Kibbutz Hatzor

The last two days we spent at Kibbutz Hatzor with my dad's mentor and his family. A kibbutz is a community that typically works around agriculture. Kibbutz Hatzor has farms but also manufactures metal components. The honey that they make is delicious! Kibbutz life is very different than anything I've ever experienced. It was sort of like living at summer camp. There is a dining hall that we ate lunch and dinner at on Friday. However, the food at the kibbutz dining hall was a lot better than the food I had at summer camp. Partially because it was hot. I made my first Hebrew friend that was my age at the kibbutz. Hila, Jay (my dad's mentor)'s, daughter. She is very nice and lucky for me, she spoke great English! I look forward to seeing her again. Jay and his wife, Tzippi, have three kids, Etan, Nadav, and Hila. Hila told me, children on Kibbutz Hatzor start working in 7th grade. She works in the baby house. A kibbutz has everything that a person would ever need, or at least it seemed that way. There was a store to buy food and other necessities, the dining hall which also works for meals, a community gathering area where meeting occur frequently, a gym and many other useful features that I can't think of at the moment. Because we were at Kibbutz Hatzor on Friday and Saturday (Shabbat), the kibbutz wasn't running like it would during the week. On Saturday, mom, dad, and I slept in and had a slower start to the day. But in the afternoon and evening all eight of us went into Ashdod. Ashdod is a town that is about ten minutes away from Kibbutz Hatzor. Ashdod is on the beach but because there was a sand storm going on while we were there, we couldn't really see the beach. Also, it got dark shortly after we arrived in Ashdod. Ashdod is one of, if not the only, city that had everything such as, sewers, telephone lines, other plumbing, and other important foundations laid out on paper before it was built. Now there are lots of big tall apartment buildings everywhere. For dinner, we went to Idi, a restaurant on the marina. I ordered cheese ravioli in an alfredo sauce. It was very delicious! The blend of cheeses was very nice. The alfredo sauce was also delicious. It was definitely one of the best alfredo sauces I've ever had. It was nice and creamy without being to strong or thick. The ravioli and the alfredo sauce combined was a terrific combination and I would gladly order it again! Today, Sunday, we left Kibbutz Hatzor and around 9:30am because we knew we wanted to go site seeing on the way home. Our first stop was at a the Soreq cave. It is a cave that contains stalactites and stalagmites. Stalactites drip down and form stalagmites. When the two meet, they form a column. And if the column doesn't break, the column gets bigger and bigger. However, this process does take millions of years. The Soreq cave was discovered by accident. Excavators were blowing up the area and came across this cave. It is truly amazing that the explosion didn't blow destroy all of the stalactites and stalagmites. They are very cool to see. For lunch, we went to an Arab village called Abu Ghosh. Abu Ghosh is supposedly famous for their hummus. We have heard from many people that they have the best hummus in Israel. The restaurant we went to was good, but they definitely didn't have the best hummus in Israel. However, their salads were pretty good. Our meal in Abu Ghosh wasn't the best that I've had in Israel. After lunch, we walked around Abu Ghosh. There wasn't a lot to see though so we left and drove back to Jerusalem. These last few days have definitely been some of the more exciting days I've had so far in Israel!