Hi everyone,

My past weekend was pretty chill. On Friday I met Guy at the federation and we worked on our presentation for this Friday, about my Kibbutz and his Moshav.  After that we met Cynthia for lunch.  After the lunch I went to Shaare Emeth to organize stuff for my activities on Sunday, for Tu B’Shvat.

On Saturday I hung out with Guy a bit during the noon, in the afternoon I went to the cinema to watch “Little Women”, I highly recommend! In the evening I went to my Israeli neighbors for a dinner.

Sunday was a beautiful day! The weather was SO nice, I wore short sleeve shirt! I had the Sunday school in Shaare Emeth, had 2 classes with the kindergarten, we did matching game for Tu B’Shvat, I told them about the almond tree, that it is THE tree in Tu B’Shvat and told them that the meaning of my name is an almond. Then I showed them pictures of the almond tree and then we did art activity and made the almond tree flowers. I had another class with the 5th grade and there we talk about the saying that a man is like a tree (our roots, trunk-who we are, branches and leaves- where we want to be, our blooming) and then the kids drew their own tree and related the saying to themselves and then they made edible trees from chocolate icing and dried fruit. After the Sunday school I went to st. Charles with Guy and Reshit, the campus emissary. In the evening I want to one of my host family friends’ house to watch the super bowl. Was great and a very American experience, and I’m happy that the Chiefs won!

Monday was my day off so I used it to have a rest.

On Tuesday I had the ECC in Shaare Emeth, where we learned about my kibbutz! The kids love it and a lot of them said they want to live in a kibbutz when they’ll grow up :)

We saw pictures from my kibbutz, I explained a bit what a kibbutz is and explained about each picture, we watched a funny video about my kibbutz that was made for the Israeli independence day (Hachi Israeli Mishmar HaEmek 2017) and then we watched another video from a kindergarten in the kibbutz, and they were excited to see how it looks in Israel and to see something like they have, in another place in the world.

In the evening I had a lounge night with USY and we planned the Purim festival in Kol Rinah.

On Wednesday I was supposed to have Religious School in Kol Rinah, PostCon group and an event in which someone was supposed to talk about antisemitism and antisemitism on social medias. All were canceled because of the weather, that turned out to be nothing at all. I used this “spontaneous” day off to work.

On Thursday I had in the morning Tu B’Shvat program in the ECC at Kol Rinah, where I was in charge of a “dance freeze” station, there were pictures of dried fruit and Tu B’Shvat food in a circle on the floor, I played music and whenever the music stopped, the kids got to taste the food they had in the picture they landed on. In the noon I had classes with them, there we visited the last place in our trip to Israel, Jerusalem. We saw pictures, talked about Jerusalem, it’s importance and uniqueness, did art activity making the western wall, and then build one, drew our wishes and put those in the creeks in the wall. In the evening I had my Cafe Ivrit in Kol Rinah where we talked about the elections in Israel, how the system works and learned words in Hebrew that are related to elections.

Wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Shaked