This is our Madricha (Counselor\Leader\Advisor), Noga, and one of the kids that she spent the summer teaching.

The view from my Kvutza's first seminar site, the youth hostel "Porriya". It overlooks the city of Tiberias and the entire Kineret (Sea\Lake of Galilee).

Our seminar was about the History of Habonim Dror and the roots of the Kibbutz Movement. We also explored the privatization of kibbutzim and its effects upon their communities.

A closer view of Tiberias.

The Ameinu program ended by dropping everyone off in Tel Aviv with several days of free time. On my family's last day in Israel, my parents hired a tour guide to show us several highlits from the north. We chose to explore the city of Acco, as it is where I will be spending the last, four-month, section of the program.

Sidenote 1: Acco is a really cool\unique city (one of the few to defeat the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte!). At some point in the future, I will write a blog entry about it. (Note: You may see the name of this city spelled as: Acco, Akko, Acre, or אכו ).

As we were walking around the old city of Acco, we came across an open door. Our guide, Shooki, had never been inside and seized the opportunity to explore. Inside, we found the home of a Greek Orthodox minister who had just moved to the region. He spoke to us about the history of the church in Israel and the Acco region and served us coffee.

Sidenote 2: It is considered extremely rude to refuse food or drink from any member of an Arabic community. Hospitality to guests is an important part of their culture.

After, his assistant (I do not know her actual church title) showed us around the actual church area. All the paintings inside the church were redone in the mid-1800's. Many other elements of the building were much older.

On one of the days of the Ameinu program, the group headed up north to kibbutz Ein Gev. In color are my sister, Sarah, and my mom.

Waiting for my parents to arrive at the airport in Tel Aviv, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Every once in a while, someone would lose their grip on their balloons resulting in this amusingly adorned arrivals terminal ceiling. Or, the "Welcome-To-Israel Balloon Graveyard."

What? There's been a post?!

January 15th, 2006 9:30 PM:

First, an apology: I am sorry for not updating the blog in so long. I was busy with my family during our vacation time. Since then, we’ve been on our seminar month and Internet access has been hard to find.

Since I last wrote on Friday, December 16^th, a lot has gone on:

• Each kvutza lead a sikum (final) seminar.
  
• Workshop left Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Hey! The first section of the program, called Boneh (where we lived and studied on kibbutz), ended.
• Afterwards, we had our winter Chofesh where we were free to explore the country on our own. Many people’s parents\families came and visited during this time. I participated in the Ameinu program with my family. Comments, photos, and critiques from this section will come in another post.
• Our seminar month started! Each kvutza (group) went their separate ways to different sections of the country. I will detail what my Kvutza has done in the next post.