Saturday 7 July 2012

The Weekly Report: 17/21/2012

Dear Parents, Sniffim and Shnatties. Shalom Rav,

What a week filled with mixed emotions, Etgar and Machon ended last Thursday, that same day we all got on a bus and headed north to Haifa and Karmiel, on the way we stopped in Caesarea for a farewell activity, in Haifa, the northerners got off the bus to begin their sikkum seminar while the southerners continued to Karmiel for their Options period.

I am attaching a link to a lip dub that our etgarnicks did, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK0aJr4hrZA, I really recommend to see it I am also attaching a link to an Etgar slide show that they made for the Etgar sikkum evening,

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=408643125845167

My dear southerners, you are embarking in to the next period of your journey, here you start putting into practice all the skills and knowledge that you learned in Etgar and Machon, you will form your own Karmiel community, you will get involved with the Reform Community in Karmiel, you will volunteer in different projects to help this world become a better place.

My dear northerners, many things happened during this year, Gilad Shalit came home, Israel had its first ever formula 1 race, one Israeli president, Moshe Kazav, was sent to jail and one Israeli president, Shimon Peres, was awarded the Medal of Freedom by president Obama, a cyber war took place, for the first time an Ethiopian Ole became ambassador for Israel, not only did it snow in Jerusalem it also snowed in Africa this year.

But the most important event that happened this year was your event; you're story, your journey, as an individual and as a group. It has been amazing seeing how much you have grown and how much you have matured over the past year.

My dear shnatties, Shnat might have come to an end but now it’s a new beginning, now you begin the life after Shnat, I and the Netzer staff want to wish you all good luck with your university studies, we hope that you all find a way to stay in contact especially now a days that it is much easier to keep long distance relationships,

With in the next couple of days I will be posting pictures on our facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/netzer.olami/

We will miss you

"It’s weird… you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second…just so it can hurt a little more".

Michael and the Netzer staff

Weekly report by the Northerners (the last weekly report)

Hey all,

So here we are. It's finally the end and it's all very sad. We weren't quite sure how to put what we were feeling into writing, so we decided to put together a short video for you all. I hope it gives you an idea of how shnat was overall for us all, what we're up to this very minute, and how we're feeling about coming home.

Love to every single one of you. It really has been a pleasure.

Here is your link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol9PtZBNJXE

If it doesn't work, just type 'shnat 5772' into youtube and it should come up.

SHNAT TEVA FOREVER!

Love,

Abby and Tara (and Naomi R who kindly edited the video for us)

Xxxxxx

Weekly report by the Southerners

Dear Northerners (and other less important people)

Do I even need to tell you how much we miss you!! SO MUCH!! I can hardly believe that you're all reading this sitting in your houses on the other side of the world (or in Dan's case the other side of the country.) It still kind of feels like you've just gone to Poland or a Keshet seminar and we'll be seeing you next week.

It's now Tuesday and Karmiel is beginning to become our home, we've had our first 2 visitors, Talia Meltzer and Gal and are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the habo kvutzah. Our lives are finally beginning to function again. That's more than I can say for our flat. In the 6 days we've lived here we've somehow managed to break the shower, the washing machine, the hot plate, the air conditioner, the fridge, the freezer and Shoshana's bed (Shoshana, if you're reading this we're are really really sorry. Notthatwe've been hanging out your bed or anything...)

Apart from our intense distress at your sudden departure and rushed goodbye (that bus thing was about the most traumatic experience of our young lives) not much gas happened to us since you've been gone. We cried all the way from Haifa to Karmiel, stopped briefly to meet Galit only to begin again upon discovering that our first meal in our new home was in fact at Jake's sushi place (for the record, the reality lived up to the legend.) One good thing did come from all the crying, we were all dead asleep by 8:00 that night.

The next day began an intense weekend of decorating (Pictures of the flat are attached as per Naomi's request.) We even politely declined a Barmitzvah invitation in favor of making a crafty spider web for Josh and Shana's wall where the 8 of us are the spiders and 'the minor characters of shnat' feature in the middle as the flies.

We started volunteering on Sunday and after a bit of shuffling we're all very happy. Liz is volunteering with the babies at the local nursery and while it's a long day she is loving it. Lily is working at the Soup Kitchen full time and Sophie and Jordy are working there alternate days . On alternate days Jordy and Sophie are also volunteering with Jade at a new option we requested, the senior citizens centre, we basically do art with the elderly all day, it's so perfect. Kitty, Josh and Shana are working at the agricultural farm with Motie, a farmer who speaks only Hebrew maintaining the crops of the local school children who cannot tend and harvest them during the summer vacation. Hopefully we'll start our afternoon volunteering once we get back from chofesh.

On a more personalised note, here is one little thing that has happened to us all this week:

Sophie has rediscovered the joys of cooking. She has already made 4 dinners 2 cakes and a horribly failed attempt at cookies (she forgot the butter)

Jordy has found herself a boyfriend at our volunteering place. He's about 87 years old and rather than speaking one language fluently, he speaks a combination of Hebrew, Spanish, English and French. He winks at her rather frequently and kisses her hand after every game of dominoes. What a gentleman.

Josh finished volunteering early this week to go see his uncle in Tel Aviv who is visiting from England.

Shana's dad arrived and took us all out for a lovely dinner (thank's Jim! I hope our Zionistic crises and talk of rebellion didn't scare you too much.) They have now taken a trip to Turkey together over chofesh.

Jade used the stove by herself for the first time ever, she made eggs, they weren't as good as Lily's but they also didn't kill anyone so she counts it as a success.

Liz won the handstand competition at the pool. It was a short lived victory however as very soon after we were almost kicked out for not wearing hat's in the pool (what normal person wears a hat in the pool...?)

Lily against all odds bought and managed to keep a baby pool in the laundry/kitchen of the flat. It is her most prized possession.

Kathryn had a particularly traumatic experience with Motie on her first day at the agricultural farm involving a cup of tea, a staff meeting, and the ruining of a staff-member's birthday.

 So that was our week. We're still sad and we still miss you but are slowly realizing we have no choice but to move on with our lives.

 Love always,

Your other half: the Southern shnatties