After traveling across Eastern Europe for 4 weeks and spending the first two days of my travels in Israel going between Tel Aviv and Netanya, I'm taking things easy. Not TOO easy, mind you, just easy enough to get to the beach a few times in the warm Mediterranean water. I spent a morning and afternoon with Jonathan Korman at the Tel Aviv beach then following a group of Maccabi kids being led by Lisa Rothstein. Shoutout to good friends! The next day I booked a hotel room for myself and spent the afternoon basking in the sun.
The one really interesting (and less vacation-y) thing I've done is to visit Kibbutz Lochmei HaGeta'ot (the Ghetto Fighers Museum) with some Habonim Dror kids. It was really interesting to go back there after having visited many of the countries and cities described. The Ninth Fort in Kaunas had a diorama on display and I contrasted it with the pictures that I took when I visited 3.5 weeks ago. Very interesting to see something in a museum and in real life.
For Shabbat I returned to Netanya to spend time with Kvutzah Aseef, my friends living communally here. We had some very nice (and very alternative) Shabbat services and then sat down to a wonderful meal of curry eggplant and potatoes with sides of chummus and challah (and salad of course). To top it all off, we had watermelon for dessert. Just great.
Now if you will excuse me I must go spend some MORE time at the beach then go down to Tel Aviv for a rally of epic proportions. If you are curious to learn about it, click here.