KIRYAT GAT!!

Shalom,

So this past shabbat, before yom kippur, I was in Kiryat Gat. Let's talk about that.

SO FIRSTTT the summer before my senior year of high school i went to CHUSY's encampment, and each year CHUSY, Chicago Region USY, has 12 Israeli's from the Kiryat Gat area attend camp with us. They are juniors, so one year younger than me. I met a kid named Roi, a really great guy while at camp and we decided that if i ended up going on nativ i would come stay with him on free weekend. Seth also happened to host Roi for the week before camp started.

Thursday night, a bunch of us decide to go play basketball at the park, get back around 1030 and was asleep by like 1130. All good. Seth and I wake up the next morning at 9, pack and head to Eged central bus station. We caught a 1030 bus to Kiryat Gat which arrived around noon. Roi picked us up from the bus station. We went to the Kiryat Gat mall, a pretty cool mall not very big but obviously not a tourist attraction at all. There were only israelis there, very different from the Americanized Jerusalem. Roi seth and i got lunch at Aroma Cafe, the only thing that slightly resembles it in America would be corner bakery, but corner isn't nearly as fresh. its like fresh food but really healthy and yummy. mmmmmm.

After eating we walked around the mall and Roi knew sooooooo many people. They were all from his "Moshav." for everyone that isn't too up to date with israeli terminology, a moshav is similar to a kibbutz in many senses, but, as Roi explained it to me, in a kibbutz everything is shared; economy, social scenes, families. moshav is where everyone has their own jobs, some work in the moshav but it's not required, there are a ton of community things such as parks, security, etc. but it's not nearly as extreme as a kibbutz. his moshav is moshav shekef. shekef is a moshav that produces grapes. it also happens to be, literally, on the border with the west bank. but i'll get to that story later. ok back to what we're doing.

so roi's mom picks us up after about an hour an a half walking around and seeing people. its about 25 minutes to the moshav from kiryat gat. fyi kiryat gat is in the south of israel, a little bit south west from Be'er Sheva, which is south of Jerusalem. OK cool. we get to the moshav and our other friend from camp CHUSY comes by. His name is miki. miki, roi, seth miki's friend and i get into miki's car and miki takes us to what he calls is "the most beautiful place on earth." i was pretty excited. I'll post some pictures of what we saw as well so you can see.

We drive about 5 minutes outside the moshav, unlock some gates, drive on some dirt roads and up a mountain. on top of this mountain we could see soooooooooooo far! looking out, we could see from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gaza Strip, across the entire country. with that, we could also see the West Bank obviously and Tel-Aviv off in the distance, as well as some other smaller cities such as Ashkelon and S'dereot. We're chillen on top of the mountain and all of a sudden we see black smoke start to come out of the west bank. I start to freak out and say "ROI THE WEST BANK IS ON FIRE!!" Miki quickly comes over, puts his arm around me and says, "Josh, don't worry, the west bank is always on fire." That was.... comforting I guess. It wasn't a big deal, don't worry.

After about an hour of hanging out on the mountain, we get back in the car and return back to Shekef. We get back, its around 630, and we have an amazing home cooked meal by Roi's mom. Their whole family spoke English and that made things easier. After dinner, we met up with some of Roi's friends. We hung out that night with Ron, Shir, Shir, Na'ama, Jon and Gafen. We got to the park and three Israeli Soldiers that were stationed at the Moshav, because its on the border, were on break. So we hung out with them. None of Roi's friends really spoke English that well, so I ended up speaking more Hebrew than English that weekend. It was really cool, not just the hanging with three random Israeli soldiers part but my Hebrew got muchhhh better that weekend. Around 2 we went back to Roi's house and hung out. I woke up and the first thing I thought was actually in Hebrew, not English. Strange right?

The next we we just hung out with everyone again at the park the next day. Seth and I returned to our home in Jerusalem on Saturday, went out for ice cream for David's birthday, and called it a weekend. It was a great shabbat.

Enjoy the pics

Currently I'm sitting on the porch with Jesse chillen, he's studying for some test and I already studied for my ulpan test, but I should probably study again soon. maybe, there's erev Nativ tonight so that takes up time from 7-10, maybe i will after its over.

I didn't get my Jerusalem final back yet, lame i know right?

I'm still trying to get this formatting of picture thing down, I'll figure it out soon though don't worry! If worst comes to worst I'll just ask David.

Talk soon,

Josh