A Long Week

It has been a long week.  I left Ramat Beit Shemesh to go to the Kinneret.  The Kinneret is the only fresh water lake in all of Israel.  I was there visiting my friend Nama, I stayed at her aprtment which is on a kIbbutz, Kibbutz Ein Gev.  

I found the kibbutz a really nice place to live, very much like living in the country.  Lots of trees and bugs.  But the Kinneret its self is beautiful.  Nama is a pastry chef and she works at a hotel in Tiberias, (pronounced Tiveria in Hebrew)  while she was at work I spent my days listening to Sirius Radio online, going for runs and long walks and relaxing.  

We went Israeli dancing a few times during the week and that was a lot of fun.  Imagine 300 people dancing in a circle singing along with all of the songs at the top of their lungs.  It was a really good time.  The one negative piece was the people.  I didn't find the people on the Kibbutz very welcoming.  They didn't seem to really welcome outsiders.  That was suprising to me, but the kibbutz seems to be a closed community that if you aren't from there they don't exactly throw open their arms when they see someone new...  It was a suprise becuase of where my cousins live in Ramat Beit Shemesh, which is a religous community, they really go out of their way to welcome outsiders.  

I thought at first that I might want to live and work in a kibbutz because of the price / convenience.  But since spending a week there I am not sure now.  Perhaps other Kibutzim (plural for Kibbutz)  will be different.  I am going to have to live and work on a kibbutz for 6 months while I am in Ulpan (language school).  

Once I left the Kibbutz I went to a town near by that I had a few friends, and that is where I spent the weekend.  The town is called Beit Shean.  It is a really small town with a really large population of Morrocan/Israeli's.  In Beit Shean I stayed with my friend Miri and her family.  They are super friendly and really welcoming.  They were always making sure I was fed and happy!  If I didn't overeat at every meal there MUST have been something wrong, and I didn't want to insult anyone so I made sure to eat everything that was put infront of me. Eating everything infront of me was a mistake in the end.  Miri asked me if I wanted some chicken.  Chicken sounded good.  Well, what she put infront of me ended up being a piece of a leg from a cow.  She didn't know that it wasn't chicken.  Apparently this was  a delicassy to her dad and I didn't want to insult him.  I cut a piece off, I didn't even see any meat, it was all fat.  I smelled it, it smelled like it wasn't exactly USDA fresh....   I put a small piece in my mouth and starting chewing.  Oh     My      God!   This was the most disgusting thing I have ever had in my life. I choked it down and almost vomitted.  Miri asked me if I liked it, I paused before I whipered to her her how incredibly gross it was.  I wish I could have taken a picture of it for you to see but it was Shabat and we weren't allowed to use electronics during Shabat.   I asked Miri if her dad was going to get mad if I didn't finish it, she said no and I said thank you so much and pushed it away.     Thank you lord for small favors.

Everyone started laughing, because they knew how gross it was.  I asked Miri, "You said it was Chicken!"  She told me she had thought it was and she didn't know that it was a leg of cow.    I laughed it off too.    The rest of the evening was spent either teaching english to her cousins and sister and brother and their kids or learning Hebrew from everyone there.  They were very interested in this newcomer and where I was from and what I was doing here in their country.  We had a lot of fun trying to talk to each other about everything you can think of.  Miri's family loves to laugh and talk and argue about everything.  Miri warned me her dad and the rest of her family were really loud.  They aren't angry they just always yell.   For them it isn't yelling I don't think but for anyone who isn't used to it, it's yelling.  But they were great and I had a lot of fun.  

That was on Friday evening, on Saturday night  we celebrated a Jewish Holiday, Lag b'omer.  Lag b'omer is celebrating/remembering a very famous Rabbi's death and the story that goes along with this Rabbi.  Basically all jewish holidays can be surmised as follows: we came we saw, we suffered, we ate!  

On this holiday in Israel all the kids start collecting scraps of wood.  They get piled high in a predetermined location.  For us it was a huge empty parking lot in Beit Shean.  This pile ended up becoming a MOUNTAIN of wood.  I think the pile was probably 25-30 feet high a good 30 or 40 feet wide.  It was huge!  Around 8pm on Saturday night, after Shabat was over people started congregating in the empty parking lot around the huge pile of wood. People set up little fires of their own around the huge pile.  About 1000 people from around Beit Shean came to the parking lot.  People brought chairs and folding tables and food and drinks and started having fun in their own little areas.  A stage had been set up and a band came and started playing music.  Myself and Miri's family had our own little fire where we were roasting potatoes wrapped in tin foil, and around 9pm fire works were shot into the air and the big mountain of wood was set ablaze!  Here is a stock photo from previous Lag b'omer's but this is pretty close to what it looked like last night.  Except, the fire last night was prbably double this size in width and taller as well. 

After the lit the fire we started dancing to the music around our own little fire and singing songs and then we ate the roasted potatoes after they were cooked enough.  All we had to go with the potatoes was salt but when you add the atmosphere along with the potatoes they tasted great!

My clothes reeked of smoke, lag b'omer is known as the most polluted day in all of Israel.  We walked back to the apartment and sat around talking till about midnight, then we all went to sleep.  I had to get up at 6am this morning so I could catch a bus back to Jerusalem.  Here are a few pictures from the bus ride back.  

If you look closely, in the center of the picture you will see what looks like a shanty town.  I couldn't believe what I saw.  I had no idea that 20 minutes outside of Jerusalem you could see something that looked like it belonged in a third world country.What I found out though is this  a Bedouin "village."  The Bedouin are a migrating people.  They are native to this area of the world and coexist in Israeli society how they see fit.  They also can receive significant government support so I discovered after talking about it with some Israelis.  

As we got closer to Jerusalem I took a couple of pictures of what is a typical scene in Jerusalem, because it is literally a city on a hill they have built right into the hillside.  

Jerusalem is beautiful and doesn't feel like any other city I have ever been to, there is a feel to Jerusalem that is electric.

I am now back in Ramat Beit Shemesh staying with my cousins again.  I am probably going to stay here until I get my citizenship and goto language school (Ulpan) that is going to take a couple of months I think.  I got in touch with the intermediary organization that is going to help in-process me into Israeli society.   I am hoping to have my paperwork squared away by the end of the week once I do I should be able to start looking for a job here and then I shall rent a room until I go to the language school.  

Bye for now!

JS