Monday, November 16, 2009
Time Is Flying!
As I try to update this blog, the days and weeks continue to melt by. Its really difficult, trying to remember and document so much, but I really think its well worth it.
Wednesdays switched halfway through the program from learning about alternative education to learning about globalization. Our peulot are fantastic. Nothing in particular comes to mind about any in particular right now, though...
BUT, we do have an exciting update in kvutza process! Today, Tuesday, we worked on the kibbutz because we didn't have a trip elsewhere, and since we finish work relatively early in the day, we finalized our kvutza name! We are now Kvutzat Ga'ash. Emphasis on the first "a", spelled in Hebrew with an ayin. "Ga'ash har" means volcano, but "ga'ash" itself is the bubbling of the lava before the eruption, and it is also the word for a sea bubbling before a storm. We chose it because ga'ash is in preparation to do something big, to really have an impact and take action, which is a really excellent hope to have for our kvutza on shnat. Also, with all the heat and bubbling, there are all the chemical reactions happening very fast, which is a very good metaphor for 18 people living and working so closely together for a year. I really like the name. We went through a lot, like "hippopotam", mostly for jokes' sake, the fact that a hippopotamus is an aggressive vegetarian, but on a serious level because the hippopotamus changes the environment it lives in, the way the water runs and vegetation grows, because of the path it chooses to take over and over again over time, and its really great to think you can have that effect on your environment. We also thought about "shoddedim", robbers, but more as vigilantes or renegade, someone taking matters in to their own hands, to change things, working from the underground, but we couldn't find a good Hebrew translation.
Thursdays have become a regular lemon picking day for me and I really enjoy it. I don't know when else in my life I will find myself spending ours picking lemons. I enjoy the solitude, relative silence, and monotony, looking for lemons, picking, filling the bucket, emptying...I find it kind of meditative. I realized almost two months in that I had only once not gone to the lemons, because our meetings to decide the jobs are so annoying and I really don't care enough to fight for any job, and I decided it might be good to try something else, so I went to the garden for two weeks. The first time I was digging trenches for irrigation hoses, and the second time picking up garbage all over the kibbutz and moving furniture around on the tractor, which was all good fun work, but I really missed the lemons. Today when we worked there was no fruit picking option, because the fruit they were picking today was mangoes, and a good number of people got really bad, persistent allergic reactions to the mangoes, so I was gardening again and we planted flowers.
Now some weekend updates. The first weekend where I left off was Simchat Torah, and we all took a bus to our regional bus station, which was hosting a region-wide celebration. There are a lot of soldiers here, so it was mostly for them, but also a lot of other people from the area, and a lot of families. There was lots of singing and dancing, very similar to what I'm used to at home for holiday celebrations in Temple or at NCSY, and not at all what I'm used to being here. We don't really do traditional religious things here, so it was a really, really nice experience for me to have, especially with these people I'm on the program with, even if they weren't as in to it as I was. Afterwards, I skyped with my family for the first and only time so far in Israel, which was really wonderful. I miss them, and my house and my puppy... but I'm pretty well distracted here.
One thing we have been doing fairly consistently in the line of Judaism is Kabbalat Shabbat. Its not a traditional Kabbalat Shabbat, but every week we have someone from a different country do Kabbalat Shabbat for everyone who wants to come, in the way they like or want to do, maybe how they do in Hashomer Hatzair in their country, or just something they want to do with everyone from shnat, so its really nice.
One weekend on Holit all the South Americans and a few others went to the beach in Tel Aviv. I was considering going for a time, because I thought it would be a good time to bond with all of them and it sounded like fun, but reality is this language separation IS a separation. Its not something to be angry or frustrated at anyone for, because I just don't understand Spanish and its just much easier and more comfortable for the Spanish speakers to speak in Spanish, and its still something we all make our compromises for and work around all the time. I just didn't feel it would make sense for me to go to the beach and be surrounded by Spanish and not know what was going on while I spent money on bus fair and watched Argentinians barbecue kilos of meat. So, I stayed on Holit, and as it turned out, some Europeans also traveled that weekend, and we ended up with a very, very cozy little group of about 8 people. We had a Kabbalat Shabbat together, had our meals together, hung out and watched movies, and had a really wonderful dance party despite the fact that no one was here.
The day after, some of us left the little Holit group, Meirav, Adi, Dana, and I, to go to the birthday party of Maya Herman, our crazy, fantastic counselor from home, who is Israeli and worked in the movement in New York for two years. Another friend, Sapir, who worked at our camp this past summer, drove us to her party. We had a long, long car ride together, ate DELICIOUS food, and got to see lots of wonderful people from home who are in Israel now. It was great.
Another excellent weekend was Halloween. An amazing girl from Argentina, Natasha, has her birthday on Halloween, and she's always wanted to have a fun, scary, costume Halloween night. Most people here are not from the US and have never done Halloween before, so we all thought up costumes, some scary, some not, and made decorations for both Halloween and Natasha's birthday. We had a dance party and EVERYONE was dressed up in costumes, even all the kibbutz members who came, and everyone went all-out. I was a tomato, because being a gluten-free vegan (explanation later), it is a major, major staple of my diet here. Other costumes included a pair of sad clowns, a pair of Satanists, Jim Carrey in The Mask, a nerd, a cowgirl, Aladdin, a cavewoman, a vampire, a zombie fortune teller, an 80's dancer, a rag doll, a dead rag doll, KISS, and many more. Usually for dance parties, our counselor DJs, and he plays the same music every time, not particularly good music, and is really difficult about requests or questions about the music, so generally, it could be a lot better. THIS night, Oren from the kibbutz, who does the gardening, was the DJ, and he was absolutely fantastic. Everyone was dancing. The energy, from it being Natasha's birthday, and it being Halloween, and so many kibbutz members being there, and all the costumes and decorations, and most of all with Oren DJing, was completely different and really a fantastic thing to experience. At one point he played about 8 Bob Marley songs in a row, and please believe me, nothing has ever been better. It was really an epic night.
More weekends to update on, and a lot more random info, soon but not right now! Peace.
BUT, we do have an exciting update in kvutza process! Today, Tuesday, we worked on the kibbutz because we didn't have a trip elsewhere, and since we finish work relatively early in the day, we finalized our kvutza name! We are now Kvutzat Ga'ash. Emphasis on the first "a", spelled in Hebrew with an ayin. "Ga'ash har" means volcano, but "ga'ash" itself is the bubbling of the lava before the eruption, and it is also the word for a sea bubbling before a storm. We chose it because ga'ash is in preparation to do something big, to really have an impact and take action, which is a really excellent hope to have for our kvutza on shnat. Also, with all the heat and bubbling, there are all the chemical reactions happening very fast, which is a very good metaphor for 18 people living and working so closely together for a year. I really like the name. We went through a lot, like "hippopotam", mostly for jokes' sake, the fact that a hippopotamus is an aggressive vegetarian, but on a serious level because the hippopotamus changes the environment it lives in, the way the water runs and vegetation grows, because of the path it chooses to take over and over again over time, and its really great to think you can have that effect on your environment. We also thought about "shoddedim", robbers, but more as vigilantes or renegade, someone taking matters in to their own hands, to change things, working from the underground, but we couldn't find a good Hebrew translation.
Thursdays have become a regular lemon picking day for me and I really enjoy it. I don't know when else in my life I will find myself spending ours picking lemons. I enjoy the solitude, relative silence, and monotony, looking for lemons, picking, filling the bucket, emptying...I find it kind of meditative. I realized almost two months in that I had only once not gone to the lemons, because our meetings to decide the jobs are so annoying and I really don't care enough to fight for any job, and I decided it might be good to try something else, so I went to the garden for two weeks. The first time I was digging trenches for irrigation hoses, and the second time picking up garbage all over the kibbutz and moving furniture around on the tractor, which was all good fun work, but I really missed the lemons. Today when we worked there was no fruit picking option, because the fruit they were picking today was mangoes, and a good number of people got really bad, persistent allergic reactions to the mangoes, so I was gardening again and we planted flowers.
Now some weekend updates. The first weekend where I left off was Simchat Torah, and we all took a bus to our regional bus station, which was hosting a region-wide celebration. There are a lot of soldiers here, so it was mostly for them, but also a lot of other people from the area, and a lot of families. There was lots of singing and dancing, very similar to what I'm used to at home for holiday celebrations in Temple or at NCSY, and not at all what I'm used to being here. We don't really do traditional religious things here, so it was a really, really nice experience for me to have, especially with these people I'm on the program with, even if they weren't as in to it as I was. Afterwards, I skyped with my family for the first and only time so far in Israel, which was really wonderful. I miss them, and my house and my puppy... but I'm pretty well distracted here.
One thing we have been doing fairly consistently in the line of Judaism is Kabbalat Shabbat. Its not a traditional Kabbalat Shabbat, but every week we have someone from a different country do Kabbalat Shabbat for everyone who wants to come, in the way they like or want to do, maybe how they do in Hashomer Hatzair in their country, or just something they want to do with everyone from shnat, so its really nice.
One weekend on Holit all the South Americans and a few others went to the beach in Tel Aviv. I was considering going for a time, because I thought it would be a good time to bond with all of them and it sounded like fun, but reality is this language separation IS a separation. Its not something to be angry or frustrated at anyone for, because I just don't understand Spanish and its just much easier and more comfortable for the Spanish speakers to speak in Spanish, and its still something we all make our compromises for and work around all the time. I just didn't feel it would make sense for me to go to the beach and be surrounded by Spanish and not know what was going on while I spent money on bus fair and watched Argentinians barbecue kilos of meat. So, I stayed on Holit, and as it turned out, some Europeans also traveled that weekend, and we ended up with a very, very cozy little group of about 8 people. We had a Kabbalat Shabbat together, had our meals together, hung out and watched movies, and had a really wonderful dance party despite the fact that no one was here.
The day after, some of us left the little Holit group, Meirav, Adi, Dana, and I, to go to the birthday party of Maya Herman, our crazy, fantastic counselor from home, who is Israeli and worked in the movement in New York for two years. Another friend, Sapir, who worked at our camp this past summer, drove us to her party. We had a long, long car ride together, ate DELICIOUS food, and got to see lots of wonderful people from home who are in Israel now. It was great.
Another excellent weekend was Halloween. An amazing girl from Argentina, Natasha, has her birthday on Halloween, and she's always wanted to have a fun, scary, costume Halloween night. Most people here are not from the US and have never done Halloween before, so we all thought up costumes, some scary, some not, and made decorations for both Halloween and Natasha's birthday. We had a dance party and EVERYONE was dressed up in costumes, even all the kibbutz members who came, and everyone went all-out. I was a tomato, because being a gluten-free vegan (explanation later), it is a major, major staple of my diet here. Other costumes included a pair of sad clowns, a pair of Satanists, Jim Carrey in The Mask, a nerd, a cowgirl, Aladdin, a cavewoman, a vampire, a zombie fortune teller, an 80's dancer, a rag doll, a dead rag doll, KISS, and many more. Usually for dance parties, our counselor DJs, and he plays the same music every time, not particularly good music, and is really difficult about requests or questions about the music, so generally, it could be a lot better. THIS night, Oren from the kibbutz, who does the gardening, was the DJ, and he was absolutely fantastic. Everyone was dancing. The energy, from it being Natasha's birthday, and it being Halloween, and so many kibbutz members being there, and all the costumes and decorations, and most of all with Oren DJing, was completely different and really a fantastic thing to experience. At one point he played about 8 Bob Marley songs in a row, and please believe me, nothing has ever been better. It was really an epic night.
More weekends to update on, and a lot more random info, soon but not right now! Peace.
# posted by Anna Schuman @ 10:43 AM 
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