Saturday 1 September 2012

The Weekly Report: 30/08/2012

Dear Parents, Snifim and Shnatties, Shalom Rav,

This past week has been full of important and or meaningful events; Gilad Shalit celebrated his first birthday as a free person; while we said goodbye to Neal Armstrong we said hello to the new pictures form Mars sent to us by the "Curiosity" (although I think it is amazing that we landed on the moon and Mars, I wonder if that money should not be spent here on Earth trying to make it a better place); the 136 year old Montefiori Windmill in Jerusalem started working again, the windmill was established as a source of work for those Jewish people brave enough to leave the walls of the Old City and create the first Jewish Settlement out side the Wall, today it is a sight were couples getting married come to take pictures all dressed up and on their way to their wedding and now after so many years of not working it will start opening its doors to the public; and my son started to go to Day Care for the first time in his life.

As for our dear shnatties, they together after their chofesh and last Sunday they arrived to Kibbutz Lotan, kibbutz Lotan is a lovely reform Kibbutz in the Arava, it is 40 minutes north of the city of Eilat, which means that it is way in the south of Israel. The Kibbutz period is the last period of the program, they have settled into their apartment, and had a few orientation days, today they all went out to the dates field as a group project to collect all the dates and next week they will be working in different fields, they have been looking forward for this period of the program.

I don’t know if in Australia and South Africa you use the saying "A penny for your thoughts" but there is something I wanted to share with you that I found interesting and would love hear what you have to say about it. Just like in other countries also in Israel there are advertisements posted on the sides of the buses, this week Egged (The Israeli Public Buses Company) has decided that they wont be posting any advertisements with the pictures of men or women, in Jerusalem it has been problematic because the religious people would not allow the buses to have advertisement with the pictures of women (even if they were fully dressed), women of course felt discriminated, so now to save themselves the headache Egged as mentioned before will not be displaying men or women on the side of the buses, and I wonder if this the correct course of action to take or if it is the easy way out.

I want to wish a great weekend and Shabbat Shalom,

Michael

Weekly report by Jade K.

Hi everyone!

Another week has gone by in our shnattie lives and I'm here to tell you all about it. Fasten your seatbelts, it's been a wild ride through our first week on Kibbutz Lotan!

Saturday night found us all squeezed into the ex-boys room of the Etgar flat chatting excitedly about our chofesh and impending time on kibbutz, exchanging weird and wonderful gifts from the far corners of the world (Kitty even brought us a South African, his name was Mitchell) and pinching Josh, Lily and ourselves just to make sure they were actually there. Yes, you heard right, Teva (south) is finally, FINALLY, reunited! We couldn't be happier.

Spirits were not dampened until the next morning when we discovered (to our utter dismay) that there was no CD player in the bus. How could we possibly listen to Dana's coveted 90s CD! Never fear, shnattie watchers, it wasn't too long before we had whipped out the Ukulele, followed by the guitar resulting in a Jade-Sophie jam sesh which quickly became a Jade-Sophie-Jordy Destiny's Child tribute band rehearsal (I'm Kelly Rowland, Jordy is obviously Beyonce which makes Sophie the one who's name no-one ever remembers) and eventually a Teva Choir sing-along (minus Josh... and the bus driver, I think we may have somehow damaged his ears. First Teva Shnenemy.)

Arriving on kibbutz in high spirits we were faced with momentary panic upon realizing that all of our stuff may not fit into our house. For those who don't know, Teva does not travel light. Thankfully we didn't have to resort to plan B - exiling Josh to the tent pitched on the grass outside our house - but at one stage it was a very real possibility. Other events of the day included a truly historic asefa in which, after Etgar apparently left the word with scarring connotations, we renamed asefot. They are now called FSBs (or FSBim for all you mad Hebrew speakers out there), what it stands for is a Teva secret. We also decided on kvutzah tafkidim for our time on Lotan, of course we can't tell you what they are until they are ratified at Teva Values Veida which will take place over Shabbat.

Since then we have been filling our days with deciding on work branches, exercising for the first time in 7 months, chillin' with the kibbutz kids, the volunteers, the shin shins (kids on Shnat Sherut) who live next door and a good friend of our beloved Northerners - Guy the (now ex-)shin shin, making lots of music and discovering all the essentials to kibbutz life on our adventures such as the filter water tap in our kitchen and the cow graveyard behind the refet. Kibbutz Lotan is slowly becoming our home.

And that concludes this weeks parents report, leaving only 10 more parents reports until you see our smiley faces once again. I guess we'd better go have some more crazy adventures so we'll have something to write to you about next week.

So, in the words of everyone's favorite South American Shnat Director,
Mmmmmbye.