It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This

The army lifestyle was an eye opener, but I can fully say it is not the way for me. More to my liking has been the next and sadly last leg of my journey – kibbutz life. I’m living outside of a town called Rohovot, a 30 minute drive south of Tel Aviv, in a small community of families and a few random volunteers from all over the world that live, eat, and farm together. The volunteers live in two clumps of rooms next to each other and we have a hangout place – The Coffee Club, with a stocked fridge, couches, and mildly useful/ always-dirty kitchen.

During the day we wake up around 7ish and eat breakfast in the dining hall and are picked up from there and taken to work. We all jump into the back of a pickup truck made of more duct tape than truck, and are bumped along to the apple trees. The ride is treacherous. I’ve been informed that several volunteers have been lost due to the combination of a larger than average bump and the speeding pickup (joke I hope).
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Once at the apple trees we are supplied with clippers and it is our very important, kibbutz-life-could-not-continue-as-everyone-knows-without-it job to prune the trees. Apples grow in a group of five and there needs to be only one to produce a fatty apple instead of five babies. So I clip off four of the buds. All morning. For the last week and this week. Thank god we’re done at one. Then the rest of the day is ours to futz around with. The days are sunny and I am getting so tan. The kibbutz is a great place to run around in. I’ve biked and run through all the fields. We play soccer and make toast (toasted sandwiches are a standard affair here for meals, I love Israel – everyone owns a sandwich toaster), walk around Rohovot, and keep making plans to go to the beach of which will hopefully reach fruition in the near future.

Elections are on Tuesday and the country is a buzz in small scandals and conflicts among the candidates. Predictions still lie with Kadima, but only time will tell.