Day One - 23/7/09

I arrived at the Kibbutz at about 6am; it was already stiflingly hot outside - humid, rather than hot hot.

I was absolutely knackered, having deliberately had a very busy day before in order that I could sleep on the overnight flight, therefore keeping my body clock somewhat to normal timings.

That was before i found myself sitting next to a bitchy queen from south London.
'F', as we shall call him, seemed incapable of keeping any information about himself, to himself. He told me the ins and outs of his life - from his first year of uni until a job interview the day before, via his internship in LA. It turned out that he found himself on the plane to Tel Aviv because he had been made redundant from said internship, as a result of the Reccession, but he was glad of this because it had forced a final decision upon him.

I suspected a lot of it was pure BS, but whatver made him happy... what didn't make me happy was that he kept interrupting my attempts to sleep and watch the inflight film - literally prodding me awake or lifting up my earphones at some points - to tell me some further facts about himself and his future plans. When I - chas vashalom - interrupted him to ask if he knew what shomer negiya was, and upon admitting that he wasn't Jewish and so didn't, I took the time to explain it, hoping he would get the hint and possibly leave me alone. He didn't, and so I sat with one ear full of 'I Love You, Man' and one full of 'F'.

So here I am, on kibbutz. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting much. I have that similar feeling to last year - utter despair, mixed with ruthless determination, surrounded by crazy heat, trying to adjust whilst having had very little sleep. Let's face it - I'm all alone here, in a foreign environment with my basic Hebrew and in a place I've never been before, and I'm very, very tired and disorientated.

It seems the whole experience could go either way - I could really like it, but it's too early to tell. I could hate it, and try to stick it out for at least 6 weeks...then, if I do come home two weeks early, I still would have had a good shot at it. I'll give it two weeks at least - that'll bring me up to the time when all my friends start dribbling into Israel, so maybe that'll make it more bearable, and then I'll take a view from there.

I'm not working today because I only arrived this morning. The Madricha says I'll be working tomorrow, either with the kids in the Gan (Kindergaten) or in the Mitbach (Kitchen). I'm quite excited - there is a certain thrill at being on the cusp of the unknown and uncertainty - I wonder what the next few months will bring me? However, on the downside, and to be realist - I've little to sod all money, no sense of how to get anywhere from here, and appar all female volunteers on kibbutz get fat.

I'm going to go explore the kibbutz.