat down for a bite to eat and tea, and then we snorkeled. We were lucky to be on the jeep with two Israeli's, a father and daughter, who had been to Dahab multiple times before and showed us around to the best places. The father knew the owner of one of the beach front restaurants near Blue Hole, which became our home base for the day. It was great to meet the two Israeli's, because they took us under their wing and made the whole day much better. After snorkeling we took a camel ride to a national reserve called Abu Galum. It was supposed to be the best snorkeling/diving in Sinai, but we couldn't find any reefs. I swam along most of the waterfront and found nothing. It was quite disappointing, but we spent some time relaxing on the beach and it was nice. As part of the day's trip, we were served lunch in a Bedouin hut, and it was delicious. We had a traditional Bedouin meal with salads and rice, but also had great fish that was caught no more than 25 minutes before we were served. After eating a relaxing, my German friend Arkadij, who was born in Russia, taught us a Russian card game called Durak, which supposedly every Russian in the world knows.We played for a while, relaxed some more and it was really nice. At one point, a man who lives in Abu Galum came over, and somehow we got to the topic of camels, and we learned all the commands for camels, which came very handy on our ride back. We had a need for speed, so we yelled the commands and ran the camels past all the other groups of people on the path. It was fun to watch as 3 teens, an American, a German, and a Brit ran past them looking like camel pros. Once we got back to our restaurant at Blue Hole, we took some more time to relax and enjoy the sunset and some more Bedouin Tea. We then got the jeep ride back home to finish off a great but tiring day. After cleaning up, we decided to go out on the town. Dahab is a beautiful beach front town with restaurants and Bazaar shops all along the promenade. We did a little shopping and then went to bed.

Saturday morning, we slept in a little, and then decided to do some more snorkeling. We got a ride to a place called Three Pools, which was even better than The Blue Hole, and it was less populated. I got tons of underwater photos, which I will post on here soon. We spent the whole morning on the beach, went back to the hotel, cleaned up, had lunch and packed everything up. We were so tired after a great weekend. We got a taxi ride with our friend Samy and the two hour ride back to the border crossing felt like nothing since we all fell asleep. We crossed the border back into Israel, and we were very happy to be "home". Much of this joy may have been because it was the first time the whole weekend we were in air conditioning! A few bus rides later and we were back at Kibbutz Yahel sharing our stories with the group and hearing about everyone else's weekend adventures. It was great to be back home after an adventurous weekend!

All in all, I have come to the conclusion that Egypt, despite being a beautiful country with incredibly nice people, is crazy. It was definitely a shock to see how different two neighboring countries, Israel and Egypt, could be. The culture- society, way of life, city development, and even food, was so different, even though we were just a few hours away.

Thats all for now, pictures are soon to come!

-Ethan

Pictures from Last Week

A great lookout into the Eilat mountains

We got into some interesting terrain this time. This was the easy stuff. More to come later.

At one point, Hagar, our Madrich (leader) for Kibbutz, stopped to teach us a song about all the Kibbutzim in the South Arava.

This is the crazy viewpoint from above the canyon. To the right is Egypt.

Some of us decided to be true tourists and put up the peace sign. Hooray for cheesy!

I'm really not that big... 

Rio took a chance to breathe right near a cliff into the huge valley

Here is some of the rough terrain. At points going down, everyone had to hold onto a railing... there was even a point when we had to climb down a rickety ladder.

Lunch on the trail is always delicious and revitalizing.

Beautiful.