Finally a time to update

Thursday September 8, 2011

I realize it has been an entire week since my last blog post... I haven't updated it for several reasons, lack of internet, lack of time, and pure exhaustion.  The thought of trying to write more blog posts on my iPhone has been a tiring thought as well...

I am going to attempt an overview of the last week.  We moved into our beautiful house!  There is a girls room with three, a girls room with 2, and the boys have a room of their own.  We have a great new kitchen, a new fridge, new stove, new oven.  We do not have a dishwasher but we are great hand washers. 

After our arrival at the house we had a slow trickle of new roommate arrivals.  We had a nice slow beginning getting to know our new roommates.  Overall, we are 7 roommates excited about the upcoming year together. 

We are in seminars at Seminar Hakibutzim from 10-6 Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.  We leave the house together by 7:40 each morning.  We walk down for about 10-15 (depending on how sleepy we are) to the Tachanat Hamerkazit.  The main bus station in Rehovot.  It is really nice being so close to the center of rehovot.  We leave Tel Aviv around 6:10 each night, and get home around 7:45-8pm.  We have very long involved days. 

The seminars are with all of the Israel Teaching Fellows.  Our group from Rehovot, a group from Rishon L'Tzion (about 20 minutes from us), Ramle/Lod (25-35 minutes), Petach Tikvah, and Natanya.  On our first day of Seminar, Lior our madrich met us at the bus stop in Rehovot to make sure we got on the right bus.  Not only did he text us to make sure we left the house on time, we got another text while we were walking, and then a conversaiton at the bus station.  He is quite Polish!  But it is really comforting and helpful to have his support while we slowly become more comfortable with our new surroundings.

The first day when we got off the bus in Ramat Aviv, we quickly spotted another group of Americans and decided to walk together.  The first couple of days were quite overwhelming with so many Americans together while in Israel.  However, we have begun to relate to each other much more, and are much more comfortable and friendly with the other groups.  We are already trying to make plans for a joint Potluck dinner.  The other groups all live in different apartment settings.  We are the only group with a house :).  We also learned that we are the only group that has Israeli counterparts.  Many other groups are quite jealous of this difference.

On Tuesday...while other groups had the day off, we were opening bank accounts with Lior and had a trip to Ma'Ase headquarters.  We had our first meeting with Micki, the head and founder of Ma'Ase.  I really enjoyed hearing his perspective and approach to education.  He is very much a realist.  I agree with his approach a lot.  His main focus is not asking people how we can help them, but demanding a high level from everyone to work with others.  The bar has been set quite high for our group, and I'm sure we will be able to meet and exceed the expectations.  All of us are very excited and motivated to make this year successful for ourselves, and our new community.