MM: Week 1

** For the good of the order: Now that I'm at the kibbutz, life is (predictably) slowing down, etc., I will plan to write about one blog entry per week.


Today was a sad day at Ma'agan Michael, as one of our young men was gunned dead yesterday while serving in Lebanon. The kibbutz has ~900 permanent residents, so the community is small enough so that this has affected nearly everyone.

But the rest of my news is mostly good. I am more or less liking my new Hebrew teacher, who unfortunately has had to spend our first week expending her energies on a group of noisy Mexican ulpanists who compost around half my class. They just graduated high school together, have known each other for years, etc... but I think they have made some headway that bodes well for the next 20 wks or so.

The people here are nice, though on average they are younger than the folks from Haifa. Most are around 18 or 19, taking a year to do their own thing before university. There are Americans, but not an overwhelming number (as there were at Haifa), and most people speak decent to good English. The exceptions are the group of Russians, many of whom live next door to me, and two Hungarains, one of whom is my roommate. Here's a shot of me and Anita, my new Hungarian buddy, on MM's splendid beach. Sorry that we're stuck in the shadows...


















The beach here is worth at least another couple pics....



















Yes, those are islands in the background... and yes, I have swum to them.

















We have dogs here like Haifa/Jerusalm have cats. Except our dogs are happy [read: not starving].









I might look stoned, but I promise I was alert while exploring the kibbutz's full-fledged cactus garden. It was my first cactus garden.









Overlooking one of MM's famous fishponds, a cool Sea (to the right) Breeze flows over this spot. There are so many gorgeous perches here... and the other parts of the kibbutz -- i.e., where people actually live -- are beautiful, too. But that's enough pics for now.






Peace.