Israel had a nation-wide bomb drill yesterday. When the sirens went off everyone started running towards the doors. All 250 students had 60 seconds to get into one of the 3 facilities, and for the oldest students to get their first aid vests out of storage. The shelters were deep, many flights of stairs under the ground, and surprisingly bright and clean. Everywhere were piled books, boards, and benches, and the far wall had black and white boards. I was nervous and unsure what to expect, but it was more casual than an American fire-drill. As soon as we got settled one of the teachers started singing Purim songs, getting everyone clapping and competing to sing the loudest and silliest. The whole thing lasted only five or 10 minutes, and then we all returned to class. It was a clear reminder for me that the comfort I feel here is clouded by a backdrop of suffering to which these amazingly sweet and bright students are in small ways already being exposed.

Over shabbat last week Abe and I went on a walk in the fields by the river on the outskirts of town. The valley we live in is just stunning. Beyond the town stretch lush green fields sprinkled with proud red wildflowers, and sliced through by a river hidden by a thriving forest of eucalyptus. Beyond are mountains rising suddenly from earth, behind which the sun sets, and if you set out around 4 or 5pm you can catch some of the most beautiful views. We wandered through the fields as the sky turned from bright blue to dusty pink, listening to the howl of the coyotes as they awoke and began to call each other to the river below us, and watching as the stars began to twinkle, free of the overpowering light of the sun. Suddenly, we turned to find ourselves face to face with a coyote perhaps only a few feet from where we stood, a silent silhouette hunched in the darkening field. For a moment that seemed to last forever we locked gazes and my heart was caught in my throat, and then it turned and sprinted for cover under the trees. I know that they are more scared of us than we are of them, but it was certainly terrifying and thrilling.

My volunteering position in the farm continues to be fun and unproductive. I've made friends with a kind and enthusiastic man named David. He takes great pleasure in practicing his English and spoiling his daughter, who goes to my school and comes into the farm on the days I volunteer. Last week, David and I prepared a huge pot of sweet corn with lemon for when his daughter came. Then he gave me a taste tour of the herb garden, and we sipped tea made from the mint and lemongrass and practiced each other's languages. Somehow we got onto the subject of anise, a popular root vegetable here that is shaped like a hand and tastes like licorice, and when I told him I cook a lot but never with this particular plant, he decided he needed to intervene. Excitedly, he grabbed a big plastic bag and a knife, and we went out to the garden. He dashed across the rows, chopping big flowers of broccoli here, huge stalks of swiss chard there, a beautiful sweet potato, and 5 big bulbs of anise, throwing them into a bag that strained against its contents. At every turn I tried to tell him it was more than enough, but at this point he was on a roll and started back to the kitchen to throw a variety of dried spices into the bag, tossing rapid-fire directions at me for how to prepare this all in a soup. I got the distinct feeling of being a daughter or friend or guest much more than a volunteer. I indeed went home to cook one of the most delicious soups I have ever made, perhaps because the ingredients were so fresh. And today as I was leaving school I heard someone shouting out HOWS THE SOUP from across the school yard, and I turned around to see David picking up his daughter! I of course ran over to report back my appreciation.

Another day last week, one of my roommates and I were walking to the shuk (outdoor market) when we were stopped by the parent of one of my students. Where are you going? he exclaimed, as if we had the audacity to do anything but visit him. We have to make it to the shuk before it closes! we protested, worried about the time, but he wore us down, insisting that we sit down to dinner with them before heading on our way. They were so kind and funny, telling us stories of a woman from Cleveland that they managed to keep in contact despite the fact that they spoke no English and she spoke no Hebrew, and yelling at us when we put down our forks for any reason. They ended the night commanding us (as is the style with all invitations here) to come any time, and to bring our whole house to their tiny table. I am constantly reminded of the kindness and warmth of the people here, and how lucky I am to have a glimpse, however brief, into life here. Beit Shean truly is a special place.

A final fun anecdote- I have been going for extra lessons with my ulpan teacher to help me improve my Hebrew, but it mostly consists of her feeding me whatever sweets she most recently baked, and telling me about her grandchildren. She doesn't speak a word of English, and so when I don't understand a word and we can't figure it out together she usually calls one of her very fluent daughters, who more often then not is in the house and will appear from upstairs to explain it to me in English and then stay to chat. Very little work gets done, but it is a lot of fun. Are you sensing a theme here? Last week, I brought a roommate along and she was so pleased by the extra company she decided to take us to her neighbors house to pick lots of pomelos from their tree. It was huge, with fat low hanging yellow globes, and our 60 year old ulpan teacher started shaking it and shouting for us to run underneath its tangled branches and collect the falling fruit. It was so silly. We dragged home perhaps 20 pomelos, and took home 6. They were so sweet and juicy, with big smooth seeds like teeth.

Spring is in full swing, with every tree I pass blooming and smelling of honey. Our little rooftop garden is similarly flourishing. Some plants are surprising us with tender baby leaves, others with delicate flowers, still others are just starting to poke their heads out of the earth. We now have tomato, spinach, basil, mint, sheba, and a variety of flowers, and I am excited to continue to watch them grow. This weekend I plan to head to Jerusalem, and am looking forward to the change of pace.

Love to everyone back home!

Last weekend I went to Beit Shemesh, which means House of the Sun in Hebrew. Beit Shemesh is the sister city of DC, and so the partnership hosted a group of MASA fellows from DC this weekend and showed us a good time. It was a lot of fun, and we met some really amazing people. Some favorites:

Beit Shemesh is half secular and half ultra-religious, which means tensions run high and there are incidents of clashing and violence. The partnership has a project that tries to address this problem by facilitating meetings and friendships between secular and ultra-orthodox women, and one of the women allowed her experience to be documented on film. We went to this woman’s house and watched the film, and then had the opportunity to ask questions to a panel of both religious and secular women who were involved in the project, as well as the founder of the organization. It was a special experience- we really saw an intimate view of these women’s lives and the ways in which their religious views interact with their experiences as wives and mothers. It was amazing how little each world knew about the other, and yet they lived so close! It really is like parallel worlds. It was heartwarming to see fears and barriers get broken down, and to feel like, despite the deep differences between these two groups of people, there is work being done to highlight the ways in which we are all human.

Another impression. The greater Beit Shemesh area (Mateh Yehuda) is a beautiful area. It is in the foothills of Jerusalem, where David killed Goliath, and area is covered with beautiful purple and red wildflowers, almond trees blooming with tiny delicate pink flowers, creeping grape vine, and olive trees nestled into 3,000 year old terraces. It was a glorious day, full of sunshine and clear skies, and we took a morning bike ride through a little moshav who’s name means “Early Morning Wind”. We went up and down the gentle hills, making frequent stops to learn about the wildflowers and the history of the area, and then made our way to a cave! That’s right, I went spelunking in Israel. The caves are hand carved out of chalk, and were used by Jews to hide from the Romans. Climbing in was a crazy experience- the passageways are so dark that the faintest of flashlights illuminated the place, and so narrow that you had to wriggle on your stomach at times and pull yourself forward with your elbows. Each time I would look ahead into the impossible darkness and feel that I would never make it through, that they would have to send cranes in to dig up this historic cave and save me, and then somehow I would find myself through! Each passageway would spill us out into a wide room, large enough for many people to stand in. The sides of the rooms had niches carved out for candles to rest, and to this day people keep candles there. To stand there with your tiny flashlight and chalk on your knees and try to comprehend what it would be like to live there- it’s impossible.

A cool story I want to share- a few weeks ago we visited Sde Eliyahu, a religious kibbutz, and one of the few in the country that still operates communally (there is a trend of privatization over the last few decades). They have one synagogue and one dining hall, one rabbi and one doctor. Everyone, from the Naot factory CEO to the dishwasher, gets paid the same salary, and people more or less do things based on interest as opposed to money. Almost everything they eat comes from their own gardens, which are completely organic. They were big innovators in organic in Israel, and people still flock to Sde Eliyahu to learn from Mario, the farm manager and man that made organic happen at the kibbutz. They do a lot of cool things, but the most marvelous is their barn owl initiative. Barn owls are really good for farmers because they eat all the rodents, and at Sde Eliyahu they built lots of little wooden houses to encourage the barn owls to nest and raise their young in the fields. However, Sde Eliyahu is right next to the Jordanian border, and in the Arabic culture barn owls are considered harbingers of death. When the barn owls fly across the border, they often get shot by scared Jordanian farmers. So Mario invited a bunch of Jordanian farmers to his farm to learn about how they stopped using chemicals and converted their farm to organic, and when they came he showed them how the owls were helping his gardens to flourish free from harm by rodents. Thus started a long lasting initiative between Jordanian and Israeli farmers to educate and protect these animals and promote a lower-chemical method of farming. Cool right?

Things have been good overall in all of my volunteer positions. The pace of life is slower here, and people work less, of which I have to continually remind myself. I’ve been volunteering in a local farm, and I am there for many hours a week but seem to do very little. There are a lot of coffee breaks, a lot of time resting in the shade while the men smoke cigarettes. I worry sometimes that I could be doing more to help, but everyone is so grateful to practice their English with me, and that is indeed why I am here. I tend to speak a mix of Hebrew and English a lot, and I hear the most interesting life stories. Today I talked for a long time with the farm guard, son of holocaust survivors and twice married, whose children from his first marriage still do not talk to him. There is a lot of pain here, and a lot of beauty as well, and I feel honored that so many people are interested in sharing it with me.

I am halfway through my program by now, with only 5 months left in this beautiful and frustrating country. It has been a struggle finding ways to be useful in Beit Shean, and comfortable in my group, and to accept the lack of control I have over so many aspects of my life as a volunteer on a program in a small town. But I am looking forward now, feeling excited about how far I have come in my Hebrew and the special niches I have carved out in the city, and ready to make the best of the second half of my program. This weekend will be spent at home, relaxing and eating good food. The sun is already strong here again, and it feels odd to look outside my window and see summer, and then read about all the snow in the States. Hope everyone is keeping warm!