pictures

I added a few pictures online, most of them are from the last days in Haifa and Jerusalem.
to see more click here: http://foto.telenet.be/3042905107

Tel Aviv by night

The seperation wall

Jerusalem

Haifa by night



Haifa by day

Me and my girlfriend Lotem

And especially for Murten: The bargirl from last night ;-)

Haifa and Jerusalem

I'm in Jerusalem for the moment.
I have staid in Haifa till this morning, found an amazing nice hostel with airconditionned rooms, lovely.
Saturday Lotem and Efrat picked me up and we drove to the Jordan near the sea of Galilei. I had an amazing time: just chilling and swimming. It was also great to spend a whole day with Lotem: I'm totally falling in love...
on sunday I walked around the city sightseeing: Haifa is definatly the most beautifull Israeli city I've seen so far.
Then I realised I hadn't been to the olive mountain in Jerusalem, so I took a bus and drove up here.
I saw the grave of Jezus, walked up the olive mountain, enjoyed the vieuw.
Tomorrow morning I'm gonna go to Ein Gedi which is an oasis by the dead see, It's supposed to be really beautifull.
Thursday I might meet up with Lotem in Eilat, she's going to spend a few days there.
It actually all depens on my financial situation wheter I go or not, cause travelling is pretty expensive: I already spent a lot of mony in the last few days.
pictures are coming up

travelling

I'm going to travel through Israel for a week.
My plan is: going to Haifa in an hour and then just following my nose.
I'm pretty excited to see where I will end up.
very small contribution today, but I have to go.
I have to take a shower and go up to the pool to say goodbye to Lotem my new kinda girlfriend (yeah Aimee and me broke up last friday).
I'll try to find a cybercafe to write my pics onto a cd so I can upload them.
Catch you on a flipside

Adam his pictures

Adam has put his pictures online, so go and check it ou here : http://adamsalbum.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0QaMWrRy5YsX_w
Funny comments included.

Some examples :


That's right, I found La Chouffe in Tel Aviv: A party in my mouth

Chilling on a pile of carrots during work

leaving our marks in our new, self made Chil Out

exodus of the volunteers

It looks like we are going to be with 5 volunteers left for a long time.
Tuesday Mariana ( Mexico) left, se is going to study in France.
Next week also Nicky (UK) and Adam (Canada) are going back home.
This sucks, especially since Mariana and Adam were kinda my two steady travel partners: every trip I have made was together with them.
And because of this stinkin' war It doesn't look like there are any new volunteers coming soon.
So we will remain with 5 guys: Chin (Korea), Ramon (Mexico), Roy (USA) and Kyle (south Africa).
No Girls anymore...
I really hope this war is going to finish soon, because it really starts to annoy me.

We have had some rocket attacks again btw.
Yesterday around 11 am 5 rockets fell in our area, the closest about 10 minutes away, all hit the Gilboa.
And this evening the sirens of the kibbutz went off.
That was the first time ever I heard the sirens here on the kibbutz, normally nobody does the effort to put them on when rockets are coming.
So just to be sure we went to the bombshelter and played some tabletennis for a few minutes.
We heard the explosions, but they sounded pretty far away.
Tomorrow I'm going to Tel Aviv again, meet up with correen and her friend and have some fun.
That's it for today.

New pictures!!

I got hold of Adam's pictures and uploaded some.
Pictures of ou trip to Jerusalem :
http://www.telenetfoto.be/7153075186

Other pictures of my stay you can find here:

http://www.telenetfoto.be/8152065145

And I promised my friends to show them some pictures of the Israeli women, so here they are:

Correen

Yael and Lotem

and ofcourse my girlfriend Aimee

My new haircut

So check it out.

Ma'agan Michael

I don't really feel like saying much about my weekend in Tel Aviv last weekend since it's already a week ago and it's friggin' hot in here.
But I will write you something about what I did this weekend.
A litle explanation about how we ended up there:
Adam, the canadian volunteer, his sister arrived about 6 days ago in Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael to do Ulpan there for the next six months.
Ulpan is something like volunteering, but they only work for 4 hours a day and the other 4 hours they go to class to learn hebrew. It is not for free like volunteering, so they have to pay for their stay, although it is not that much.
Ma'agan Michael Is the biggest and richest kibbutz of the country: It Is located besides the beach, pretty close to Tel Aviv, between Haifa and Tel Aviv.
There are about 90 ulpanists there so that is really a lot, they even have like their own litle village!
This kibbutz is really like heaven on earth, the beach is gorgeous, there are so many international young people, It is really great.
There was supposed to be a welcoming party there for the new ulpanists, which we had been told is really kick ass every time.
But when we arrived they just had a rocket hit nearby which was the first time ever: It was the first time the rockets reached that far. The people there where pretty afraid.
So we met up with Adam's sister and went to the dining Hall (with a magnificent vieuw over the sea).
While we were eating the bomb sirens suddenly went off again, and to our big surprise almost everyone jumped up and rushed almost paniking to the downstairs.
What a difference with back home.
we just kinda laughed with them and finished our meals.
after that we heard one more explosion, but not as loud as the one last friday.
at night we heard that the party wouldn't take place because of the rockets, that's when we were totally shocked. What difference does it make if you are at a party or just sitting outside or even on your room: If a rocket falls on you you're fucked anyway.
apparently they are just totally not used to this up there.
So we went to "the Getto" which is a kind of a going out ally for the ulpanists: the people who live there are volunteers who have been there for several years, they just open their rooms and sell some alcohol, there are sofa's outside: so cool.
Most of the ulpanisists were there, so we chilled there all night talking with so many people from so many nationalities, what a night!
I even got to speak Flemish since there were some ulpanists from Holland too.
At around 5 am I went to sleep in a sofa outside of Adam's sister's room.
I woke up around 10 because of the heat, and then we chilled a bit.
The whole morning we could hear explosions somewhere far away, I think about 50 of them.
I still don't know where it came from, but I guess it must have been from the area around Haifa.
At about 2ish we got a taxi and headed home.
I really loved it there, it must be amazing to do Ulpan in that kibbutz.
who knows I might end up there one day, that would be great.
That's it for now, I'm going to see a movie and propably pass out while doing it.
Maybe a litle thing about Tel Aviv :
I had an awesome time there, we went out till the sun came up, met some great Israeli girls where we spent some times with: Adam even got kinda hooked up with one eventhough he has a girlfriend back home: the naughty boy ;-).
We also went to see Old Yaffo which is the oldest part of the city, even from before Jesus Christ, It was simply gorgeous! such a beautifull place white a great vieuw on the beach and the skyscrapers behind it.

that's it, I spoil you guys too much: 3 reports in a period of 4 days!
I guess you can give me some slack now if I don't write something for a while.
Eregtov

Katousja's part 2

As promised I give you the rest.
So when I heard that about the 5 rockets hitting the region around Afula I felt kinda strange.
I would have thought I would be Afraid with this news, but I still am not.
I actually felt more excited than I was being scared.
You have to realise that the rockets are far from accurate, that's also why they hit so close to the kibbutz, and also, for example: yesterday they fired about 200 rockets to Israel, and only 6 people died which made that day to have almost the most casualties in one day.
So 6 kills for about 200 rockets is not a lot, which also means that the chanse of getting killed by a rocket is also very small.
Anyway, So nothing happened after that friday till yesterday.
Yesterday I was working at the dining hall when Nadav came telling me that they got a message which told the people in the kibbutz to go to a safe place because rockets where on the way to our regions.
I first felt like going to a safer place as suggested, but I noticed nobody was there.
Everybody was still in the dininghall working and eating their meals, they didn't really give a shit about the message. They were all like : they are really not going to hit us, the chanse is so small, so why should we bother?
This is like the best example of the difference in attitude between here and home, really weird.
Back home everybody would be running to the shelters like crazy.
anyway, so I went back to work too, I felt kinda stubid hiding by myself and they did have a point.
So that they I heard 2 explosions, not as loud as last friday, so further away.
In the evening I heard they hit both Bet Shean and Afula, those are the 2 cities where our kibbutz is situated right in the midle off.
When Efrat and Lotem( two Israeli girls we hang out with once in a while) came around they told me they where shopping in Afula when they saw 2 rockets flying over their heads and hitting 2 blocks from them. they just kept on shopping...
So that's about the most important update on the rocket attacks the latest days.
I'll try to write about My Tel Aviv trip( which was absolutely awesome by the way) as soon as I can.
Now I have to get ready because we are going to Efrat's birthday party somewhere about 20 minutes from here.
Shalom y'all

Katousja's

since everyone keeps nagging about me not letting hear from me I write this post.
Since last Friday the Hizbollah started targeting Afula with their Katousja Rockets.
So last Friday after work we got packed and just left the kibbutz houze when we heard an explosion, about 30 seconds later we heard 2 more explosions, the last one being really loud.
Even the windows where shaking.
Although we didn't really feel much at ease we decided to continue.
At the busstop a taxidriver stopped and offered to drive us to Tel Aviv directly for 100 Shekels, which is really cheap.
We didn't hesitate and took the offer, also because we heard the explosions came from Afula where we had to take the bus.
As we where driving we saw smoke coming up from a field just after Kibbutz Gevah, so about 5 km from our kibbutz.
A bit later we saw smoke coming up on a hill just besides Afula.
Although the Taxi driver didn't think it were rockets we had the feeling it was.
And yes indeed, 10 minutes later we heard on the news that Hizbollah shot rockets to Afula.
Also one about 4 km from our kibbutz.
that's it for now because I really have to go now.
I,ll write the rest soon, promised.
Lailatov