Happy Thanksgiving!

hi all.

i just want to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving for tomorrow. this is the first time i will not be spending the holiday with family and it definitely makes me a little sad. as a group though, we will be making our own version of thanksgiving for friday. we're not exactly sure what traditional dishes we will even be able to make because we'll have to go with what's available to us in the stores. as long as i get some form of stuffing...i'll be a happy person.

so we lost 4 members of our group the other day and the mood has definitely changed a bit. these people were the ones that joined our group for about a month and a half after 3 and a half months of their program in Ramle. most of us got rather close with these people so it was definitely sad to see them leave. in addition to them leaving on monday, we got 2 new people from the eilat group to join our group yesterday. they seem nice...

in the past few weeks we have been pretty busy. we went to Haifa, a hike to the Klil, and to Tel-Aviv. although i have been to all these places before, it was like being there for the first time. Haifa was awesome and we got to explore a bit of the bottom of the Bahai Gardens. Prior to that, we all enjoyed a delicious lunch at a very fun restaurant. our group coordinator took us on a very fun hike where we learned a lot about the local surroundings. Yariv, (the coordinator) also took a few of us to lunch and off-roading in his SUV after the hike. so much fun! later in the day after the hike, we went to Tel-Aviv this past weekend and i had a ton of fun hanging out with everyone and enjoying dinner at an excellent burger place in which we celebrated one of the guy's birthdays.

everything is still going well. i still love school and what i'm doing here. at times, this place can get a bit boring but it's still great. it has been a lot colder than i thought it would be and i definitely didn't pack right for this but i'll most likely survive.

all for now. i'll try to update more frequently. i just get lazy and distracted. sorry. please enjoy the below pictures :)

This is the group of us that went to Haifa for the day. this pic is in the Bahai Gardens

This is at school during a break and my friend Alex and I took a lil nap. haha. I just thought it was a funny picture.

This is our coordinator Yariv on our off-roading adventure after our hike to Klil. We ran into a little road block and he had to take care of it...

LOVE.

ooops...

So once again, I must apologize for my long absence. The combination of being really busy, tired, and not wanted to wait for the website to upload photos has left me putting up updating this for quite awhile. But...everything is still wonderful and I am still having the most amazing time here in Northern Israel. Since I last posted we have had a very fun Halloween, been to Eilat (Southern Israel), and have continued to enjoy the volunteering at the high school.

For Halloween we showed the Israeli's on the Kibbutz how we do it in the States when it comes to our favorite holiday. It was fun because we improvised costumes and ended up having a great night as a group.

We went to Eilat last weekend where we met up with all the other Oranim groups for a weekend of fun in the sun. Eilat is the Southern most city in Israel and it is still very warm while we were there, probably in the mid 90's. We went a couple hikes in the middle of the desert, had Shabbot dinner at the hotel, went tubing on the Red Sea (that water is rather salty and doesn't feel good in the eyes), checked out the local bars, and met some cool new people. I also ran into a high school friend of mine who is a part of the group in Eilat. He seems to be loving it just as much as I am which is great. Definitely a fun, but extremely tiring weekend.

Alex, me, and Eddie enjoying a night at the hotel.

A beautiful view of the desert...

I also continue to visit my host family for their favorite meal of the day --"late lunch". This takes place at around 2:30 and still confuses me. They are so nice and I'm having an amazing time getting to know them. We even watched Bear Grills (with Hebrew subtitles) on the Discovery Channel for awhile after we ate.

I also definitely didn't pack right for this place. It has been way colder than I have ever expected in this part of the country and I have been wearing my OU hoodie to death. I may have to purchase a jacket very soon.

So I believe that'll do it for now. We are having Israeli food night in the common room tonight and I'm quite excited. I should to get a move on....

Love.