Its been a while.

 

Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted. There was nothing really exciting happening and then we were in the North for a couple days but now I’m back at Tzuba. This will probably be my second to last post here. I can hopefully get another one in before I leave in a couple days. It went by fast and its weird to think its coming to an end.

 

Exams are done and now I’m on summer break (kind of). My last exam was Thursday and then we went to the North on Friday. The tiyul to the North is called the security tiyul. We learn about the borders with Lebanon and Syria, the Yom Kippur War, both Lebanon Wars, and the general area. It was a lot of fun and really interesting. It was also fun to go places and learn without being the in the school setting. We joked about pulling out our notebooks and taking notes. In addition we did a lot of outdoors stuff. We swam in the Knerret, kayaked in the Jordan, and went on a walk to this waterfall thing. The waterfall was so pretty and so much fun. We walked in this field till we got this trench thing and then we walked through it and came out at this pool. Then behind that pool there was another pool with a huge waterfall. It was gorgeous. We all chilled and lay in the sun and swam. The water in the Knerret was perfect. IT was warm and clear and just a lot of fun. The kayaking was fun too. I was in a boat with a bunch of my friends and we splashed around and jumped on other people’s boats.

 

Learning about the borders was really cool. We first went to the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed after gaining in the 6-day war. I don’t want to get political but the Golan is a disputed territory between Syria and Israel. Both claim it. Luckily the border has been the quietest border since the Yom Kippur war even though there is no peace treaty with Syria. David, my teacher, was on border patrol there when he did his army reserve service there last year. He said it was pretty boring which is good. The Golan is really strategic because it’s elevated and has good land and over looks a lot of Israel and Syria. The views from the hills are really pretty. The North isn’t as green and pretty as it was during Pesach a couple weeks ago. It stopped raining and everything dried up like it does every summer. I still liked it though. It was hotter which was good and the nights weren’t as cold.

 

The Lebanon border unfortunately hasn’t been as quite as the Syrian border. There was the first Lebanon War in 1982 and the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Lebanon is a very unstable country. There have been civil wars, political assassinations, and power vacuums. Fattah came to power. Hezbollah has come to power. The Christians were kicked out of power. No one supports dictators but at least with a dictator, like with Syria and Egypt, there is stability. Not even Syria recognizes a government in Lebanon. Anyways, we learned about that border. We went to a border military base thing. There was an American there named Phil who was in charge on the base and he took us around. One really funny part was we walked to a wall, he picked up a rock and tossed it over and said with his thick Southern draw, “Lebanon.” We all kind of chuckled. But we saw the fences and the tanks and learned about the soldiers. All the soldiers were Druze and spoke Arabic and Hebrew. We went into a bunker and it was just really cool.

 

One really interesting thing we did was meet with Arab Israelis our age in the North. Arabs not in the West Bank have the same rights as Jewish Israelis but still identify with their Arab Muslim heritage before their Israeli citizenship. In the Middle East citizenship does not always equal nationality. It might be a hard concept but there are many ethnicities in the Middle East living in arbitrary borders. Back to meeting with the Arabs. They spoke Arabic, Hebrew, and a little English. Some spoke more than others. At first everyone was a little nervous because we didn’t know what to expect. But we had topic to talk about like where we live, sports, our friends, and things like that. They are normal kids living in another culture. They usually had bigger families and had different relationships with the opposite sex. It was really interesting. The most interesting question was about how they felt during the war. During the second Lebanon War there was a lot of rocket fire in the North and rocket fire is in very random. They fall on Arab villages as often as kibbutzim or anything else. They were all scared and didn’t really talk about being the minority or anything. Arab Israelis is a really sticky situation and people have been trying to solve the issues for a couple generations now. These kids were really nice and interesting though and I’m really happy we met even though it was a little awkward at first.

 

Later that day we met with a Druze man to learn about the Druze. The Druze is another ethnic group in the Middle East. They broke off from Islam in the 12 century (I think) and started their own religion. People have 73 lives but can only remember their previous life.  The religion is very close and people can’t convert or marry into the religion. If someone married another religion they lose their Druze identity. People can choose to become religious at age 15 and then they continue to learn about the religion. I hope to learn more about them because they were really interesting. The guy who talked to us was not religious but talked about his previous life. He used to be a Druze in Lebanon and when he saw the house he started crying and I think a lot of us didn’t know how to react to that. Some us were like “What the Hell?” and some were like “That’s amazing!”  The best part though was the food. The entire tiyul we were eating gross hostel schnitzel and we got sick of it real fast. The Druze brought out huge trays of food with laffa, chummus, lentils, beans, and it was amazing. I ate so much and it was one of the best meals I’ve had in Israel.  It was up there with Abu Gosh and Pesach.

 

Now were back at Tzuba. There's a really strange feeling here. We’re all dreading going home but trying to enjoy our last couple days with each other. We had a program the other night about our time here and just about every one was crying by the end of it. They also told us to start packing. The pool opened today and hopefully I’ll go soon. I also bought a really breezy Israeli white shirt and it’s awesome. I’m planning on weaning it today for Shavuot. A couple people volunteered to do a dance in front of the entire kibbutz and I’m going to do that. Then at 4 AM tonight/tomorrow morning were going to the Kotel for a big ceremony. I’m really excited. And lastly I got this really awesome poster of Ben-Gurion and Einstein chilling on a bench together with their crazy white hair and their infinite knowledge. Einstein is saying something like, “I came up with relativity and am considered the smartest person of all time.” Ben-Gurion responds by saying, “I founded the first independent Jewish state in over 2000 years and can speak 10 languages.” I can go on and on about how amazing each of them is.  

 

That’s it for now. I really want to go to the pool and I hope I can post again before I go back to Texas. And this is Reuven’s blog. I mentioned Reuven before but basically he is the smartest person whenever he walks into a room and made aliyah almost 40 years ago and never went back to American to visit or anything. He teaches here and everyone loves him.

http://malbisharumim.blogspot.com/

 

Joey

Quick Post

Hey! 

Yesterday was log b'omer which means everyone in the country lights bonfires. My class was having dinner in a park in Jerusalem with our teacher. It was a lot of fun and his band played. David's band is a cover band of Crosby, Stills and Nash. They were really good and I kind of freaked out when David first started singing. I like jumped and starting screaming because I was so excited. And then he had a solo and we all were freaking out. It was amazing.

One funny story of the night: Me and my friend, Molly, were standing by one of the fires with our other friend Emma. Then a little orthodox boy walks up to Emma and ask her to cook his hot dog for him. So Emma being a nice person gets closer to the fire and tries to roast this hot dog on a stick but the fire is really hot and she can't do it. She has to cover her face to protect herself and me and Molly are just cracking up. Then Emma asks the kid, Raphi, if its cooked and he goes, "Nope. Needs more." So Emma goes back and cooks it more and Raphi is showing no emotion and me and Molly are cracking up. Emma is trying to get it caught on fire to cook it but can't get close enough to the fire. Finally its done roasting and Raphi takes the hot dog. We were all laughing about it in a second. On top of it, Emma is a vegetarian. It was really funny. 

The kibbutz still smells like smoke from log b'omer. I have an AP tomorrow. English. Thats it. 

Bye!

Joey

Hey

Hey Everyone!

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting while still being at Tzuba. Sorry about that.  Stuff is starting to wind down a little bit but a lot has still happened. AP tests are starting and finals are soon so we can't have any more tiyulim.  

Yom Hazikaron started Tuesday night and ended Wednesday night. Yom Hazikaron in Israel has a different meaning than Memorial Day in America. Israel is constantly at war and everyone goes into the army so every family has some connection to someone who died in the army. Tzuba has two boys who died in the different wars. We went to the Tzuba tekes at the kibbutz cemetery. It was all in Hebrew and I didn't understand anything but I'm still very happy we all went. Tuesday night we went to the state tekes at the Kotel. We weren't guests of honor or anything. Everyone in the country can go. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, and Gabbi Ashkenazi, the head of the military, spoke. My madrichah, Jomi, was translating. She did an alright job but we were all able to get the meaning of the speech. I also wasn't really able to see anyone speaking. It was really crowded and I was only able to see from people holding their cameras up and then looking into the cameras. But Yom Hazikaron was a very interesting day and I'm glad I was in Israel for it.

As soon as Yom Hazikaron ends Yom Haatzmuot starts. Its a very sudden transition but Yom Haatzmuot was a lot of fun. We were with another American high school for a bbq. It was an EIE vs. Alexander Mosk type deal where we played a bunch of sports. I played basketball and it was a ton of fun. I hadn't played basketball in a while and the kids on EIE aren't that bad. Only a couple people play basketball for their school and I used to play in middle school and for a bunch of teams. We won. We came back in the last couple minutes. It was a lot of fun. Then we also played soccer and volleyball against them. The best part of the whole outing was getting to grill. About 10 of us were grilling the whole time and we made so much food. We made hamburgers, chicken, and steak. There was enough food for two EIEs and afterwards we all got to take the leftovers back to our rooms. Shai, one of our madrichim, has a panini grill so we got some pita and anything we could find and took the leftover meat and made paninis in our roon. They were so good!  We only eat kibbutz food and fast food falafel so eating fresh cooked food was amazing.

The SATs were alright. We went into Jerusalem to take them Not much to say about them. I hope I did good. In Israel after high school everyone goes straight to the army and then takes time off and then goes to college in their late twenties. It has its advantages and disadvantages. When people are older they know what they want to do and know more about themselves. Most kids in America have no clue what they want to study when they are 18. So by going into the army and then working or traveling, Israelis are more mature when they start college But in high school they don't work as hard because college is so far off. Its different but to me it makes more sense. 

School is starting to get harder. Finals, APs, and no more tiyulim. It kind of sucks. This week we had a 5 day week and people were freaking out. We haven't had a 5 day week since the second week of school and school here is killer. 8 3o to 1 15 in the morning. then 2 10 to 6. Thats about 9 hours of real school. No journalism or art or fake classes. They are all legit classes and 5 days of school is pretty hard here. I know it sounds kind of weird because back home, its 5 days every week but its true here. 5 days is hard. I'm only taking 2 APs so thats not too bad. I have a slanted view on what is a lot of APs because at TAG I saw sophomores taking 4 APs, juniors taking 8, and seniors taking 7. Not everyone but a lot of kids. So only two APs really isn't that much and when people complain about 2 its a little weird to me. 

We started the modern period in Jewish history, which means the State of Israel. There a lot to learn and I'm happy that I'm getting a class on it and can piece together all the knowledge I've accumulated about Israel.  We got our review sheet for the final and there was so much information! So much more than an AP class. Its cool to think that we've learned that much though. 

Were going to Tel Aviv in a couple hours. I am really excited because we haven't really spent very much time in Tel Aviv. Only tiyulim. Tel Aviv is a really cool, modern city. It should be a lot of fun.

Thats about all. I come home in about three weeks which sucks a lot but the summer is going to be a lot of fun. Got to stay positive. I got to go but hopefully I'll get to post soon. Bye!

Joey