Breaking Point For Some

Once I again there is a good gap between my blog posts. I’m not sure how it ends like that but it does and I will try to improve but I always say that so who knows. I just took a shower and its always mentally refreshing for me after a long day here. I believe a lot of people have reached their kibbutz ulpan breaking point. About 6 or 7 people have left on their own accord for various reasons. Thats interesting by itself but you get the feeling after three months it has become a grind. Work is boring but I have a new boss so thats something at least different to mix things up. Some dude I think was mad at me at work or was just talking I’m not sure cuz he spoke way too fast. I picked up words but couldn’t put anything together. I am buddies with some of the workers at the factory including an eccentric Ethiopian man who loves american rap music. The other day I overloaded myself with Hebrew and I think I am just recovering from it. We found out the dates for our written and oral exams. The oral exam is the 6,7, or 8th of December and the written test is the last week of December. Zak and Ally are coming and the day I will be able to see them is Saturday the 17th I believe. I will have to see them, then probably catch a train and bus combination back to the Kibbutz late that night. I will try to see if someone will want to come with me from the ulpan. The next week I have a goal of thinking about what I will do after the ulpan because I don’t want to have to rush and have nowhere to go after and such. The Internet has gotten real bad the past few days except for by the coffee shop and the ulpan office so its really bothering some people. There is so much going on back home in many ways and I just wish everyone well about everything. I went to this big international party that was kinda for Halloween. There was like 700 people there almost all non-Israeli (if you dont count olim chadashim) and was in like a warehouse type thing and was pretty cool overall but not my cup of tea. I shaved and just left a mustache for the party and there are some good pictures I will look back on and question what I was wearing. I have kept the mustache and its no shave November so its gonna stay like this for a while and I’m not sure how its gonna end up but I figured why not. It gets cold here at night like no joke. I wear my sweatpants and a hoodie at night and I’m totally fine but some people are complaining about the cold like its a lot colder than it is. The past few days I have done my homework in the office. I don’t want to be in the moadon or my room totally ant-social and being the office allows me to hear some hebrew and to be up on all the gossip and its a good time. I like all of the office staff I think for different reasons but they can be grumpy at times but they have had a rough 3 months so far so its understandable. I wonder to myself how long it will take me to learn Hebrew like to certain levels. I have put in a lot of work and everyone is very nice and says I am the best student in my class and learning fast but I feel there is so much to learn that it can overwhelm at times so I just have to step by step go at it. I’m gonna post this then lay down and rest up for another day on the grind. Tomorrow is the last day before the weekend and I am looking forward to it for sure.

Lots of letters I put together that more or less make sense

                   I don’t know what I’m going to write about I just feel like its a good thing to do right now. The other night me and some ulpanists went to this cool brewery/restaurant/music venue in Zichron Ya’akov which is the closest city to us and is an upscale little town basically on top of a mountain of sorts. We were like 12 people and couldn’t get a cab so me and Michael from Ohio started walking back and the other people of course got cabs back right after we started walking. This is a pretty long walk like over an hour and even though it took a while and we didn’t get back till late it was awesome. We started up high and could see the entire area and got a whole new perspective on the area. The weather was perfect and we weren’t in a rush. And we just talked about stuff, me and him have talked many times before. About how if I Google Earthed myself at this moment where I would be and just thinking about that. Also I asked him what he thinks would be scarier 12 one inch spiders or 1 twelve inch spider? Kinda goofy but I heard it somewhere so I thought no time was better than then to gather some opinion.
                   Today I played perhaps the weirdest basketball game I ever have played and I haven’t played too many to be honest so I don’t have a good sample size. On my team was Sacha from France, Gregory from Ukraine, and Jeremy from the States. We played against Adam from Hungary, David from England, Tomer from Guatemala, and I can’t for the life of me remember the other guy and I feel awful seeing as it was just today. Hold on it was Neil from Cali! I know I should of probably just delete the last sentence but I’m just going with it. Well Sacha was playing like And 1 mixtape style trying all these crazy moved and they mostly worked except when his behind the back passes hit the defenders in the face from 2 feet away. Honestly I couldn’t help myself from laughing even though it looked like it hurt. Other than that it was just a fun group of people to play basketball with. At times I think I should of played more basketball when I was younger cause I feel like I could have been good but who knows. A lot of people are gone this weekend or at least for tonight. It gives the ulpan area a different feel. I sometimes feel like people here just drink out of boredom or something I don’t know exactly why its not my place to judge but I don’t always understand.
                   The pub is open and its a chill night over there right now but this weekend I want to be productive and such and maybe I will stop by over there later but who knows. Most of the people I would hangout out with are gone for the weekend so that gives me a chance to hangout with some different people. I don’t like to take naps during the day here a lot of people do it and I feel if I like its ok sometimes when you really need it but overall its a waste of time and only makes you more tired. I’m excited to get back to class on Sunday because we haven’t had any in a while because the Ministry of Education has a scheduled teacher break. Just talking with people I have kinda realized that people came to this program for different reasons. Obviously they did I’m not so egocentric that I think everyone should think the way I do but you can get in the mindset of why you came and its hard to just stop and think that oh hey other people have there own reasons. I think people who don’t try in class are missing a great opportunity and kinda wasting their time. If you didn’t come here with learning Hebrew as your first priority then you sure didn’t come here just work 20 hours a week at a boring job and party with the same people every single weekend? This has made me think about why I came here. I’m not attacking other people just the attitudes and lack of respect I think some of them show to our shared living area, the staff, and program in general. But thats enough of that.
                  Why did I come here on this program? I wanted to come back to Israel and now I’m here. Its like a what do I do now situation. My problem is that I have options and tough decisions to make. Which on the other hand makes me a lucky person to have chances and opportunities. Both my roommates are gone this weekend. Which is nice to have some space to myself. Just me and my box of candy! I think people think I’m crazy with the box my mom sent but its honestly pretty radical. I actually really like the socks and I will take pictures wearing them. Auntie Charlotte wanted me to post something about her and my mom on facebook but I will just mention her right now in blog so I hope that will suffice. I miss my family a lot, all of you guys. I’m not homesick but you crazy people aren’t so bad. I also miss my friends and buddies. I really need to say fuck it and go up to Metula like next weekend and get my ice skating on but I’m not sure I would ever get off the ice.
                  I think this might be one of the hardest to follow things written by anybody in a while but whatyagonnado. I thought about putting a space with the words but if you say it fast enough you don’t need to and thats what I was going for. Last weekend me and some people did a 1000 piece puzzle over the course of slightly less than 2 days and it was a cognitive mental grind if there ever was one. But in case anybody didn’t know puzzles are super awesome and I feel like its something I want to make a point of doing more of. That and go to the library. No 3D puzzles though unless its like a castle or something of equal street cred because I don’t want to get too fancy with it. Jose said he is looking forward to this post because I told him I was writing a lot so I thought I would give him a shout out. I don’t expect people to read everything here because its probably close to incoherent but its a good outlet for me. Some bands I’m digging right now: Streetlight Fire, The Front Bottoms, Into It. Over It. , Forever Came Calling. They are all different in style but are of high quality. I don’t know what I’m gonna do tomorrow. I need to catch up on Workaholics and Its Always Sunny so I will do that for sure. Well thats all I have for now. I’m making a goal to write more posts lets see how I do...

Yom Kippur Golan Heights and a Few Thoughts

Well for Yom Kippur I decided to go to Shay’s family’s house in Lehavim where I stayed before the Ulpan. I took the train with Sacha and Ariel. They were going to Beer Sheva which is just one or two stops after mine so it was a fun time. We plan on taking the bus back together Saturday night which would make it a much more enjoyable 3 hours on a bus. 

Well I am writing this on Monday after Yom Kippur and my trip to the Golan Heights. Yom Kippur was fine just hung around and we went to synagogue (or at least the outside because it was packed) for about an hour to hear the shofar blast mostly. I like going to their place its a nice little house that feels lived in and I feel comfortable there with the family. I met up with my buddies at the Beer-Sheva central bus station and we hugged and talked about our Yom Kippur happenings and such and we got on our way on the 8 o'clock bus to Tel-Aviv. As we were waiting for our next bus that goes from Tel-Aviv to Haifa and drops us off near the Kibbutz one of the other ulpanists came up to the waiting area. It was Mike from Germany. He stayed in Tel-Aviv with his parents and was catching the same bus back and also Annie from Brazil got on the bus with her boyfriend. The bus only had like 12 people so we were almost half which is kinda funny. We got back to kibbutz at about midnight so I was super tired and went right to bed. The next day was just a work in the morning and class in the afternoon kinda day. We have a succah right by the classrooms that the looks really cool and I hope to spend some good thought provoking time in there. We had our trip to the Golan Heights. It was awesome. We first did a hike at Banias. Its like a nature reserve that has a waterfall a stream and ancient Greek ruins. The sound of the stream and the way it looked reminded me of home and the Minnehaha Falls. We hiked for almost two hours and it was super hot but enjoyable. We then went and ate lunch at a site of a famous tank battle during the Yom Kippur war and heard some personal stories from our guides. After that we descended to Hamat Gader a hot spring spa/pool/alligator farm and spent 2 hours chilling there and then went back to the kibbutz.

Well its about the halfway point of my program so i figured it would be a good time to reflect. I’m not sure where to start. I’m having a great time being in Israel and meeting new people. My work at the factory is as boring as ever but not hard and I’m friendly with the people there so its not bad but I won’t miss it thats for sure. My roommates are both cool guys and we really don’t have any problems so I think I lucked out because there are some people I would not want to be roomies with. Hebrew class is going good. I have learned a lot but there is still so much to learn. Speaking will be the hardest for me reading and writing come more naturally. The dining hall is ok on some days but can obviously get tiresome also. Friday Night is always good but besides that its hit or miss unless you want to eat schnitzel every day. I’m excited that Ally and Zak are coming to Israel and I know they will have a good time. I have been thinking about what I am going to do after the program finishes. I have been thinking about maybe doing this Magen David Adom volunteer program or something else but I need more information about a few things. Israel is a place that constantly forces you to think. There are great things that Israel does and it also does some bad things and you have to be informed because its easy to get confused by all the information. On a totally different note anybody that wants to skype/vid chat let me know, I LOVE video chatting.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going in a general sense but I’m just going to go with how I feel and see where I end up.

Rosh Hashanah

Well Happy Rosh Hashanah. I have a nice break of a few days off for the holiday. Well the trip to Jerusalem was a long long day. I’m not sure what to say about it really. It was a good trip and we saw mostly things I have seen before but that was still cool to me because the old city is always special. Right now most people are with there families for the holiday and only a handful of ulpanists have stayed here. Its quiet around the ulpan area which isn’t a bad thing really. Today me and my roommate cleaned our room which it needed. They inspect the rooms every once and a while and since we have the time now we just did it. Right now I’m outside getting eaten alive by mosquitoes on my legs so I’m gonna go back to my room then to dinner so sorry about the short post!

Tree video and pix

Video of the tree and some pictures

First Rainfall

Well another weekend is coming to an end. There was a latin party before the regular pub night which was fun. This weekend was the first rain and it caused a tree to fall in the ulpan area right by my room blocking a path. I will post a video and pictures of the rain and the tree. I have my trip to Jerusalem on monday which is exciting. That also means a short week this week. Work and class like regular on sunday then trip monday and regular day on tuesday, but wednesday is a half day because it is erev Rosh Hashanah. I got my package and i forgot my mom said there would be a surprise and I opened it up and found a book with pictures of all the family and of home it was a very nice surprise and of course there were sour patch kids. Today I went to the beach with some friends I usually don’t go that often but it was nice to go. I have to go upload the pictures and videos in the moadon on a wired connection once I finish writing this post. I  probably won’t even waste my time with the Vikings this week which is most likely for the best but the Wild start soon which is good. Well I got lots of stuff to upload so l will post again after my Jerusalem trip!

Midweek Update

Today two classes went on a trip to Jerusalem. We go next week on Monday but that meant we had to work a full day today. I worked from like 6-4 which is really long for such a monotonous job such as mine. I love to eat the fruit in the ulpan office its something I do everyday and today after work I ate 2 peaches and that was the highlight of my day. Rosh Hashanah is next week I don’t know exactly what I’m doing but it should be fun. I’m tired so I’m going to bed.