Important Website: photos and calender

Hello hello,

All is well with me. I had a new roommate for about two days last week (she decided to leave the program early). So, I'm back to having my own room and enjoying it.

Important website to note: http://destinationisrael.com/
When at that website--the bar on the top of the page has two things worth noting.
1) Calendar: if you click this, you'll get to a list of programs. The one I'm on is referred to as "Oranim 22, Community Involvement, Kibbutz Yehiam".
This calender is being updated constantly but can give you and idea about what my group is upto.

2) Photos: you can also access this site by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/israelservicecorps/collections/
Click on Community Involvement.
Then look for any album with "Oranim 22, Kibbutz Yehiam"

there are many albums, all taken by yours truely...only the first album, pictures from our arrival on the kibbutz were not taken by me. i'm hoping to add captions to the photographs, but that could be another week before i actually get around to it.

Oh, something exciting not on that group calender is my upcoming trip to SPAIN! I'll be meeting my dad & cindy there on christmas, to spend about five days exploring Barcelona. I'm very excited and, if anyone has been, please give me tips on good places to eat and see.

Thanksgiving day we didn't do anything. However, the next day, Friday, was the group's thanksgiving. I decided not to take part, as I already had an invitation to my host family's house for dinner and choose to go there instead. I stopped by their thanksgiving dinner at the end, the food looked very traditional and everyone seemed to be having a great time. (I wasn't the only one who didn't go.)

I had a very nice afternoon off the kibbutz today, in Naharyia. I got money out of the atm, ate a decent falafel (it was great at the time cause i was so hungry and looking forward to it, but i won't go back to that particular stand again), then we walked around for a while. i bought a 6 in 1 game set thing for about $3 which i'm very happy to have found. it includes chess and baggammon. we also went to the grocery store. oh and i went into my usual two bakeries, bakery #1 for potato pastries/patties and to get some with mushrooms inside. then i go to bakery #2 to buy donuts.
actually bakery #1 has the better donut, but the bakery #2 has more interesting ones with chocolate and coconut and nuts on top, so i keep buying different kinds there anyway.

so that's that. with the cold weather, i've noticed an increase of daddy long legs bugs around my place. the dont bother me since they are on the ceiling or high on the walls. i've seen a few of those centipede's since my horrible bed incident, but they have been little and are always found by the door. (now i either kill them or sweep them out)
unfortunately, i've been waking up in the middle of the night, startled, thinking i felt a bug on me. there is a reading light above each bed, so i turn it on, check for bugs, and seem to fall back asleep immediately.

anyway, that's that. on wednesday we have two lectures. the first, not really a lecture, is a woman from MASA. MASA is the organization funding my grant to be here and works closely with Oranim to run the program. the second lecture, will be about politics in israel. this will be run by Offer, a man who works for Oranim and has lectured for us in the past.

thursday, we have a trip to Acco and a village. it should be interesting and i'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

anyway, it's nearly 1am. i am still volunteering on the kibbutz at the afterschool center, so thankfully i don't start until mid-day. i really like it and find that my hebrew and interactions with the children seem to be improving. i've recently discussed options to volunteer elsewhere, but i will continue working where i am (at least through december). i enjoy the people and kids i work with, and i am a useful extra set of hands when dealing with the kids, serving lunch, creating and preparing activites, etc.

don't forget to check the website and see pictures of everything or the calender of our trips & lectures.

hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving and all is well stateside.