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Showing posts from December, 2009

So, what have I been up to lately?

Considering I haven't added a post to this blog in way to long, I fully expect to have been really busy with what life has thrown my way. That isn't really true. For while I have tried to take a trip every weekend (more on those in a bit), most of my time has been spent working in the dining room of the Kibbutz, operating a dishwasher and other souse chef obligations. Yes, I rather prefer the term souse chef over dishboy, even though I'll be neither in ten days. 'Cause in ten days lambing season begins and given my extraordinary experience with animals *cough, cough* I managed to wrangle a job as a midwife. It's gonna be totally awesome! But now to the weekends and what spectacular places I've seen so far. In short: The Golan Heights The Sea of Galilee Castle Nimrod (most awesome castle name ever!) Nazareth (on Christmas Day, ha!) River Jordan The country Jordan (though only from a distance) Lebanon (same as Jordan) Syria (ditto) And come Friday I'll be hea

Kibbutz Geva

That would be the name where I'm currently living. It's a pretty small Kibbutz with around 650 kibbutzim (that would be folks who live there full time), a bunch of people who only work there and about 20 volunteers (that would include your own personal Icelandic writer dude, aka me). It's located just south of Nazareth, about 15 km from the Jordanian border, overlooking mount Gilsomethingorother. It's in the Bible, look it up if you want to. I'm gonna try to hike up it on Saturday and then I promise to find out what it's actually called. Geva makes its living from a big-ass factory that makes something with air-pressure-valves; also they have orange groves, almond trees, about 700 cows, 50 horses, tons of sheep, scores of cats and heaps of dogs (a heap would be aproxomately 5 scores if you're interested). But let's focus on the dogs this time. Dogs are, after all, the single most leet animal in the world... maybe excluding hippos. But as there are no hip

Morning walk

I took a walk around the Kibbutz this morning and saw "everything". Everything ranging from the library (with a memorial room) to the lamb-pens. The latter is much cooler according to your own personal Icelandic reporting guy. We (I and a french guy who also arrived yesterday) saw that they had put the calfs in their own little pens and he showed me the coolest trick! If you reach out like three fingers the calfs start sucking and licking them. It felt really friggnn awesome and waay cool to this city slicker. And the same thing with all the little lambs (no worries, they're still too small for my killing instincts to set in). Animals are great! But then, as we had decided to take the scenic rounabout way back to our place, we walked past this grapefruit tree and noticed that it was fruiting (blooming?). So simple as that, we picked us a fresh grapefruit straight from the tree... man! It was the best piece of fruit I've ever had. Life really is great!

Landat i Israel

Får bli på engelska, eftersom jag kände för det: After far too many hours in the sky, stuck in a crammed airplane, eating lame food, not getting any beers and neither many hours of sleep, I finally touched down in Tel Aviv at around 4.30 this morning (local time, whatever that's called). As I've just walked out of the plane, this guy in a funny red beard, wearing a vest with something written in weird characters on it, asks me if he can ask me some questions. I, having just woken up from the aforementioned far too few hours of sleep, manage to grunt out a "sure" after which he swings into full action... first asking to see my passport, tickets, travel itinerary (spelling?), why I'm here, what I'm gonna do, what my shoe size is, why I'm wearing hiking boots and probably several thousand more questions. Apparently he's not to amuzed with my muttered answers and asks me to follow him somewhere else. Somewhere else turns out to be next to the passport con