aka: the biggest waste of a week ever (by unanimous consensus)

It wasn't all bad, though. We stayed at the King Solomon hotel for shabbat, which had much better accommodations than Beit Nativ (including food). In the end though, this week has already proven to be filled with quality nap time.

We were joined by the director of USY, Jules Gutin, who is notorious for putting people to sleep by talking for extended periods of time. On friday night, we had a program on what we believed conservative Judaism was about (egalitarianism, and "tradition and change" according to plurality vote), and you could just look around the room and see unconcious people everywhere.

The next day, we had 4/7 elective seminars on leadership. My courses dealt with different leadership models, humor, and another session with Jules Gutin on conservative Judaism. By the end of the day, I had learned absolutely nothing new, but had gotten some valuable nap time.

As usual, the food at Beit Nativ is sub-par, especially after the food at King Solomon.

And now, a little about last Thursday on the Kibbutz:

I was assigned to work for the day with a truck driver who was transporting reels of irrigation tubing to a farm near Ashkelon. We drove 4 truckloads there, and I helped unload each one. Here is a snopsis of what happened:

1 - We are greeted by the Bedouin workers there. The driver gets out, and a ferw minutes later, one of the Bedouins comes up to my door of the truck with a cup of tea on a platter. After I had finished, the driver came back, and we delivered the first load. 

2 - The people in charge of the sheep were herding them out to graze. It just so happened that they were leading the sheep right across the road we were supposed to drive on. Imagine sitting in a truck in the middle of a massive herd of sheep, and that's what happened. A few times, one of the smaller ones would escape from the pen that they were supposed to stay in, and the Bedouins took them and threw them back in.

3 - On our way into the farm, we see four helecopters heading directly towards Gaza. Half an hour later, we hear a big boom (which apparently shook some of the buildings back on the kibbutz). The driver points south, and says to me "Gaza."

4 - Last one of the day. Nothing eventful happened on the shipment itself, but afterwards, I was driven back (in a small truck) to my caravan on a dirt path that I didn't even know existed.