Shana Tova!

This week was filled with tons of peulot about the kibbutz and our program in general. Some were decent but some were awfully droll. The most eventful night of the week was when we had our kupah asefa. It lasted a solid five and a half hours until the wee hours of early morning. We chose Tom, Miriam, and Noah as our gizbarim (people who facilitate the kupah structure). Our Kupah structure is going to be open (no spending personal money) with a monthly budget. Va'adot (different committees in the kvutzah) will request money from the gizbarim, and they'll do most of the spending. I think it's a good system. We'll just have to see how it goes. The next night Esther finally returned from the hospital after being there for four days with water poisoning (the opposite of dehydration with the same original symptoms). Finally our whole kvutzah was complete. To celebrate Esther's return, the next night Va'ad chevrati planned a really fun activity which I won't go into details about at this moment... Then the week gave way to a long weekend for the holiday.

About 35 workshoppers are going to different parts of Israel to celebrate Rosh Hashana this weekend with family. About 25 of them tried to board the bus from Ein Dor into Afula, where we could catch bigger busses. It just so happened that this bus only had 11 open seats. There's a mismatch somewhere in there... About 15 of us squeezed onto the bus and went to Afula. I had half an hour to kill before my bus to Haifa, so, with a stomach filled with schnitzel and rice as motivation, I set out for a schwarma at 10:45 in the morning. I boarded the bus a little too full and got to Haifa within an hour. While waiting for my great-uncle Barry to pick me up, some Israeli tried to sweet-talk/guilt-trip/low-ball me into giving him 20 shekels so he could get somewhere. He failed. After that encounter, Barry picked me up and took me out for lunch. In the course of two hours I had a schwarma and falafel. I love free weekends... Right now I'm just hanging around at his apartment. Later tonight his kids and grandkids who I sort of know are coming over for Erev Chag and then tomorrow and Sunday I think we're going to shul. It should be a nice weekend.

Besides all of the eating today, I was able to watch the first episode of the new Survivor season. Here are my thoughts: Russell is hilarious, albeit a huge d-bag, Shambo is very reminiscent of Rambo, and the producers have gone over the top in choosing contestants for the show who have nothing going for them except for their looks (see the three girls on the losing tribe?). I hope Russell stays around just to see how far his strategy will take him.

One of the things I miss most about home is watching baseball and being able to follow it routinely. I don't really think it's a coincidence that as soon as I left the Giants went from red-hot and tied for the wild-card lead to slumping and falling out of the race for the wild card. I haven't yet given up hope for them, but if they don't put up a good showing this weekend against the Dodgers, hope will be all but lost.

While the Giants are going down, Michigan football is on the rise! Watching the end of their 38-34 win over Notre Dame made me even more pumped to head out to Ann Arbor next year. Yahoo Sports called them a legitimate contender for the Big Ten title.

That's about it. I'm going to add a glossary for those people who don't know what I'm talking about sometimes (thanks Morriah). Shana Tova! Happy New Year!