so another regular week where nothing happened. our teacher was on vacation, so we had 3 subs. two of them were our old teachers from kita bet whom we all love and miss, and the other was a great teacher from kita gimmel. so it was a nice vacation for all of us. yesterday i think it was (all the days sort of mesh together) sergio (grandma rose's cousin i think?) came to meet me on the kibbutz. it was a quick visit, but it was nice to meet him and he told me how to take the bus to his house, so thats good. and i have a plan to hang out with marsha on wednesday, and she said she was going to take me to the mall somewhere where i havent been. so thats cool. last night my friend sarah's friend michael fedder (from noho and went to umass) came to visit and we showed him around the kibbutz. we took him to the heder ochel for dinner, to the pub, and to the night club ultrasound. it was fun. today they all went to the beach while i went to haifa with tuvia. he took me up the mountain to get a nice view of haifa, and we saw the bahai gardens (from affar we didnt go inside) and we got a late lunch by the ocean, then he drove me back to the kibbutz and i showed him pictures of the family and all that.
thats all. i love you all!!!!
bye
ps, the title is from a song that is a favorite at ultrasound, the night club we went to last night
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
i love love tel aviv!
this weekend, my friends sarah, alexis, mia and i took the train down to tel aviv after i got out of class on friday. we got there around 230 and checked into our hostel. it was a last minute trip, so they didnt have any rooms. we had to sleep on the roof. we shoved our stuff in a locker and hit the town before everything closed for shabat. i bought a pretty dress for 40 nis ( about 10$) and some presents for y'all. then we went back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. after dinner we walked around a bit, sarah's friend picked us up and took us to a really cool bar.
the bar was called the english pub, and we stayed for about an hour, but then the power went off for some reason, and i was tired and they wanted to party some more, so mia and i went back to the hostel, and sarah, alexis, and sarah's friend went to some other bars. mia and i had a long interesting conversation on the roof, we met some other people sleeping up there. everyone was really cool. then sarah and alexis came back and we hung out with them, a boy from toronto named mike, a boy from cali named ian, a kiwi named john and a spanish guy who was living in germany named andre (i think?). i liked talking to him. he lives in berlin and loves it. i talked to him for a while and told him i was going there for a few months after this. it was nice talking to them cause i realized that i knew soooo much more about this country and so much hebrew and so much more than they did. i can tell ive been here a while. and it was cool saying 'oh i live near haifa' when they ask if i knew anything about haifa. at about 3 am, alexis draged me from the hostel with a few of our new found friends, and we went swimming in the sea. it was GREAT. it was sooooo warm, and there were these planes that looked like big yellow stars from far away that kept flying in. then we went back to the hostel, showered, and fell asleep. at 7am, the lovely sun woke us up cause we were soooo hot and there were all these flies (the flies in this country are the most obnoxious flies and the most plentiful thing here. i HATE them) that were landing and crawling all over my face and legs and it was awful. so we got up and went downstairs to get some breakfast, which was just a piece of bread and butter. i fell asleep on the couch watching planet earth. at around 10, we went to get real breakfast, i got a lovely salad with egg, tomatoes, cream cheese, and other salady stuff. it was really good. after that we went to the beach. we got there at 1130 and left around 715. it was the most beautiful beach i have ever been to. the water was warm, the sand was soft. there were these jetty things, a bunch of rocks in a line in the ocean to block the waves and make them less intense. we swam out to them, and walked on them for a bit, then just floated in the ocean, and slept on the beach. we saw the sun set over the ocean. there were some pretty kites flying all day, and there were so many people were playing beach tennis type game, where they have wooden paddles and a ball and they hit it to eachother. it sounded like drums playing music. it was really pretty.
we took the 1st train home, at 9pm and hung out and went to bed early. today i had to work, which i really didnt want to do so i took a nap in the middle of cleaning.
the bar was called the english pub, and we stayed for about an hour, but then the power went off for some reason, and i was tired and they wanted to party some more, so mia and i went back to the hostel, and sarah, alexis, and sarah's friend went to some other bars. mia and i had a long interesting conversation on the roof, we met some other people sleeping up there. everyone was really cool. then sarah and alexis came back and we hung out with them, a boy from toronto named mike, a boy from cali named ian, a kiwi named john and a spanish guy who was living in germany named andre (i think?). i liked talking to him. he lives in berlin and loves it. i talked to him for a while and told him i was going there for a few months after this. it was nice talking to them cause i realized that i knew soooo much more about this country and so much hebrew and so much more than they did. i can tell ive been here a while. and it was cool saying 'oh i live near haifa' when they ask if i knew anything about haifa. at about 3 am, alexis draged me from the hostel with a few of our new found friends, and we went swimming in the sea. it was GREAT. it was sooooo warm, and there were these planes that looked like big yellow stars from far away that kept flying in. then we went back to the hostel, showered, and fell asleep. at 7am, the lovely sun woke us up cause we were soooo hot and there were all these flies (the flies in this country are the most obnoxious flies and the most plentiful thing here. i HATE them) that were landing and crawling all over my face and legs and it was awful. so we got up and went downstairs to get some breakfast, which was just a piece of bread and butter. i fell asleep on the couch watching planet earth. at around 10, we went to get real breakfast, i got a lovely salad with egg, tomatoes, cream cheese, and other salady stuff. it was really good. after that we went to the beach. we got there at 1130 and left around 715. it was the most beautiful beach i have ever been to. the water was warm, the sand was soft. there were these jetty things, a bunch of rocks in a line in the ocean to block the waves and make them less intense. we swam out to them, and walked on them for a bit, then just floated in the ocean, and slept on the beach. we saw the sun set over the ocean. there were some pretty kites flying all day, and there were so many people were playing beach tennis type game, where they have wooden paddles and a ball and they hit it to eachother. it sounded like drums playing music. it was really pretty.
we took the 1st train home, at 9pm and hung out and went to bed early. today i had to work, which i really didnt want to do so i took a nap in the middle of cleaning.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
something tells me i'm into something good
so....now that gadna is over, we get our new class, Kita alef plus....or so we thought.
we walk into the new classroom, and our teacher smiles at us. her name is batiya, and she says welcolme to kita bet. she is used to teaching kita gimmel. she wants to teach gimmel. she speaks almost entirely in hebrew and covers topics very fast. she gets annoyed when we get confused. i have only had 2 classes with her, and am already scared shitless. the entire class is silent trying to figure out what the hell is going on. tension is high, but its not so bad. we all know we will learn a lot, we just wish she would be a little more patient, cause this is the first time we are learning hebrew, and we should really be in alef...not bet. its a little frustrating, and a lot of work. already we have a test tomorrow on words we learned yesterday. there are 25 words, she will say them and we have to use them in sentences. also we have about 6 sheets for homework (shur'ait ba'it) and some pages in our workbook on directions.
i also started learning some russian. there is a couple here who are engaged, art and luda. art is from the us, and joined the peace core. he got sent to Kazakhstan where luda was his russian teacher. they had to wait until he finished to get together (its really a very romantic story, but rather irrelevant). so basically, there is a professional russian teacher here, and she decided she would give lessons to us if we wanted. two people did, a boy james and a kibbutznik named leor. i found out about it later, so i just had my first class alone and not with them. she was very impressed with what i knew, although i was very saddened by how little i knew after a whole year. shes really nice, and her handwriting is soooo pretty! so now i can practice talking to the russians in russian and hebrew!!!
anyways, we went to this concert last night in haifa on the beach. it was kinda a bust. we went to one earlier in the program (im sure i wrote a blog about it with pictures) and that one was a lot of fun. but this one wasnt that great, so we left early.
im getting more comfortable here, and making more friends with the kibbutzniks, as well as some of the lone soldiers here, and some of the russians. its good. new people with interesting lives and interesting conversations.
we walk into the new classroom, and our teacher smiles at us. her name is batiya, and she says welcolme to kita bet. she is used to teaching kita gimmel. she wants to teach gimmel. she speaks almost entirely in hebrew and covers topics very fast. she gets annoyed when we get confused. i have only had 2 classes with her, and am already scared shitless. the entire class is silent trying to figure out what the hell is going on. tension is high, but its not so bad. we all know we will learn a lot, we just wish she would be a little more patient, cause this is the first time we are learning hebrew, and we should really be in alef...not bet. its a little frustrating, and a lot of work. already we have a test tomorrow on words we learned yesterday. there are 25 words, she will say them and we have to use them in sentences. also we have about 6 sheets for homework (shur'ait ba'it) and some pages in our workbook on directions.
i also started learning some russian. there is a couple here who are engaged, art and luda. art is from the us, and joined the peace core. he got sent to Kazakhstan where luda was his russian teacher. they had to wait until he finished to get together (its really a very romantic story, but rather irrelevant). so basically, there is a professional russian teacher here, and she decided she would give lessons to us if we wanted. two people did, a boy james and a kibbutznik named leor. i found out about it later, so i just had my first class alone and not with them. she was very impressed with what i knew, although i was very saddened by how little i knew after a whole year. shes really nice, and her handwriting is soooo pretty! so now i can practice talking to the russians in russian and hebrew!!!
anyways, we went to this concert last night in haifa on the beach. it was kinda a bust. we went to one earlier in the program (im sure i wrote a blog about it with pictures) and that one was a lot of fun. but this one wasnt that great, so we left early.
im getting more comfortable here, and making more friends with the kibbutzniks, as well as some of the lone soldiers here, and some of the russians. its good. new people with interesting lives and interesting conversations.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
how do we like it? how do we like it? shtiam!! shtaim!! shtaim!!
"akshevet mefakedet!!" "ken ha mefakedet!"
this past week, from sunday to thursday, i was in the israeli army. the IDF. not really, but at a gadna. gadna was created for 17 year old israelis to spend a week seeing how the idf works. but now they also do it for tourists and ulpans and stuff. there was another ulpan there, as well as a whole bunch of little french kids, and some israeli kids.
we had to stand in a chet when our mefakedet (commander) approached us. a chet is like the letter. there were three girls on the left side, three girls on the right side, and five girls at the base of the chet. it looked like this: l__l (sorta).
we had to carry around our squeegee, cause we spent a whole lot of time cleaning ( meaning with water and toilet paper- israel is not up to date on sanitation and cleaning supplies. our mefakedet didnt know what we meant when we asked for bleach) we had to stand at akshev, which meant straight, not moving, with our feet in 1st position (heels together and toes pointing out in a v) and our hands making diamonds behind our backs. we were in one uniform the entire week, and it smelled sooooo bad by the end. we had to yell the seconds counting down while we ran. were were given 20 seconds to get here, 10 seconds to get there, and so on. when we got to one, we either had to be in 2 lines or a chet, standing in akshev and shout 'tam azman akshevet mefakedet!' if we did something wrong we did pushups. we were in the sun almost the entire time.
we were split up into two groups, boys and girls. our segel (officers) were our mefakedet (commander), samelet (one step above our commander), mem mem (one step above samelet). the boys's commander was actually a mem alef. i dont know what that means, but she got promoted and this was her last week doing gadna. we had a ceremony today and she started to cry. when we said goodbye, she gave us all a handshake and a good hard punch (somehting weird and painful that they do in the army)
the first day, we got kitchen duty.
(this is me, sarah, and alexis in the kitchen) the kitchen, in short, is unsanitary. they dont have bleach or real cleaning supplies. we took handsoap (soup as our mefakedet called it), put it in water, poured it on the floor, and squeegeed it out of the kitchen. we didnt touch the walls. the food is also nasty. the bread was moldy. they gave us chocolate milk for our cereal! the pasta was not real pasta. it was more like mush. they didnt use any salt. it was all gross food.
the second day, we did a lot of running and marching. we played a game where we layed down on the rocks and dust in the blazing sun in pairs of girls, and one person was the cat, one person was the mouse. the cat would chase the mouse and the mouse had to run and lye down next to one of the pairs of girls, and the girl on the other side had to get up and become the cat, while the original cat became the mouse. it was very confusing and very dirty. my hair was caked with dirt. i got so much dust in my lungs that now i have a shitty cough and my voice is going. they gave me cough drops which made my toung numb. it was weird.
we also had classes about the army, how to shoot an m-16, types of jobs in the army, ranks and badges, stuff like that.
on wednesday, we had a fitnes test. we had to run 4 laps (1.5 km...i dont know how far that is in miles) and do 86 sit ups and 40 pushups. lo tov. that was before the nasty breakfast. afterwards, we had an 'in the field day'. we were not allowed to say 'mefakedet' because the 'enemy' cant know who the commander is. we learned about shade and hiding, how to walk quietly, how to cover our faces in mud,
where to hide, stuff like that. i learned the indian crawl (fast and low) and the 60/6 crawl. the 60/6 crawl is really slow. its the sneaking up crawl. you go 6o meters in 6 hours. it was invented in israel so the soldeiers could sneak up on the enemy. we got to drop and crawl through rocks, dirt, barbed wire, and broken glass. it was lovely. i have some beautiful cuts and bruises. my friend sarah broke her camera. it was really really hot. we had to play a hide and seek game, and i hid under a truck. i fell asleep, and it took them a while to find me. it was great.
that day was the only day we got our mefakedet to laugh. we tried so hard. she almost did when we met her in a chet the night before (in our pjs before we cleaned before we went to bed) with our shirts tucked into our shorts, and our shorts pulled up REALLY high. we all looke rediculous. she came, looked at each of us, tried sooo hard not to laugh, and forgot to speak in english. she started giving us orders in hebrew and we had no idea what she was saying. it was great.
but the day we were in the field, we had to sneak up to the fence where the enemy was before we could 'shoot' them, so we did the 60/6 crawl, and then this big adhd redheaded russian girl lena said "echad, shtaim, shalosh" jumped up and started pretending to shoot like a crazy woman. our mefakedet just cracked up.
that day we also learned about grenades.
we had other classes on other days. we learned how to shoot an m-16, we had a lecture on other guns, we learned about the rescue of the french plane filled with israelis and jews that was sent to uganda (i kept thinking about The Last King of Scotland) and how benjamine natanyahoo's older brother was the commander and got shot but they did a great rescue opperation, and about this one guy who jumped on a granade and sacraficed himself to save his team, we talked about war and purity (my mefakedet didnt really enjoy me sharing my opinions about this) and about missing soldiers and a whole lot of stuff.
every day we got up really early, a little before 6, and had to unmake our beds and make sure the blanket that stayed on the matress was wrinkleless and all our stuff was packed up and on the space before the blanket started. we had to clean with toilet paper and water, as i said before. it was insane.
today we got up around 4 and walked to the shooting range which was at the bottom of the mountain, about 10 minutes walk from the base. we got to see the sun rise over the kaneret sea, surrounded by this beautiful Arab town on a mountain. it was beautiful there. thats was great. the view was incredible. we were surrounded by mountains with the kaneret sea in the background, and all these fig trees in groves around. there were a bunch of Arab towns around us, and at about 430 am every morning, i woke up from the uncomfortable beds to the sound of their singing to call to prayer. it was obnoxious, but pretty none the less.
anyways, we went to the shooting range and i shot 10 bullets out of an m-16. i got to keep my shells and target. i actually hit it a few times. i wasnt very good, and i didnt really like shooting. it was cool to get ready to shoot, to lie down and hold this huge gun, but i didnt like the backfire thing, and all these burning hot bullet casings from the girl next to me kept hitting me and they hurt me.
then we had to do all this stupid stuff like clean a lot with unsanitary stuff and get really frustrated. and we had shitty food and i didnt like it at all. finally, at 11 we got to take off our uniforms and talk to our mefakedet like a human being and she was so cute! shes 20 and has 2 more months at gadna before she changes jobs. she lives 4 hours away from the base, near jerusalem, and has a boyfriend who shes gonna marry when she gets out of the army. hes in the army too, and was in the airforce, but failed and is now in the tank unit. she has 3 older brothers, and her name is tamar. it was great to talk to her, and she told us how hard it was for her not to laugh at us.
we played this really intense game of capture the flag on our 'in the field day'. we were supposed to practice using our new found skills, and capture a glowstick while a whole bunch of soldiers patrolled. it was really hard, but we ended up winning. it was a lot of fun actually.
gadna was not too bad. it was sooo hot, but i learned a lot and played a lot of games and had fun.
we had to carry around this green squeegee the entire week, and couldnt forget it. we had to name it, so we named it ari, after the ulpan director. the boys had one too, and coincidentally named theirs ari as well for the same reason! it was funny. we also had to take turns carrying a gurny and a stretcher. they were heavy and we had to do everything with them.
(this is me with ari, the squeegee-אני ים ארי)
now i am back at yagur, and sooo glad to be here. i love the food which is really just bad cafeteria food, but is 1000 times better than gadna food. and i love the beds which dont have holes in them, and i love waking up at 730 not 545 or 4 or anything like that. i love having my body belong to me, and my time be my own.
my camera died on the first day, so give me some time to put pictures from this week up. i will, dont worry.
this past week, from sunday to thursday, i was in the israeli army. the IDF. not really, but at a gadna. gadna was created for 17 year old israelis to spend a week seeing how the idf works. but now they also do it for tourists and ulpans and stuff. there was another ulpan there, as well as a whole bunch of little french kids, and some israeli kids.
we had to stand in a chet when our mefakedet (commander) approached us. a chet is like the letter. there were three girls on the left side, three girls on the right side, and five girls at the base of the chet. it looked like this: l__l (sorta).
we had to carry around our squeegee, cause we spent a whole lot of time cleaning ( meaning with water and toilet paper- israel is not up to date on sanitation and cleaning supplies. our mefakedet didnt know what we meant when we asked for bleach) we had to stand at akshev, which meant straight, not moving, with our feet in 1st position (heels together and toes pointing out in a v) and our hands making diamonds behind our backs. we were in one uniform the entire week, and it smelled sooooo bad by the end. we had to yell the seconds counting down while we ran. were were given 20 seconds to get here, 10 seconds to get there, and so on. when we got to one, we either had to be in 2 lines or a chet, standing in akshev and shout 'tam azman akshevet mefakedet!' if we did something wrong we did pushups. we were in the sun almost the entire time.
we were split up into two groups, boys and girls. our segel (officers) were our mefakedet (commander), samelet (one step above our commander), mem mem (one step above samelet). the boys's commander was actually a mem alef. i dont know what that means, but she got promoted and this was her last week doing gadna. we had a ceremony today and she started to cry. when we said goodbye, she gave us all a handshake and a good hard punch (somehting weird and painful that they do in the army)
the first day, we got kitchen duty.
(this is me, sarah, and alexis in the kitchen) the kitchen, in short, is unsanitary. they dont have bleach or real cleaning supplies. we took handsoap (soup as our mefakedet called it), put it in water, poured it on the floor, and squeegeed it out of the kitchen. we didnt touch the walls. the food is also nasty. the bread was moldy. they gave us chocolate milk for our cereal! the pasta was not real pasta. it was more like mush. they didnt use any salt. it was all gross food.the second day, we did a lot of running and marching. we played a game where we layed down on the rocks and dust in the blazing sun in pairs of girls, and one person was the cat, one person was the mouse. the cat would chase the mouse and the mouse had to run and lye down next to one of the pairs of girls, and the girl on the other side had to get up and become the cat, while the original cat became the mouse. it was very confusing and very dirty. my hair was caked with dirt. i got so much dust in my lungs that now i have a shitty cough and my voice is going. they gave me cough drops which made my toung numb. it was weird.
we also had classes about the army, how to shoot an m-16, types of jobs in the army, ranks and badges, stuff like that.
on wednesday, we had a fitnes test. we had to run 4 laps (1.5 km...i dont know how far that is in miles) and do 86 sit ups and 40 pushups. lo tov. that was before the nasty breakfast. afterwards, we had an 'in the field day'. we were not allowed to say 'mefakedet' because the 'enemy' cant know who the commander is. we learned about shade and hiding, how to walk quietly, how to cover our faces in mud,
where to hide, stuff like that. i learned the indian crawl (fast and low) and the 60/6 crawl. the 60/6 crawl is really slow. its the sneaking up crawl. you go 6o meters in 6 hours. it was invented in israel so the soldeiers could sneak up on the enemy. we got to drop and crawl through rocks, dirt, barbed wire, and broken glass. it was lovely. i have some beautiful cuts and bruises. my friend sarah broke her camera. it was really really hot. we had to play a hide and seek game, and i hid under a truck. i fell asleep, and it took them a while to find me. it was great.that day was the only day we got our mefakedet to laugh. we tried so hard. she almost did when we met her in a chet the night before (in our pjs before we cleaned before we went to bed) with our shirts tucked into our shorts, and our shorts pulled up REALLY high. we all looke rediculous. she came, looked at each of us, tried sooo hard not to laugh, and forgot to speak in english. she started giving us orders in hebrew and we had no idea what she was saying. it was great.
but the day we were in the field, we had to sneak up to the fence where the enemy was before we could 'shoot' them, so we did the 60/6 crawl, and then this big adhd redheaded russian girl lena said "echad, shtaim, shalosh" jumped up and started pretending to shoot like a crazy woman. our mefakedet just cracked up.
that day we also learned about grenades.
we had other classes on other days. we learned how to shoot an m-16, we had a lecture on other guns, we learned about the rescue of the french plane filled with israelis and jews that was sent to uganda (i kept thinking about The Last King of Scotland) and how benjamine natanyahoo's older brother was the commander and got shot but they did a great rescue opperation, and about this one guy who jumped on a granade and sacraficed himself to save his team, we talked about war and purity (my mefakedet didnt really enjoy me sharing my opinions about this) and about missing soldiers and a whole lot of stuff.
every day we got up really early, a little before 6, and had to unmake our beds and make sure the blanket that stayed on the matress was wrinkleless and all our stuff was packed up and on the space before the blanket started. we had to clean with toilet paper and water, as i said before. it was insane.
today we got up around 4 and walked to the shooting range which was at the bottom of the mountain, about 10 minutes walk from the base. we got to see the sun rise over the kaneret sea, surrounded by this beautiful Arab town on a mountain. it was beautiful there. thats was great. the view was incredible. we were surrounded by mountains with the kaneret sea in the background, and all these fig trees in groves around. there were a bunch of Arab towns around us, and at about 430 am every morning, i woke up from the uncomfortable beds to the sound of their singing to call to prayer. it was obnoxious, but pretty none the less.anyways, we went to the shooting range and i shot 10 bullets out of an m-16. i got to keep my shells and target. i actually hit it a few times. i wasnt very good, and i didnt really like shooting. it was cool to get ready to shoot, to lie down and hold this huge gun, but i didnt like the backfire thing, and all these burning hot bullet casings from the girl next to me kept hitting me and they hurt me.
then we had to do all this stupid stuff like clean a lot with unsanitary stuff and get really frustrated. and we had shitty food and i didnt like it at all. finally, at 11 we got to take off our uniforms and talk to our mefakedet like a human being and she was so cute! shes 20 and has 2 more months at gadna before she changes jobs. she lives 4 hours away from the base, near jerusalem, and has a boyfriend who shes gonna marry when she gets out of the army. hes in the army too, and was in the airforce, but failed and is now in the tank unit. she has 3 older brothers, and her name is tamar. it was great to talk to her, and she told us how hard it was for her not to laugh at us.
we played this really intense game of capture the flag on our 'in the field day'. we were supposed to practice using our new found skills, and capture a glowstick while a whole bunch of soldiers patrolled. it was really hard, but we ended up winning. it was a lot of fun actually.
gadna was not too bad. it was sooo hot, but i learned a lot and played a lot of games and had fun.
we had to carry around this green squeegee the entire week, and couldnt forget it. we had to name it, so we named it ari, after the ulpan director. the boys had one too, and coincidentally named theirs ari as well for the same reason! it was funny. we also had to take turns carrying a gurny and a stretcher. they were heavy and we had to do everything with them.
(this is me with ari, the squeegee-אני ים ארי)now i am back at yagur, and sooo glad to be here. i love the food which is really just bad cafeteria food, but is 1000 times better than gadna food. and i love the beds which dont have holes in them, and i love waking up at 730 not 545 or 4 or anything like that. i love having my body belong to me, and my time be my own.
my camera died on the first day, so give me some time to put pictures from this week up. i will, dont worry.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
oh i just can't wait to be king!
so, this friday after class my friends from the ulpan Sarah and Alexis and I packed into a car with our kibbutz friends Mike and Leslie and we drove to Cesarea.
(Sarah and Leslie at the entrence to the ruins)
look how pretty!
Cesarea is a rich people town, but also is home to these freaking awesome ancient ruins. you know how much i love history stuffs, so this was right up my ally. i loved it.
(this is mike in the pantheon- the roman amphitheter)
apparently, in something BCE, King Herod of persia built this really cool city about half way from the top of israel to the bottom. its on the sea, and its a beautiful beach. he built a deep water port with techniques very advanced for the time. then he died, and it got taken over moreso by the romans, and then there was a war and christians took it over, and there were a bunch of jews, and then muslims, and all this stuff happened.
this is sarah on this wire horse drawn chariot. it was to show where they used to chariot race, and then they changed it to satisfy the 'blood thirsty spectators' and turned it into where slaves faught lions and aligators and other killer animals. crazy.
there was a gorgeous roman temple that was torn down to build a beautiful christian church that was torn down to build a beautiful mosq which was destroyed by earthquakes.
basically its a really old city that is now in ruins on a really beautiful beach.
we were there for a while but it got really hot so we went to this nice little town called tzikron yitzhak (remember isaac) named after a rothschild family member. mike knew all this stuff and told us all about everything. it was really cool. the rothschild family were like the first big bankers in europe so the were really rich and they used to buy a lot of land in israel for the zionist movement. so there are a lot of towns with people names, and they are all in memory of a rothschild family member.
the rothschild family apparently bought a large plot of land and paid to have people brought to live there. the people wanted to make wine, so the rothschilds paid their living expenses while they grew the grapes and tried to make wine, but it came out really gross and completely bombed, so the rothschild family paid to bring in people to teach them how to make good wine as well as paid their living expenses, for a few more years, until the carmel winery took off. now it makes good wine and does really well. isnt that a nice story? i think so.
today was shabbat, so i woke up at noon and went to the pool for several hours. now im here and then im gonna go to dinner, and there is a free movie on the kibbutz. its a really nice theatre actually, and the movie is State Of Play, which i wanted to see in the states but never got around to it, so im excited.
(Sarah and Leslie at the entrence to the ruins)
look how pretty!Cesarea is a rich people town, but also is home to these freaking awesome ancient ruins. you know how much i love history stuffs, so this was right up my ally. i loved it.
(this is mike in the pantheon- the roman amphitheter)apparently, in something BCE, King Herod of persia built this really cool city about half way from the top of israel to the bottom. its on the sea, and its a beautiful beach. he built a deep water port with techniques very advanced for the time. then he died, and it got taken over moreso by the romans, and then there was a war and christians took it over, and there were a bunch of jews, and then muslims, and all this stuff happened.
this is sarah on this wire horse drawn chariot. it was to show where they used to chariot race, and then they changed it to satisfy the 'blood thirsty spectators' and turned it into where slaves faught lions and aligators and other killer animals. crazy.
there was a gorgeous roman temple that was torn down to build a beautiful christian church that was torn down to build a beautiful mosq which was destroyed by earthquakes.
basically its a really old city that is now in ruins on a really beautiful beach.
we were there for a while but it got really hot so we went to this nice little town called tzikron yitzhak (remember isaac) named after a rothschild family member. mike knew all this stuff and told us all about everything. it was really cool. the rothschild family were like the first big bankers in europe so the were really rich and they used to buy a lot of land in israel for the zionist movement. so there are a lot of towns with people names, and they are all in memory of a rothschild family member.
the rothschild family apparently bought a large plot of land and paid to have people brought to live there. the people wanted to make wine, so the rothschilds paid their living expenses while they grew the grapes and tried to make wine, but it came out really gross and completely bombed, so the rothschild family paid to bring in people to teach them how to make good wine as well as paid their living expenses, for a few more years, until the carmel winery took off. now it makes good wine and does really well. isnt that a nice story? i think so.
today was shabbat, so i woke up at noon and went to the pool for several hours. now im here and then im gonna go to dinner, and there is a free movie on the kibbutz. its a really nice theatre actually, and the movie is State Of Play, which i wanted to see in the states but never got around to it, so im excited.
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