Week at the Kibbutz

Hello all,

Currently I am stationed in Nazareth at the Fauzi Azar Inn. We arrived on Sunday and I have really enjoyed my time here thus far. We got a tour of Nazareth Village last night. Nazareth Village is Mennonite affiliated and it is a recreation of a 1st century town. They have people come in and work and dress first century and it is really neat. We even had a 1st century meal last night. We ate with our hands and made our own pita over the fire. It was so fun and the food was delicious. On Thursday we start hiking the Jesus trail. It is a 40 mile hike over 4 days from Nazareth to Capernaum. If you want to know more about the Jesus Trail, the website is www.jesustrail.com. So we will do that until Sunday, and then we will return to Nazareth for a few days before we end our journeys in Israel and head to Greece.

Last week we stayed at a Kibbutz. A Kibbutz is a intentional group living community. In the days when they first began they shared everything, and were very communist based. They are much more modern now, and they had a guesthouse where we made our home. While at the Kibbutz we were with a program at a nearby college, Oranim. Three days last week we went into Oranim and had lectures and toured and met with students. It was a really good time. We also spent a few days at the Kibbutz relaxing and working on our final papers for the semester.

On Friday I had the opportunity to help our leader for the week, prepare a Shabbot meal in her home. It a lot of fun, and very eye opening. The Jewish beliefs make it difficult to cook easily, as their kosher laws require meat and dairy to never interact. This involves the oven being cleaned after a meat use to cook something dairy. The same with the sink. And she had special dishes and utensils that were for meat or dairy. It was a pain, I'm so glad I don't have to cook like that all the time. Though, the food was delicious despite the difficulty in preparing it.

This may be my last update in Israel. I'm not sure if I will have time the few days back in Nazareth before we fly out.

So to all of you, I love you, I miss you, and I can't wait to see many of you in a short 3 weeks!

~Allison