Dude I'm in Israel......again

I first came to Israel on Birthright, and in true American Jewish college student tradition, I absolutely loved it. Three years later I graduated college looking for an adventure. Not ready to start grad school or get a real "grown-up" job, I came back to Israel. I am spending a year in Tel Aviv volunteering with organizations that help refugees and migrant workers, exploring Tel Aviv and Israel as a whole, and studying Judaism and social Justice.
So Tuesday I packed up my over-packed suitcase (the zipper was busted by the time I got to Tel Aviv) and got on the airplane.
Wednesday I arrived in Tel Aviv and went to the apartments in Jaffa. I spent the rest of the day walking around Jaffa with a fellow participant I met on the plane.
Note: To all of those people who told me Israel is in the desert so it would be a dry heat and would not be humid.......sooooooo not true! You disillusioned me. It is crazy humid in Tel Aviv, and hot until October apparently.

Thursday we officially started Tikkun Olam in Tel Aviv-Jaffa! We met at the Daniel Center, one of the partners of Tikkun Olam. There were a lot of people there to welcome us and tell us about all of the amazing opportunities that will be available to us. Never gonna be bored in Tel Aviv this year.
Then we got on a bus and headed south. We basically went as far south as possible in Israel. We are in the desert. We are spending the week at a Kibbutz called Kibbutz Ketura. It is really beautiful, but really hot! Max, Arizona has nothing on Southern Israel!

Today (Friday) we learned about what a Kibbutz is. Never really knew what it meant to live on a kibbutz. It's like a small, fully functioning village. There is also an environmental research and educational center, called the Arava Institute. Pretty interesting stuff going on there in terms of sustainable development and renewable energy. The kibbutz also apparently has 5000 date trees and a whole mess of cows. They sell dates and milk products to everyone else to make money to keep the place running. They also farm a special kind of red algae that can be used to make certain medicines and cosmetics.

We had shabbat this evening. It was a lot like Hillel Shabbat, which is pretty cool since I'm a zillion miles away. We lit candles and went to services....I knew most of the songs  :) Then we had really good dinner and now we are all enjoying the wonderful desert night. There are more stars than I have ever seen....ever! Apparently the entire country is filled with Jewish grandmothers who just wanna keep feeding you until you explode. At least the food is good



So I've never written a blog and it might be really bad, but I'm working on it and I'm sure I will have more entertaining anecdotes as the program progresses.