Hello Everyone!

Hey Everyone! (Or no one, as the case may be)

     I’m starting a blog to attempt to document my time in Israel since making Aliyah in late December. I started the Aliyah process back in July, and it wasn’t too arduous but overall it wasn’t that interesting so I won’t take any further time to recap it other than to say it happened without any great difficulties. Since coming to Israel I have been living on Kibbutz Yagur, about a 20 minutes bus ride from Haifa.

Yagur from the Hiking Trail

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     I work at the Horsha (Wedding Garden).

When I work there it doesn't look like that.  That's during a wedding.

 
     Three days a week I'm there doing landscaping (i.e. raking leaves and cutting branches), and the other three days I'm in class. (In Israel it’s a six day work week with a short Friday). I’m in kita bet, which is the second level of three offered at the kibbutz.

      My average day is as follows:
 7am – Wake up, get dressed, etc.
 8am – Start either class or work. Either way this always involves strong coffee.
 ~9:15 – Go to Breakfast for between half an hour and an hour, and then go back to work/class
 1pm – Go to lunch. If it’s a work day I’m now off for the day. Otherwise I’m back to class at 1:45 until 3. 

     After that the day is basically my own until Dinner at 7 (which is free and kept warm leftovers from lunch). So far I’ve spent that time studying my lessons, wrestling with various bureaucracies (fun at any time, but even more so when only 1 in 3 people you connect with speak any English at all), or just hanging out with the other ulpanists.

      After dinner it’s more of the same. If it’s Thursday or Friday I might go to the pub on the kibbutz.

Yea, it's actually a bomb shelter

     It’s a relaxed pub, with prices the same as if I were to buy directly from the kolbol (the store on the kibbutz). The hardest thing to get used to is how much smoking there always is. People haven’t smoked in restaurants in Canada since I was very young.

     That’s basically how things are going with me currently. I’m going to try to update this blog about once a week (give or take), and we’ll see how that goes. Blogs usually aren’t all that interactive, and this will be no exception, but if you want to know more details about anything or if you feel I’m leaving something out let me know and maybe I’ll post about that.

 Cheers!

 Shaun