Rosh Hashana Sept 8-11

This week Jason and I went down to Arad to spend Rosh Hashana with our host families. We started out together on the bus from Ashkelon to Be'er Sheva, but when we made the transfer to the Be'er Sheva -Arad bus, the driver closed to door between Jason and I, causing us to take two different buses down. When I arrived I was picked up by my host mom Ofra and her three kids, Noam, Ayala and Amitai. Noam is 10.5, her sister Ayala is 8 and Amitai is a wonderful 3 year old little boy.

We immediately went shopping for some last minute things for the holiday dinner and to grab some cereal for my house. We then headed back to her house, which is across the street from the house I will be living in from November until June. Ofra gave me a tour of my house and left me to get my stuff settled in while she headed over to her own house.

The rest of the evening set the sequence of events for the whole holiday. I went over to the house and played with the kids for a few hours. This was everything from arts and crafts with the girls to a rousing game of “Afo Tomas?” (translated, “where is Thomas?”) with Amitai. “Afo Tomas” happens just about every 30 minutes when he comes over to you, asks where is Thomas and then we start the hunt for his favorite of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters. Every once in awhile though thegame becomes “Afo Percy” and we begin the search all over again. The main reason that these toys kept getting lost is they are the pull back style – you pull the car back to wind up the “engine” and let it go to skitter across the room. Eventually I convinced him that playing on the track would be just as good and we no longer had to look very far to find Thomas, Percy or even Emily. (And yes, I can name all the characters now – and sing the 'Roll Call' song.)

After spending time with the kids I helped Ofra with dinner a little bit (grating veggies for the salad) and attempted to pick up the hebrew words for the vegetables I was using. Then I headed back to my house to change for dinner, and the whole family walked down the road to Savta and Saba's house. (Grandma and Grandpa). The grandparents know a little bit of English (they started out telling me they knew none, but kept coming up with phrases when I got completely stuck with my very limited hebrew vocalubary) but mainly we talked through Ofra or her sister who would translate back and forth.

My first day in Arad (Wednesday) repeated again on Thursday and very closely followed on Friday as well. The only difference being that on Thursday night Jason and I met up with Abir to go out to the local pub and figure out the town a little better. Ofra knew Abir because she helped him interview for a position that is taking him to New Jersey for the next year to teach Hebrew (sound familiar?). Since he is leaving on Monday meeting up with him was wonderful, we told him what we could about the area he would be in while he introduced us to some of his friends and the town.

On one of the days the girls took me on a walk down to the overlook. (The same overlook that Otzma visited on our first week.) Noam packed up a bag for us with water, cups and the Hebrew/English dictionary, while I brought along a camera.

Ayala and Noam

Amitai

The whole trip to Arad was a lot of fun and I feel like I really get along with my host family. Saba even asked if I could move in with them and help out his wife around the house instead of living down the street! I am definitely looking forward to moving down to Arad now.

September 7th

Today we were invited by the Mercaz Klitah to a Rosh Hashana party being thrown by the kids. We all gathered downstairs in the patio area of building 1, and were immediately seized upon by the kids-just like always!

 Eventually though things calmed down a bit and we sat down for a bit of a Rosh Hashana explanation- first in Hebrew and then in English.

 We passed around apples, honey and honey cakes and sang together. Then they kids came around with Rosh Hashana cards that they had made for us. We also retreived some crayons and paper and created cards for the kids and had fun passing those out too.
No party is complete without dancing though, so we started up the music and spent about half an hour just dancing and playing with the kids.

Slichot Seminar September 6

We got information about our Slichot seminar a few days ago, and found out that we would be leaving Ashkelon at 1:30am to head out to Jerusalem. While most people thought about taking naps before we left, it didn't really happen for most of us. We all headed out to the bus in the dark and proceeded to sleep the whole way into the city. Once we got there we met up with our lecturer/guide Jared.
Jared led us into the city and we all sat down to read about Rosh Hashana from some parsha portions and writings. There were some really great discussions about why we do Slichot prayers, and the differences between how they are done by Ashkenazi and Sephardic jews.
For anyone that doesn't know what Slichot is, allow me to explain. Slichot is a time period in which you are supposed to pray for forgiveness from God and work on repenting for the bad things that you have done during the last year. In the states we tend to be taught that this is all done during the 10 day period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but in reality it is different depending on your sect. The Ashkenazi start the Slichot prayers on the Shabbat prior to Rosh Hashana, while the Sephardic actually perform slichot prayers for the entirety of the (Jewish) month prior to Rosh Hashana up until Yom Kippur - 40 days. The slichot prayers are supposed to be performed during the night, and usually as close to the start of the morning prayer as possible, this means that the prayers are started somewhere between 3:30-4:00am.

The reason that we were in the city at 3am was so we could sit on an overlook over the Kotel (Wall) and hear the Slichot prayers while we discussed the impact this holiday season has on us.
During our seminar we were asked to break into pairs and discuss our past year, and anything we may have regretted. I sat with Lauren and we talked about our last year and found that we had quite a bit in common.
After visiting the wall we regathered again and headed through the city, we climbed up to the top of the city and settled in to watch the sunrise. From where we were sitting we could watch as the sun came up from behind the hills and rose into the sky.

Sept 2nd

Sorry for the hiatus, I went on a trip to Egypt (and yes I will write about it!) and got out of the habit of updating.
This will be the last of the one per day posts, from now on updates will be about just the big events/holidays/fun things that happen.

Today was fairly uneventful, though we did have a meeting with a lady from Masa Israel. Masa is a program dedicated to helping bring people to Israel for long-term programs (5-10 months). Otzma is a Masa program, so the representative came to see how we were doing and see if we had any input on how our program is going so far.
After the meeting with our representative we headed over to the Ulpan building for testing. None of us knew what exactly this would entail, we were nervous since we did not want to get placed into the wrong Hebrew class! For my test I walked in and sat down with a woman in one of the classrooms. She asked me if I knew any Hebrew and I truthfully told her that I do not know very much, just what I learned through Rosetta stone. She then proceeded to ask me about my Alef Bet (which I do know) and then if I could spell out words if they are said to me. I told her that I could and she thanked me for my time.
After I walked out of the test I was told by my fellow Otzmanikim that they were having some trouble since they had so many more people in Kitah Alef than Bet (Alef is the 1st level, Bet is 2nd) and I started to worry that they were searching for a reason to place me in it. Gosh I hope not!

September 1st

Today we had a group volunteer day. So at 8am we all loaded up onto the bus with our packed lunches and headed out. We were going to a student village near באר שבע(Be'er Sheva) called Ayalim. This is one village in a series that had been started a few years back in order to relocate young and idealistic people into the Negev and Galilee. These two areas combined cover 80% of the country, but only have 8% of the population located within them. Israel has a feeling of use it or lose it when it comes to this problem, but does not seem to be able to get people to move into these areas very easily, despite trying to move factories and industry into the area.
As I said, this is a student village and all the inhabitant are students. These students live in the volunteer village (and in fact build them!) while being full time students on scholarships at the University located near their village. We spent some time watching a recruitment video on the program and having questions answered by one of the higher ups in the organization before (figuratively) rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.

We were split up into about 5 groups, the first was working on pruning flowering plants etc. on a walkway between some of the houses. The second group (the one I was in) was pulling out the plants that had grown out into to the paths around the building in the background of the above picture. The third group was working on laying out a gravel terrace area, while group 4 was transporting all the gravel from the gravel pit. Group 5 was our two lovely water girls who made sure we all stayed hydrated throughout the day.

I started out working with David, Shauna, Max and Tracy on pulling out plants and sweeping down the sidewalks when I came to a Rosemary bush that had grown out over half of the path. Unfortunately Rosemary grows from one central trunk, so you cannot just pull out the offending parts, you need to take a saw to the plant to prune it. For the next 2.5 hours I worked on this bush with an old hand saw, and eventually the path was clear.

The upper part of this path was blocked by a Rosymary bush. The black hose is an irrigation hose, it will be placed better in the future to allow plants to grow despite the desert conditions.

The upper gravel terrace - this area was just sand before the group laid out tarp, irrigation hoses and gravel.

On my way back from dumping some of the clippings from my Rosemary bush (it took 4 wheelbarrow loads to get it all moved!) I noticed a part of the entrance sign we could not see from the bus.

I thought it was a beautiful sign and a perfect sentiment for the type of work that is being done with this village.

At the end of the day we were all hot, sweaty and tired. But knew we had made a difference. As a group that came to Israel specifically to volunteer, we were all itching to get our hands dirty and do some actual work. Today was perfect.

August 31st

Today was a fairly slow day. We started out at 9am with a few presentations on different volunteer opportunities in Ashkelon. I really liked the sound of the after school daycare at the conservative temple. We also went to a boys and girls club style after school gym, and a organization that helps mentally disabled adults. At this point ITC had a mini meeting while the rest of the group went on to hear a few more opportunities. We found out that we already had our volunteer opportunity set up for us -we will be going to an after school program 2 times a week to tutor 5th grade girls and 9th grade boys on their English work. The way it is set up is that we will spend half the time with each group doing homework and the other half playing learning games. While I am really excited for this program with Emunah, I wish we had not heard about all the other wonderful opportunities when they are not actually options for us.
After the ITC meeting we met up with the bigger group again and were all dropped off for lunch at an outdoor bazaar style area with shops lining the street. And we broke off into small groups to grab a bite and look around before heading back to the bus. When we got to the bus we were joined by a local teen that pointed out some of the "main attractions" of Ashkelon on a 1/2 hour long ride around the town.

Pier at the marina .5 miles from the מרכז קליטה

Later that evening after dinner and such a large portion of our group gathered at the front gate of the מרכז קליטה for a walking tour to Afridar Center - the local shopping/dinning area. We all wondered around once we got there and finally all settled at a very long table at the local pub.

Photo op!

We all hung out for a while and talked - it seems that we are really getting to know each other now and it just feels natural to all be sitting around talking in this place across the world from home.

August 30th

Today we started out with a light breakfast (cakes... seriously, am I the only person who does not think chocolate should be included in breakfast?) and then went on a short tour of the מרכז קליטה (absorption center). Which consisted mostly of: this is a building, this is another building, and the computer room is over there... ok it was a lot more informative than that, but it was 7:15am and I don't have my bearings in the center yet.
After the whirlwind tour of the we מרכז קליטה got separated into our three groups of the day. We had 3 things to do, pack up boxes of food for the less fortunate for Rosh Hashana, go grocery shopping, and finish unpacking our rooms. I was put in charge of group 1 as the contact person - making sure we were all on the bus etc - totally unnecessary since our מדריך (kinda of like a guide/educator - it does not exactly translate) was with us for the majority of the time.
Anyhow, we got to the first place to pack up the boxes and found out they had already been packed and we would be going out to deliver them instead. I helped load up cars for the first hour or so, and worked on my numbers a little bit - I can confidently count up to 4 now! Finally I was placed in a car with 3 men... only one of whom spoke any English, and it was not very much. When we got to the first building the youngest man looked at me and started saying Lo, lo (no, no) when I tried to pick up a box. I finally convinced him that I could carry the box and he pointed to the building, said "arbah" (four) and handed me the small box of veggies. This apparently meant that we were going to the 4th floor. At the next apartment we repeated the same process again, only this time he said "shesh" (six) and we were on our way. When we got to the final building he pointed to the building and said something I did not understand (I was later told he probably said "shomonai" since I counted 8 floors) and then just started pointing to the roof which I took to mean the top floor - I was right. Now these things only matter since all of the buildings were walk-ups with little to no lighting in the stairways. Interesting to say the least.
Next we were off to the shopping center to do our grocery shopping. Along the way we saw some evidence of Israeli driving.

Remnants of an accident

Luckily all of my roommates were in my group, so 3 of the 4 of us were able to do some basic apartment shopping together - paper towels, toilet paper etc. Due to some odd mishaps and apparently being too efficient at the volunteering opportunity, the timing got a little messed up and group 1 ended up spending both our room setup and shopping time at the shopping center. 

Milk in a bag!

When we did finally get back to our apartment it was almost time to start cooking for the potluck dinner. We were making a pasta dish, but of course this is when we found out that our gas range is a little interesting to work with. Unless you hold the gas knob in the flame will go out, so finally we filled a pitcher with water and put in front of the knob to hold it in. 
Our pasta was loved by the group when we finally got downstairs, and we all enjoyed a nice meal together before retiring to our apartments for the evening.