Yerucham to Afula to Yonatan and Back Again

Thursday morning I cleaned up around the Yerucham Lake and then headed off to Afula. I stopped in Be'er Sheva for an hour to get a connecting bus and I made best friends with a soldier girl and we sat next to each other on the bus and chatted the ride away. I got into Afula around five and Meir and his dad, Fred, picked me up. We spent the night with relatives of theirs in a gorgeous suburb overlooking the valley. Everything was green and healthy, you could see for miles and miles, and there was even a cat I could pet and play with!

On Friday, we explored Afula a lil bit, picked up Yael and David, visited Kibbutz Merhavia and saw where Golda Meir spent some of her younger years working and living, and made a quick stop at a shopping mall. After lunch, five of us packed into the compact car and piled it high with backpacks and suitcases. We drove along a very scenic route around the Kinneret and stopped in pretty places to take pictures. Finally we arrived at Moshav Yonatan, where Yael's sister's family lives, and we spent Shabbat there.

Everything was delicious, fun, friendly, comfortable, beautiful. The Golan is like a different country compared to Yerucham, and it was great to spend 24 hours immersed in greenery, fog, and heavy gray clouds. There were also four incredibly adorable children to play with, which is always fun.

The ride home motzei Shabbat was pretty crazy as far as Israel standards go--traveling from the Golan to Yerucham in one fell swoop is as far as you can get. We left at 8:23 pm and I stepped foot in the apartment around 1 am. Not far for upstate New Yorkers, but in terms of Israel, we saw half the country last night.

Today we all woke up around 11 and started vigorously cleaning the apartment for pesach and kashering countertops, sinks, tables, pots, stovetops, the whole shebang. It has been good for our apartment but it is difficult to evenly divide up work; everyone takes a break once in a while and says, someone else has to finish it, I've been doing the whole thing! Anyway, we're just about done now, and then we're going to have pizza in the park tonight. Tomorrow, I am off to Sa'ad for my first Yemenite seder and then I don't know what I'm doing for a few days and then I am hiking up north and then spending Shabbat with Elkana's parents, and then hiking again and spending second chag in Jerusalem at JJ's. Check back in a week to see how everything played out!

חג שמח!!!!!