So i figured i would write abit about the kibbutz life since i have been her for a bit now. Might have time later to write about the adventures i have been having (bacon in jerusalem, etc).

So the kibbutz is a communal lifestyle where the people are actually paid now and have to pay somewhat for food and lodging. Everything is very community oriented and open for people to travel between houses and lunch is served in a large mess hall and everyone eats that one meal there throughout there day, and for their entire lives. The kibbutz itself is not at all religious, and some people even end up working on shabbat-example fish ponds everyonce in a while. The other week when i went to the neighborhood synagog with some of my friends from the kibbutz. There were very few people there, the 6 of us mad up half the congregation, and i assume they were from the community not the kibbutz. There is a large degree of separation between the jews in israel. Most the ulpan kids are jewish by ethnicity only, and a few religious, and the rest of the nation seems to be like that, with the jews being at either one end of the spectrum-orthodox, or the opposite-nonreligious. I always thought before most were middle ground and had some religion in their life, but most are secular even though they love and live in the holy land. Back to the synagog-it was an interesting service, all in hebrew so i didnt know much what was going on, but Josh (referred to as jewish josh here since there are 4 joshes and he is the religious one) kinda told me what was going on, and i tried as best i could to follow along in the reading in hebrew. There was quite a bit of individual prayer along with the recitation and singing of psalms in hebrew. The singing of psalms was different, but i enjoyed it, kind of like the difference between more modern worship and hymns, but even before that. It was interesting to see how they welcomed in shabbat by actually physically moving. First time in synagog-israel, good experience.

So back to kibbutz life since that is what i actually wanted to let you know about. Like i said the work is 6-7 full day a week for people on the kibbutz but since we are ulpan we do 6ish hrs a day everyother day but shabbat and trips. The main source of income for the kibbutz is the fish and a nice garden where they have wedding-no one is allowed inside so i have not seen it . Other jobs that we do include gardening around the kibbutz 6am-12 normal stuff, working in the kitchen/diningroom/dishes, picking fruit in the citrus plantation, foodshop, and working with the fish (guys only in ponds and shop). I have been very lucky so far and have had to do gardening twice-raking dirt for 6 hrs twice and then have been on fish since then.
In the fishponds we go out and take a massive net and circle the pond to bring in the fish, which are then sucked up and sorted on the top of a machine. THis is the most physical work there is but usually it is not too bad sicne it is around water the entire time and rather cool. We also deliver the fish to the fish shop. Usually we have a machine that pulls in the nets, but this morning since we were doing a smaller pond, we had to pulll the nets in by hand, and that is alot of work pulling in full nets of fish-reminded me of the disciples fishing when there nets were about to break. I really enjoy this work because it doing something all the time wheras in the garden we slack off quite a bit. Also the coordinator of ulpan activities works there-ahron-so have gotten to know him quite well.
I have worked at the fish shop once so far and our basic job is to kill the fish with a mallet and then scale them-later gutted by others. This was on friday getting all the orders ready for shabbat. This is also probably one of the better jobs on the kibbutz.


Back to food about all three meals. Breakfast is very small with maybe a small bowl of cereal and some bread and if we are lucky a hard boiled egg. Lunch is the big meal of the day like before and is the only time we actually have the option of eating meat. At first i thought i would get sick of constant snitzel, but i always look forward to it after the breakfast and after work or class. dinner is pretty bad with not much more than breakfast, so we end up going out to the mall alot to either actually eat something or just a snack. But one great thing about israel is the unlimited hummus availible at every meal-im going to miss that alot.

So thats pretty much the kibbutz life.