Akko!

We've finally moved into our house in Akko! It's pretty small (it's meant for one family), but somehow we managed to fit 18 of us in this one house. 

This is what the house looks like when you first walk in. Through the door to the left you have the kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and one bedroom. To the right you have the entryway to the living room (which we call our moadon), and through the living room you can get to another bathroom and 2 more bedrooms.

This is our kitchen! We finally have a real stove, and a nice, fully functioning refrigerator. We also have a pantry full of dozens of spices, pasta, different spreads, and an array of fruits/vegetables!

Here's our living room/moadon! This is where we do most of our asephot/peulot.

This is my bedroom! I share a room with 4 other people. Sam from Miriam, Jess from Galil, Jacob from Miriam, and Chief from Gesher. I have top bunk, and it's very cramped in our room, but it's got a warm, homey type of charm to it that I like.

If you walk up these stairs, you'll get to the 2nd floor, with 2 more bedrooms and 1 more bathroom. 

This is the central part of upstairs. Here is where we keep the dryer to dry our clothes (the washing machine is downstairs, don't ask why, because I really don't know why they're separated).

Through this window you can see our balcony! And the beautiful sunsets!

The best part of the house is definitely our wrap-around balcony! As you can see, everyone else is very excited about it too! We get the best views of the sunset, and we live right next to the train tracks that separate us from the main city of Akko. So we live super close to everything, which is awesome! 

What's nice about living in Akko is that we can walk to just about everything we need in the city. It's a lot warmer here than it was in Ein Dor, which makes walking a lot more pleasant. A few days ago we split up into groups and did a short scavenger hunt. We saw the shuk that so many people have told us about. It's full of so many fruits and vegetables! There's also a super cheap grocery store nearby that's cheaper than the kolbo that was on kibbutz. 

Today we went out for lunch as a kvutza. We went to this hummus and pita place and all sat down on a super long table. They kept on giving us so many different kinds of hummus like hummus with chick peas, hummus with beans, hummus with tahini, and regular hummus. It was so good, and we all left feeling super satisfied. 

After lunch, we still had 2 hours to kill before our next peula began. 7 out of the 9 of us girls decided to walk to the beach! It was amazing being able to go to the beach in the middle of December! I could even see Haifa across the bay! 

 

Another part of kaveret, and probably the most exciting and important, is messima. Messima is the work we will do in schools with Israeli Jews, Arabs, or both. It was a super long process of deciding the tzvatim and choosing where we want to work (there were 4 options), but after a night and a morning of discussing, we finally figured it out.  

I'm working in Haifa at a school with mostly Jews. In the afternoon, my tzevet, (which is Sara Banai, Ari Egar, Chief, and myself), will be working in the ken at Beit 

HaTzeirim. I still don't know the specifics of the messima, but I'm still super excited. Haifa is my favorite city in Israel, and I can't wait to finally be a madricha.

Soon it'll be chofesh for workshoppers, which means that we have a week or so off from programming. 

Last Few Days of Boneh

It's already Friday, which means we move to Akko on Sunday! It's very bittersweet. While I'm excited to be living in an actual house in Akko with just my kvutza, I will also miss the other kvutza a lot. It'll be weird not seeing and talking to them everyday. I think it'll be good though-- I think my kvutza's dynamics will definitely change, but I think for the better. It'll be good to just be living with each other. Either way, it'll be a pretty big change. Small, isolated kibbutz to a house in a city! 

In the meantime we have been cleaning a lot. This weekend is a closed weekend, which means we have to stay on kibbutz and clean everything. I'm just about packed, but we still have to squeegee the moadon, the bathrooms, and the kitchen. 

We all moved our mattresses into the moadon to sleep because it's the only place in our house that is heated. Everywhere else is absolutely freezing. The insulation in our house sucks and whenever I leave the moadon I have to bundle up with hat, gloves, and jacket. It's also incredibly rainy outside too. Mud has been making its way into our house no matter how hard we try to clean it up. But that's winter in Israel-- lots and lots of rain.

Yesterday we had a Boneh Sikkum tekes, in which many people on workshop gave speeches, sang songs, and spoke about their experience on Boneh. Ariyeh, the 92 year old man who lives on Ein Dor and has been a guest speaker for us before was present, along with Chava, the woman who coordinated with Habonim Dror to allow us to live on this kibbutz. 

Last night after the tekes our kvutza watched The Incredibles and had popcorn, and we each got bowls of ice cream, warm homemade brownies, and half a bar of chocolate! Thanks to Aliyah and Micah for making it for us! 

The next time I'll blog will be from a

Akko, so look forward to a new post in the next few days!

Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Birthday, and Habo History Hagshama Seminar

Thursday, November 28th might have been Thanksgiving in America, but Workshop 63 decided to celebrate it the following day, Friday the 29th. And even though we might have a strict food budget, we still had plenty of delicious food to go around. Two nights before, Aliyah, Sara Banai, Hannah Blass-Martens, and I all made the dessert for Thanksgiving! We made snickerdoodle cookies, pumpkin pie, and peach pie. Aliyah made the pie crust from scratch, while Sara made the fillings. Hannah helped make the cookies, and I just sort of helped out with all 3 jobs when they needed help. On Friday morning, a few of the Miriam workshoppers woke up super early to cook the turkeys, make the sweet potato latkes, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.

We all dressed up into nice outfits that night since it was Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, AND Shabbat! After writing what we were thankful for, reciting the blessings over the candles, the kiddush, and the blessings for Hanukkah, we began eating! We all left dinner feeling very satisfied and full. It was so nice being able to spend Thanksgiving with workshop, however, I'm sure many of us missed spending it back at home with our families.

Hanukkah didn't just fall on the one day of Thanksgiving though, we celebrated it all 8 days! Every night we all met in the Stones kvutza moadon, lit the candles, and all sang together.

My birthday also fell on the 7th night of Hanukkah! When it turned 12:00 AM, we were in the middle of an asepha (meeting) and my friend Aliyah ran across the circle and tackled me to the ground saying "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" After the asepha, everyone in my kvutza sang "Jump down, turn around" and then lifted me up on a chair 19 times. I then went to bed since it had been a very, very exhausting and long day. At night my kvutza surprised me with a chocolate peanut butter cake. And when I say surprise I really mean surprise. I was in the bathroom and when I came out, everyone in my kvutza was yelling at each other. I thought it was just a joke, but then one member of my kvutza got really mad and demanded that we all meet into the moadon to have another asepha on respect. Both of our gizabarim (the people that handle our kupa money) came in and told us that someone had taken 400 shkalim out of their wallets and that whoever did needed to confess. When no one said anything, Aliyah shut off the lights, and brought in the cake with candles in it! It was an awesome birthday, and I'm so happy I was able to spend it with my kvutza.

This past week we had HHH Seminar (Habo History Hagshama). Everyday we left kibbutz and traveled somewhere new. Most of these trips were to kibbutzim around the north of Israel to listen to guest speakers and learn about their take on the decline of the kibbutz movement, along with just learning about their respective kibbutzim. On Sunday, December 1st, we traveled to Hatzer Kinneret, along with the cemetary where some famous Zionist thinkers were buried. We went to these 2 spots on MBI, but it was still interesting seeing and learning about them for a second time. The next day, we went to Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi, a kibbutz founded by Habo UK. We heard a guest speaker, Ariyeh, and then traveled to 2 more kibbutzim, Amiad and Yisrael. Fun fact: Amiad was founded by our our madrich's (Nir's) grandparents. Also, Yisrael was founded by Habo South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders. On Tuesday, we went to Jerusalem (Specifically Mt. Herzl) and listened to a representative from the World Zionist Organization talk to us about Hanukkah. Not going to lie, I was incredibly bored. It was pretty redundant, and most people couldn't stay focused. We then went to Kibbutz Mishol, an urban kibbutz in Nazareth Illit. We listened to Anton, a former member of Habo UK, speak with us about the kibbutz and his view on the kibbutz movement. On Wednesday, we went to kibbutz Eshbal, a kibbutz founded by HaNoar HaOved V'HaLomed. Thursday was one of my favorite days though, because we got to go to Haifa, one of my favorite cities. We first went to an HDNA panel, and listened to Ruth Stevens, Gil Browdy, and Tamar Levi speak to us about their involvement in the movement. We then split into 2 groups and went to either the 56 bayit, or Tamar's house to hear Amit and Crook's kvutza speak to us. I was in the group who went to the 56 house, which was unbelievably nice. A few representatives from their kvutza spoke to us about the Garin Aliyah process. We then had a hummus and pita lunch along with some fresh vegetables. Afterwards, both groups all met back together and we had a short peulah with our kvutzot to end the seminar. It was an incredibly long and tiring week, filled with a lot of guest speakers and not enough sleep. However, it was such an interesting seminar and I do feel that I learned a lot about the kibbutz movement and more about Habonim Dror's involvement in it.

This week we are on Boneh Sikkum Seminar, which means we get to cook our own dinner! I made dinner on Monday night with Hannah W, Sarah K, Aliyah, Jess, Chief, Micah, and Michael. We made brinner (breakfast for dinner), which consisted of chocolate chip and banana pancakes, broccoli and cheese frittata, and fruit salad! We also made a giant pancake for just those who helped make dinner. It was so good, and I basically filled up on the pancake before people even got there. 

Soon we will move to Akko, but before we do, we have to clean EVERYTHING. That is, our moadonot, kitot, and yard space.