Gadna+ Rachel= Broken Bone Balagan

We left for Gadna Sunday morning.  The bus ride took a little over 2 hours as we headed down south to Sde Boker. When we first got to Gadna they split us into two groups, we met our Mefakdim (commanders) and put our stuff in our tents. The tents were concrete slabs with tents over them and death trap looking wire cots…. I actually thought it was a joke at first. They looked a little friendlier with foam pads and sleeping bags, but not really. We had to roll our tent flaps up every day and let them down every night. We also had to roll our sleeping bags and pack our stuff every morning. 

The first day all we really did was learn the proper positions to stand in, (achshav- feet pointed in a v with your heels touching and your hands in a diamond behind your back above your pants line) learn  commands, and go over all the rules about 1000 times. Also I broke my nose. They do this thing where they give you ten seconds to run from one place to the next, and in this case we were running to line up in front of the dining hall for dinner. In true Rachel fashion I tripped and performed the perfect faceplant right onto the bricks. Hello nose fracture!

The next day, everyone else was taking classes on the M-16, how it works, and gun safety. I spent the whole day at the hospital waiting forever to have a doctor look at my nose for 2 minutes. So that was uneventful.  That night we had a group circle and talked about our days and I made our commander laugh so much with my reenactment of the hospital. Commanders aren’t supposed to laugh at all so the fact that he was cracking up so much was even funnier.

Wednesday we did some field activities, like rubbing mud all over our faces and learning camouflage, learning army crawls, field commands, how to run from grenades, and all that jazz. It was actually so much fun! Later that day we got to go to the gun range to shoot M-16s… except for me because I missed the classes and they wouldn’t make them up for me.  So yey for them. The second half of the day was fun though, we did more field activities and classes and all that jazz. We also had a competition between all the teams with physical challenges like pushups, team running challenges, plank things, and other stuff. Our group beat all the other groups! There were a bunch of other groups of Israelis there, Gadna is kind of like science camp for Israeli students in 11^th grade (mostly ones with discipline issues, so not the best kids)

Wednesday was the same shennagians, we got to clean M-16s which was super cool though! The other groups went home Wed morning, so we ended up having the whole camp to ourselves! Thursday morning we just woke up, ate breakfast, packed up, and left. We woke up every morning between 5:30-6, which wasn’t as bad as I thought but the days were definitely draining!

Thursday morning I also messed up my ankle. I was walking across a row of chairs trying to get out, and they were the kid of chairs like in movie theaters where they fold up ( without all the nice padding though) Again, in true Rachel fashion, the chair folded, ate my leg, and the rest of me fell to the floor. I felt totally fine, laughed it off, and was fine all day. I even walked to my cousin’s to meet her brand new, absolutely adorable baby!

BUTTT my ankle was about 3 times its normal size so Friday morning I went to the doctor, still in no pain. The first thing the doctor said when he saw my ankle was “OH MY!” so that’s a good sign. X-rays were taken and the radiologist should have results for me tomorrow (there wasn’t one at the office) so for now I’m on crutches and in a big boot.

I spent the weekend with Arielle at Aimee’s so of course it was filled with tons and tons of delicious food, lots of sleeping, and more food. She played mommy doctor Aimee all weekend, it was adorable.

I also have a nasty cold, and I took some Nyquil before writing this, so you’ll have to excuse me for any mistakes. Hope everyone is doing well and breaking less bones than me! Have a good week! 

Winter Break!

I finished up my week in the Golan without much excitement. It was mostly just the same thing every day, but on the last night I did go see The Wolf of Wall Street with my second cousin and his friend (and if you’re wondering, American movies are always shown in English with Hebrew subtitles) 

Then on Thursday I drove back to Jerusalem and my parents were here! Yey! We spent the week just going around Jerusalem, we visited Hebrew U, took A LOT of trips to the shuk, went to the tachana rishona, visited the old city, window shopped in Mamilla,  ate a lot of falafel, took a lot of naps, and had a really good time. Also, Arielle, my mom, and I went to the place where the fishies eat your feet, it tickled like crazy! They brought me tons of goodies too, including my Christmasukkah presents from Stacey 🙂  There’s some things you just can’t get here… like Red Vines and chocolate caramel santas…. We joined my aunt and uncle, ALL the cousins (including 2 significant others) and Dalit and Tzuki (the family from the Golan) for shabbat dinner. That’s a grand total of 13 in their little apartment! But my aunt pulled it off flawlessly and everyone had a great time. On Sunday we drove to Haifa to visit with my dad’s aunt and Dalit (she lives in the Golan but babysits for her daughter Sunday in Haifa) We had dinner at Chen’s (that’s Dalit’s daughter) and i spent most of the night playing with her adorable 3 month old baby. Unfortunately, my Grandpa passed away on Tuesday, and so very early Thursday morning my dad and my uncle flew home to be with the family for the funeral. 

My mom stayed with me until late Friday night when her original flight was. We had a little Shabbat dinner with me, her, my aunt, and one cousin. It was little and quiet but very nice. The rest of Shabbat I spent at Agron (it was a closed Shabbat, but they let me go out Friday night for family stuff) 

Tomorrow we start Israel Experience Week. We could choose between Gadna (army boot camp essentially), an archaeological dig, or volunteering in Haifa. I of course, being me, chose Gadna. It’s going to be a crazy week but I’ll update you on that next week! 

Packing and Heading off to the Golan!

After finals, we spent the next few days packing our rooms up and preparing for break. Tuesday night for Erev Nativ a group of Nativers who have been working on the show all year preformed the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for all of us. It was actually really good! That night was also New Year’s Eve, so my friends and I went out to celebrate and had so much fun!  Once our rooms were all packed and cleaned and our suitcases were ready to go, we all departed to wherever we were going for winter break. Most people are traveling around Italy, Spain, Rome, London, etc, but I chose to spend the week in the Golan (we have 2 weeks for break, but my parents are coming next week)  The bus ride was about 3 or so hours, and my relatives picked me up from the bus stop. I’m staying with my dad’s cousin, Dalit, and her husband Tzuki. They have 4 kids, who were all here Friday night to see me, but left Saturday afternoon (except Nitsan, who’s 23 and lives here too) They live on a kibbutz, which back in the day was essentially a communist community. Everyone works in the dairy, the factory, the fields, etc and they all take what they need. An example of this would be that after their wedding, Dalit and Tzuki gave all their financial gifts to the kibbutz, but the kibbutz paid for the whole wedding. Community members voted on who could go on vacations when, but the kibbutz paid. Everyone ate together in big dining halls, and the kids even slept all together in a kids house. Today it’s not like that, everyone makes their own salary, buys their own stuff, pays for their own vacations, cook their own meals, etc. I’m up in the Golan Heights, and the kibbutz is pretty much on top of a mountain, so to do fun things, like go out to eat or see a movie, you have to drive all the way down which takes about 25 minutes. 

Friday night we had a huge dinner with really cool foods. We have Cube (coo-bay) which look like jalapeno poppers but are stuffed with some kind of meat, stuffed cabbage,zuchinnis, and peppers which were stuffed with rice and meat, and poyka. Poyka is a dish made in a poyka pot, which is pretty much a big iron pot, that you put over the fire. You fill it with rice, meat, potatoes, carrots, onion, all sorts of seasonings, wine, water, etc. You let it cook over the fire for an hour or two and you end up with delicious poyka!  We also had chicken, soup, salad and other not as exciting things. We ended the night with cake and turkish coffee (which they drink like water here)  Saturday morning we went walking around the kibbutz a bit. We saw the orchards and picked some delicious clementines, went to the dairy and saw the cows (and the baby ones!), and passed by the factory and olive oil plant, but neither of them were working because even though the kibbutz is not religious, the olive oil they produce is kosher so they can’t make it on Saturdays.  That night I went with Nitsan to his friends house and we went to a really delicious burger restaurant that reminded me a lot of the counter. Mostly just because of their crispy onion strings, but still. Sunday Dalit was is Haifa and Nitsan and Tzuki were working. I slept in and spent the day reading, working out, making lunch, etc. Really I did nothing. That night we went and hung out with Ntisan’s friends again and then around midnight Nitsan decided he wanted me to teach him how to make pancakes, so we made pancakes. 

This morning everyone was gone again, so I woke up and took a walk all around the perimeter of the kibbutz. There is a fence that goes around the edge to keep out unwanted animals, and the road goes along the fence so I walked around the entire thing. I think it’s around 3 miles total, so it was a nice walk!  

Once I got back I started working on a cake for Dalit’s birthday, which is today. Once I figured out all the conversions, the cake was fairly easy, but the frosting was a disaster. They didn’t have any powdered sugar, so I found a buttercream recipe that doesn’t require powdered sugar. What it left me with looked like soggy cottage cheese though. Finally after almost 2 hours of messing with it and adding more butter than Paula Deen herself would, and beating it more than Michael Jackson ever could, I came out with a nice, fluffy, white buttercream. In the end, I threw some persimmon on top to add some color.

When he got home from work, Tzuki made homemade hummus, so once Nitsan was home we ate pita and hummus and it was delicious! Now we’re just waiting for Dalit to get home and we’ll eat cake, make a fire outside, and make pita over the fire! That should be lots of fun! And maybe it will warm me up a bit… this house it so cold I walk around in boots and a jacket and I’m still freezing! The weather here isn’t bad though, lots of wind, but the sun comes up during the day!