It's raining here right now. It rained some last night too. This is a very big deal around here. Even though it doesn't look like a desert where I live, it's still really really dry. The entire state of Israel has serious water shortage problems. The only naturally fresh water is a few some rivers, which are more like streams, and the sea of galilee, all of which are drying up. So, great! It's raining!
We had that barbecue last week that I mentioned in the last post. It was a lot of fun. There was the usual big fire, a grill, food, but then we also has some planned activities/entertainment. (I think that this whole event was planned to be most entertaining for the staff.) All the boys were given a girl that they either don't always get along with or don't know very well and vise-versa for the girls. We were told to prepare something to read to them in front of everyone. Something about them, something nice, whatever you wanted really. Some people's were letters, some poems, some song lyrics, a rap, an original song. Some were funny, some were serious. So then we also had little group performances. The Brazilian boys, plus one American guy, sang Brazilian songs. A group of boys did a dance and a group of girls did a dance. The dances were very funny. I posted some videos I took on youtube: Ulpan BBQ Videos
But the most impressive thing, I thought, was that everyone took it seriously. Everyone played along, wrote something or sang and danced. No one was too cool to just be a little goofy and have fun. It was nice.
(I don't have any pictures without people in them to post with this)
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Learning and Doing New Things
Just as I am saying there that new things aren't happening here...I try something new.
Last night we had a barbecue (different post about that) so at work in the morning we had to prepare the food for later. I was told we would have to "clean up" the chicken wings. I assumed that meant cut off the pieces of extra fat or little extra pieces, rinse them off a little. Oh no! "Clean up" the chicken means pull out all the extra feathers that still in the skin. You only need to worry about the big ones, the ones that look like feathers. The little ones are alright to leave, because they will just burn off in the fire. It's a pretty tedious job when you are making wings for 40 people. Needless to say, plucking feathers out of chicken wings was an exciting new experience for me.
Last night we had a barbecue (different post about that) so at work in the morning we had to prepare the food for later. I was told we would have to "clean up" the chicken wings. I assumed that meant cut off the pieces of extra fat or little extra pieces, rinse them off a little. Oh no! "Clean up" the chicken means pull out all the extra feathers that still in the skin. You only need to worry about the big ones, the ones that look like feathers. The little ones are alright to leave, because they will just burn off in the fire. It's a pretty tedious job when you are making wings for 40 people. Needless to say, plucking feathers out of chicken wings was an exciting new experience for me.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
I feel like I am neglecting the blog but I don't have a lot to report lately. We are pretty much set into our schedule of work and school. Hang out after that. Eat dinner. Hang out. Sleep. But it's great. I love it. I don't that I would be able to maintain this lifestyle forever but for right now...it's amazing. No pressure, no stress, no hurrying. It's slow and uneventful, but it's light and easy.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
I'm having company!
It's been a while, but there's not too much to update you on. It's mostly been business as usual. We went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, on Monday. Of course the content of the museum is amazing and disturbing but the actual, physical museum building itself is very interesting. There's a lot of symbolism in the architecture of the building, the location, the way you are forced to walk through the museum. There was a lot of thought put into and you can feel it. In other museums you passively see and read about what happened to other people some time in history. Here, it's more of an experience. You learn the facts about what happened but you also feel a little bit of the weight of it all as well.
On a much lighter note, and more exciting at the moment, Evan (my brother) is coming to Israel on Birthright in January! I'm really excited, for him and for myself. It will be really nice to see family, especially in January, 4-5 months after I left the US. Since I was on my trip last year I have been looking forward to him coming here. I had an great time and I kept thinking to myself "This is awesome! Evan would really like this!" It will be cool that he's here while I am too. I would love to be able to show him where I am living a little because it's hard to explain exactly what its like on a kibbutz. (Speaking of, my friend here has a blog also and he took some pics/videos of the kibbutz in general, like off the ulpan, if you are interested: http://jakesexcursion.blogspot.com/2010/10/kibbutz-life.html .) Even if he cant come here, I'll definitely meet up with his group somewhere along the way. It kind of feels like I am having company!
On a much lighter note, and more exciting at the moment, Evan (my brother) is coming to Israel on Birthright in January! I'm really excited, for him and for myself. It will be really nice to see family, especially in January, 4-5 months after I left the US. Since I was on my trip last year I have been looking forward to him coming here. I had an great time and I kept thinking to myself "This is awesome! Evan would really like this!" It will be cool that he's here while I am too. I would love to be able to show him where I am living a little because it's hard to explain exactly what its like on a kibbutz. (Speaking of, my friend here has a blog also and he took some pics/videos of the kibbutz in general, like off the ulpan, if you are interested: http://jakesexcursion.blogspot.com/2010/10/kibbutz-life.html .) Even if he cant come here, I'll definitely meet up with his group somewhere along the way. It kind of feels like I am having company!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Starting Hebrew
We are finally getting into the routine of school and work. Before now we have only had a few Hebrew classes and there's a few things that are interesting but pretty confusing for an English speaker learning Hebrew:
- Writing...in script the letter mem looks like a capital N but it makes an "em" sound. And you write it backwards. So instead of going from bottom left to top right, you go from top right to bottom left...try it, you have to concentrate on it. You write everything backwards actually. To make an "O" shape goes around clockwise, instead of counter-clockwise and to make a lamed you start at the bottom of the letter and go up, not down. It makes sense that they make the letters this way because you read and write right to left but it's very hard to force your hand to do that after making the shapes left to right for 20 years.
- He in hebrew = she in english.
- There are no vowels a lot of times. We learn with the vowels so we know how to pronounce the words but on worksheets they are often left off. (In normal contexts, books, newspapers, signs, there are no vowels so we need to learn to read without them anyway.) Bt prtnd y d nt knw nglsh nd try t rd wtht vwls...hrd!
- All words having a gender. That effects how you conjugate verbs or adjectives...It seems like a lot of other languages do this, but in English we don't really. We can say I/they(referring to men or women or both)/you (singular or plural for men or women) go to the store. In Hebrew you would need a different version of go for all of those different subjects, for each tense, plus the infinitive, which is a concept we don't have at all. And in English a pencil is just a pencil, gender neutral because it is clearly not a man or women or related to either. In Hebrew, a pencil is feminine versus a notebook that's masculine.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Kibbutznik Life
A lot of people have been asking about how the Kibbutz works and what it's like to really live here so I did some research. This is what I've put together from talking to some people (so don't quote me)...
Theoretically a kibbutz is community where people live a communal lifestyle and work for the good of the group. Originally most kibbutzim were based on agriculture but now most have other industries as well. They also used to be completely socialist but now they are mostly privatized.
If you are born on a kibbutz today, you would stay with your parents most of the time until you were about four. It seems that there is day care for kids under four but I am not sure how much time they spend there. So then once you enter kindergarten, you are there all day, like 7am to 4 pm or so. But then you go home to your family, not like in the old days where you stayed there and slept there. So, you grow up keep going to school. There's no high school here...I don't know where the high school kids go to school actually. So this whole time you live with your parents until you are 17. Then you live with other 17 year olds. When you are 18 or are done with high school you go to the army, but you still have a place here with kids your age. Then you can live here and work if you want but you are not a member of the kibbutz. In that situation you get a place to live (which includes all utilities) and get a certain amount of money per month (about 2500 NIS = $690). The amount you get paid is not at all based on your job, just your age and your situation, i.e. married/single, kids, etc. The only thing you pay for is food. You either buy your own or eat at the dining room and they charge you but very little (like a lunch is maybe 15 NIS = $3.75). Its definitely possible then to save a fair amount of money. So after the army you can do whatever you want, school, work, bum around, live somewhere else. At age 29 you have to decide if you want to become a member or not. (I don't know how you become a member if you weren't born here and don't marry in, but it is possible.) If you stay, you get a job and a house here if not then, you leave and your parents live here. Your house size is based on how long you have been a member of the kibbutz. (I don't 100% understand that because then the old people have the biggest houses, instead of the families). Jobs, houses, laundry, sports facilities, are all open to everyone.
The industries here are the plastic factory Palram, agriculture (avacados, grapefruit, lychee, there's more stuff but i don't remember), dairy products (yogurt, labeneh, cheeses). Then you can also work in the places that just keep the kibbutz running--schools, dining room, laundry, store, bank, etc. You can work outside the kibbutz but you have to give them a certain portion of what you make. I have no idea how it is all organized or who oversees what's happening but everything seems to run pretty smoothly. If you live on a kibbutz, you will work but you will always be taken care of no matter what happens to you. If you need medical care or something else similar and expensive that you can't afford out of pocket, it will be taken care of (somehow--not sure how that works). It sounds like its possible too to get stuff like braces for your kids or money towards a family vacation. You will never be rich here but you will be really safe and secure. Apparently even if something happens to the kibbutz (like it gets bombed and blown off the map or goes bankrupt or who knows what) there is something in place so that the members are given enough money to restart their lives on their own.
I am sure there is a lot more to it but I think that's enough for now. If you have more questions ask me, I'll ask them. Its pretty amazing though how well it works (but maybe I have been raised in the US to always be skeptical of anything communistic). Its a pretty slow and uneventful life but that's exactly what some people are looking for, especially when you are raising a family or getting older. If you don't mind that, and seeing the same people all the time (which again some people like), it's a pretty good deal.
Theoretically a kibbutz is community where people live a communal lifestyle and work for the good of the group. Originally most kibbutzim were based on agriculture but now most have other industries as well. They also used to be completely socialist but now they are mostly privatized.
If you are born on a kibbutz today, you would stay with your parents most of the time until you were about four. It seems that there is day care for kids under four but I am not sure how much time they spend there. So then once you enter kindergarten, you are there all day, like 7am to 4 pm or so. But then you go home to your family, not like in the old days where you stayed there and slept there. So, you grow up keep going to school. There's no high school here...I don't know where the high school kids go to school actually. So this whole time you live with your parents until you are 17. Then you live with other 17 year olds. When you are 18 or are done with high school you go to the army, but you still have a place here with kids your age. Then you can live here and work if you want but you are not a member of the kibbutz. In that situation you get a place to live (which includes all utilities) and get a certain amount of money per month (about 2500 NIS = $690). The amount you get paid is not at all based on your job, just your age and your situation, i.e. married/single, kids, etc. The only thing you pay for is food. You either buy your own or eat at the dining room and they charge you but very little (like a lunch is maybe 15 NIS = $3.75). Its definitely possible then to save a fair amount of money. So after the army you can do whatever you want, school, work, bum around, live somewhere else. At age 29 you have to decide if you want to become a member or not. (I don't know how you become a member if you weren't born here and don't marry in, but it is possible.) If you stay, you get a job and a house here if not then, you leave and your parents live here. Your house size is based on how long you have been a member of the kibbutz. (I don't 100% understand that because then the old people have the biggest houses, instead of the families). Jobs, houses, laundry, sports facilities, are all open to everyone.
The industries here are the plastic factory Palram, agriculture (avacados, grapefruit, lychee, there's more stuff but i don't remember), dairy products (yogurt, labeneh, cheeses). Then you can also work in the places that just keep the kibbutz running--schools, dining room, laundry, store, bank, etc. You can work outside the kibbutz but you have to give them a certain portion of what you make. I have no idea how it is all organized or who oversees what's happening but everything seems to run pretty smoothly. If you live on a kibbutz, you will work but you will always be taken care of no matter what happens to you. If you need medical care or something else similar and expensive that you can't afford out of pocket, it will be taken care of (somehow--not sure how that works). It sounds like its possible too to get stuff like braces for your kids or money towards a family vacation. You will never be rich here but you will be really safe and secure. Apparently even if something happens to the kibbutz (like it gets bombed and blown off the map or goes bankrupt or who knows what) there is something in place so that the members are given enough money to restart their lives on their own.
I am sure there is a lot more to it but I think that's enough for now. If you have more questions ask me, I'll ask them. Its pretty amazing though how well it works (but maybe I have been raised in the US to always be skeptical of anything communistic). Its a pretty slow and uneventful life but that's exactly what some people are looking for, especially when you are raising a family or getting older. If you don't mind that, and seeing the same people all the time (which again some people like), it's a pretty good deal.
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