For some reason last Tuesday night I had a horrible time sleeping, so I woke up at about 5am and went out to the beach: it was beautiful. Even though the sun rises over the mountains to the east of the kibbutz, the moon was on a certain cycle where it sets in the west over the sea. It was beautiful. The funny thing was that as I was taking these pictures I tripped over a giant rock hidden by the darkness and fell flat on my face.
This picture was worth the pain and self humiliation.
I spent the next hour and a half laying on top of some huts on the beach and watched as the sun illuminated the kibbutz and the moon disappeared over the horizon in the sunlight. It was inspiring.
Nothing particularly interesting happened the rest of the week at the kibbutz until Friday night-- the night of the Kibbutz adult Purim Party. It was crazy, and held at a redecorated hedar ochel dining hall. While the consensus among most of the ulpanists was that the party was in likeness to a high school dance. The thing is that I guess it was sort of like a high school dance, if your high school served super cheep alcohol drinks, great food, and didn't lock you inside the pool lobby for the duration of the dance. OK maybe the last statement was just a Hawken thing. I do have to say I had a blast. For the party I went as a French painter. My costume was equipped with a pallet, paintbrush, frenh baret, and a button down painting shirt with paint of a assortment of colors covering it.
After the party ended at about 3:30 AM! I wondered over to the pub right outside my room. They had an alternative party going on equipped with trance music instead of regular pop party music. The party was pretty dead, but luckily I spotted my new friend Pavel, the Russian who lived in Germany for 10 years and speaks perfect English. He introduced me to his new friend Sonia, a neo-conservative Russian American olah hadesha. After about an hour of speaking about politics, we decided to go to the roof of the then abandoned, the chedar ochel. We stayed there until about 5 AM. Then I went to bed.
Saturday was filled with some catching up on sleep and lounging on the beach.
The last thing the I want to tell you, my readers, is about my evening tonight. Every Wednesday and Sunday evening at 4:30PM the kibbutz has a pre-army training workout program. It's meant for the kibbutznics and olim hadashim planning on entering the army, but they don't actually check and my faked interest in joining the army (not in a million years)was enough to get an invite to the training. I didn't finish class until about 5 PM so me and the rest of my classmates got to the training about 45 minutes late. Nonetheless, the training was fun and hard. It included running down the beach from circuit to circuit. In between circuits of crawling, sprinting, running up a sand dune, and just plain running we had to jump into the salty Mediterranean. The first time I made the mistake of opening my mouth a little, and I felt the salt in my mouth all the way until the first, and only water break. We also had to wade in a fishpond empty of fish for about 10 minutes, its a test in the army tryouts. While it made most people cramp and freezing. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It reminded me a bit of cold rink before, during, and after run through. It was a bit easier just because the air was relatively warm compared to the ice cold, dry or super damp, lung puncturing air inside the ice rink. Overall, I finished tied for 3rd among the 25 or so ulpanist that did the training. Not too bad for my first time doing the training. When I finished the training I was soaked, covered in sand, and smelled like sweat and fish poop; I felt amazing.
Before I go, I forgot to mention that Katie Scott, my history teach in 10 and 12 grade asked me to skype her Middle Eastern Studies class and talk about the kibbutz and current politics in Israel. While I know a lot about the the history of the kibbutz, I know close to nothing about Israeli politics, it seems so much more complicated than American politics, or at least to an outsider. I better go and educate myself about this stuff. Until next time.
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