the weather is amazing, even the birds are bumpin'

so not much else has happened. ive been making friends with kibbutzniks, and the other night i went out with one of them and two other ulpanists. Hofit (the kibbutznik who took us out) is really nice. i make dinners with her some nights. she took us to this waffle desert place just a town away. the waffles were soooooo good. then we went to the beach and walked in the ocean for a bit. the water was so warm. we saw haifa all lit up as well as accra? maybe? im not sure but its somewhere like that. in about a week we go to do gad'na, which is a week of army training. its more like 4 days. im excited. and a little worried, but im not gonna be the worst one, so it will be fun i hope. there is a man here who refuses to go- i think its kinda stupid, it will be a great once in a lifetime experience. but to each their own.

i really miss home. even the boring normal things, like driving on 63 on a summer day to go to the gym. and my bed. the beds here are quite small. about half of what my bed is, and i have a twin.

everyone here is really nice. its nice getting to know the people who dont speak english better now that we can sort of talk hebrew/mime to them. some of them are a little weird, but for the most part really nice.

let it fly in the breeze and get caught in the trees

so, this week has been my attempt to get in contact with family week. i called Sergio, and he was supposed to call me today if he was free to meet me and introduce me to his kids. so far no word, so I'm thinking its a no go for this shabat, but maybe another time. I also got in contact with Tuvia through a long game of phone tag. i have no voicemail, which sucks. people leave me a message and all i get is a text message with the number and a whole bunch of little boxes. anyways, im gonna try to go visit him in tel aviv sometime soon. i still have to call him and make a plan, but we'll see. i really want to see the blind museum and hang out on the beach in tel aviv. it looked so beautiful when we went last week, but they didnt let us go :(

i did meet my kibbutz family on thursday. the mother is sagit. she is really nice. she picked me up on her scooter/moterbike thing and we went to the pool to meet her family. she has 3 sons who (i think) are 16, 13, and 8 ish. she also has a daughter who is about 3, netta. i think netta is my favorite. she is cute and too young to be weirded out by the fact that some random girl is gonna be hanging out with her family. i didnt meat the eldest boy, but i met the other 3 kids and the husband. i forget his name. the 8 year old i think is names reah, and the 13 year old is uri. it was nice. sagit spent a year in annapolis so she speaks english pretty well. the kids are learning in school (netta isnt old enough yet i dont think) but they pretty much speak hebrew. i can pick out a few words of what they are saying and get the gist of it tho, which is nice. sagit said that she hates making plans ahead of time, so i am supposed to just call her when i have free time and see if she is available. its a little weird for me, but it seems like thats the way they do it in israel. people dont make plans.

yesterday we had class but the regular teacher wasnt there. we had our old teacher, sarahle. sarahle is really nice. we have tests every friday, and she gave us the test, but it was nothing like what our other teacher dina had said it would be. she told us to study the infinitive forms of 10 verbs, but the test was on all forms of the verbs (not that the different forms are so hard except for the infinitives, femenine is with an h or t, plural masc is with ימ, and plural fem is with ות so its not that bad, but some of the verbs we hadnt learned and some of them we hadnt even heard of, so i was pretty pissed. i have been trying really hard cause we have been having trouble with the classes. we were supposed to have kita alef, bet, and gimmel, but we only have kita alef and gimmel. that means that the classes are big and there are a lot of different levels in each class. a few people moved down from gimmel cause it was too hard, and there are some people in alef that are really struggling, and some people that find it a little to easy. we are trying to get another teacher for a kita bet, but israel takes a while to do anything. anyways, i am hoping that we get a kita bet class and i can go into that one. they said it wouldnt be necesarrily the next level, but more like a kita alef honors, where it just moves faster than the class im in now. so thats my goal right now.
anyways, back to the class on friday (yom sheeshee). the test took me about 20 minutes to do, but she gave us an hour, so i had a 40 minute break. then when i came back, she told us that that wasnt the test and that she found the real test, so we took that and it was shorter so she gave us 30 min, but it only took me about 10. so i had a 20 min break. then we played memory games with our neighbors, had kabalat shabat, and left. i think i was on break more than in class. it was okay cause i wasnt feeling great.

i ended up passing out while watching the office (a tv show) and turned out i was really dehidrated, and felt really awful. i had been to the pool, had some beer and no water, and just hadnt been drinking at all in the heat, which is no good, lo tov, so i got sick and felt really bad. it was a shame cause friday nights is when we can go to ultrasound, the huge club on the kibbutz. its the biggest one in northern israel. there was a special dj playing. we had a whole plan to go see a free movie on the kibbutz, then go to the pub, then go do ultrasound. but i just couldnt get out of bed. my friend brian came and took care of me. he got me nice cold water from the waterfountain in the other building, and made sure i was okay, and made me promise to drink the entire waterbottle, and then left me to fall asleep. it was very nice of him.

today i feel a lot better. im a little upset with myself cause it would have been a fun night had i just drank something. and i slept through dinner yesterday, which is where you get food for shabat, cause the dining room isnt open on shabat. so now i have to wait for dinner until i can eat something, and im hungry!

love love,
ella

it seems like everywhere i go, the more i see, the less i know. but i know one thing, that i love you

so today we went to tel aviv for an educational trip. it was pretty fun. we went to some museums, independance hall, that square where Yitzhak Rabin was killed 14 years ago, old jaffa, and a small shook. it was really fun and REALLY HOT. oh and we went paddle boating, which was kinda random.

(this was on the paddle boat)





(this is the memorial wall for Yitzhak Rabin)





this is in old jaffa

take me home country road.

so we went to the maccabiah chai games. the biggest jewish sports event in on the entire planet. that was cool. we went with masa programs so the tickets were free. and we got masa tshirts. and we sat with other ulpans. i met a few people who were really awesom. we got back really really late though, which kinda sucked.

today i climbed a mountain. not even though. it was crazy. we climbed cliffs and rocks and bushwacked. i have a fair amount of cuts and scratches. my hair was full of burs and cobwebs and all kinds of nasty nature stuff. the way down was a lot easier, but climbing down cliffs is quite scarry. i dont like heights. anyways. we left at about 3 and got back around 730 so you know it was pretty intense.

thats about it for here. love y'all!

btw, i havent put the few pics from my hike on the computer so ill post them later.

when the sun goes down

this is a picture of my roomate melissa and i on our first attempt to take the bus to nesher, the town right next door. the buses are kinda unreliable, and there are so many tour buses that look like regular buses and you have to hail down the bus, so we made complete fools of ourselves that day. but we went to go shopping and i got dr seus stories in hebrew for practice. :)

so i am very tired. i have been staying out pretty late with my friends, and then getting up pretty early to do more stuff. this picture is of my friend sarah and two israeli guys we met. we are all at the club on the kibbutz.

we went to the druz villiage today which is in the mountains above the kibbutz. it was pretty cool, but really touristy. i bought a gift for my friend emily and a good sized bag for me. there arent any taxis there we had to call one and there was lots of confusions with it, so we ended up waiting for about 2 hours for a taxi to go back to yagur, which was no fun at all.(this is sarah, ari, and alexis) but we had a great lunch there- falafel with veggies and yummy stuff. mom and dad you would be so proud of me. my pickyness is too much effort to try to explain with the hebrew, so i have given up. im eating all kinds of veggies, even tomatoes if i must.

not much else has happened. we went out to dinner last night at a bar in haifa. we tried to order so much food and the waitress basically ended up telling us what to get. it was mad good tho. after a pb&j sandwhich, some cheese and some cucumbers (which i have almost every night), it was a great meal.

everybody all around the world, gonna tell you what i just heard: there's gonna be a party all over the world

so not much happens here. wednesdays and fridays i think will be my favorite days. that is because on wednesday, i have class and then i get my laundry back (!!!!) and i dont have to work. on fridays it is a short class day, and i have the oppertunity to go to away for the weekend, meaning friday afternoon and saturday. i havent done it yet, but im working on it.

on tuesdays, we played these team building games. we had to get everyone from on side of an ' electric fence' (really some string) to the other without touching the string. then we had to get everyone from one side of the hot lava (sand) to the other on 3 milk crates. then we had to get everyone on 6 milk crates, and they slowlu took milk crates away. the entire ulpan was split into 3 teams, and my team stayed on the fewest milk crates (4). there were about 16 grown people on 4 milk crates. it was crazy. after that we played volleyball. it was pretty fun.

mom, you would hate the sleep schedule here. israelis are crazy. i have work from 8-11:45/12:00, then i shower, then i have lunch, then either nap or do nothing or go on the computer or whatever, then make dinner at 630, eat at 7, clean up till 8, then the pub or whatever opens at 9. the club doesnt open until about 1am! i havent gotten there yet, but i wanna go this weekend. but israelis go out at like early morning. i still havent figured out what they do before that, and how they get up so early the next day. i dont understand. but my sleep schedule is all screwed up.

i went to lev hamifratz, the mall. we saw My Life In Ruins. it wasnt that great a movie, but it was cool cause it had hebrew subtitles and i tried to pick out works i knew. i got a few, but it was hard.

i miss the pub food. im not gonna lie. maybe bueno, but mostly the pub.

love אלה

pay attention my friends cause class is in session

we finished the alef bet in class today. we started practicing reading with and without vowels. i am proud to say that i am picking it up pretty easily. i mean, i cant really remember the random words people keep telling me when i talk to them around the kibbutz, but i can sound out the words (now that i know how to read script). the teacher gave us a paper with words that are similar to the ones in english for us to sound out and it was really easy for me. there were also some cities in israel that i didnt know that had no vowels for us to try, and i was able to read them and get most of the vowels correctly. needless to say, i'm in a good mood right now. i am not lost in the class at all or anything. so thats good. i am also picking up some russian, because there are a lot of people from russia here. its cool. the only shame is it is kind of hard to get off the kibbutz sometimes. i mean, we can, but every other day i have to work in the evening helping to prepare dinner, so i dont have enough time to go anywhere, and on the days i have class, we dont end until 3 so there isnt much time either. and we only have shabat off, but nothing is open and the busses and trains dont run so much, and i havent even figured out the bus and train situation, so i dont get off the kibbutz much. hopefully, that will change soon enough.

i am making lots of friends here. almost everyone is really cool. there are a few people i dont like, but i'll survive. our first trip is comming up. we are going to tel aviv on the 20th for a day trip. i'm excited.

i have a 'kibbutz family' here. that means i can go have dinner with them, and hang out with them sometimes. its to help me learn hebrew quicker and just have another place to go. my kibbutz mother is named sagit (i dont know if that is how to spell it). unfortunately, her life is kind of crazy i think because she keeps saying she will call me, but she doesnt. and i cant call her because i dont have her number. i'm gonna try to figure this out, but i am a little dissapointed she hasnt called me yet.

im having lots of fun here. the pool i wonderful, and my friend raf and i have started swimming laps for excercize. its nice.
(me and some friends at a music festival on the beach)