Glorious, Beautiful Shabbat

Anat, me and watermelons!

Matan, me and beautiful flowers

Pinny, Tal, me and Anat

What a glorious Shabbat I had!

The Sarigs picked me up on Friday to go to their home in Merchavia. We hosted their son, Nitzan, 8 years ago for 3 summers when he was a camper and one of their other sons, Tal, has also stayed with us. Since then we have become good friends. They've visited us and Zack was their adopted son when he lived in Israel. The Sarigs live in a moshav; it's a community where all the people used to have different farms but now not everyone has one. Pinny grows grapes to make wine and also does important work improving how grapes grow (there's a name for it but I don't remember it now). They have 2 horses, a bird, 2 dogs and a bunny; their neighbors have loud sheep and loud cows and on Sat morning, somewhere very close there was a very,very loud rooster who continued to make himself known even though it was well past day break!

I happened to mention that I missed my ofanaiyim (ok..that means bicycle) and Sat morning at 6:30 am we went on a phenomenal bike ride! Where else but in Israel can you ride a bike and see sunflowers that are going to be harvested for its seeds, watermelon growing (which Pinny karate shopped cut in half with his bare hands-YIKES!) and almond trees. We went to this beautiful stream and rested for a short while before heading back.

After breakfast Anat and I went shopping and then went home to spend time with Matan. Matan was on the Teen Mission 2006 and when it was canceled, he came to Michigan for a few weeks. We had a wonderful time together, catching up on everyone and everything.

The flowers, as you can see in the picture of Matan and me, are so beautiful here. The colors are vibrant...just like the people. Speaking of which, if ever you need to be away from home, Israel is the place to be. I cannot begin to express how warm and inviting everyone is here. While I still have a little less than 3 weeks left, I question whether I will manage to see everyone or see them again. And I thought a month would be a long time!

It's Sunday now. I'm back at the University and have had a long day of classes and homework. There really are 3 hours of homework daily. I wanted to work out but it got late. I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it; I climb 3 sets of stairs daily. In all there are 130 steps on these stairs and that's only on the way up to my class. I still have to go down them too! So instead of working out, I ended up going to a Druze village with a few kids for falafel and it was great. That should also answer any questions about how I am fitting in :)

One last note - the World Cup games are huge here. Not sure if I already mentioned that when I was on the bus the other day coming home late at night, tons of people were watching the games outside of bars and other shops. There's a large screen t.v. in the main area that many people are watching as I write. With all these different nations represented in the school population, someone is always happy with whoever wins!

Time to say shalom to y'all! xoxoxo