Israel Jan 19

I slept like a baby and woke up energized at 6:30. So to waste the time until 7:00 I roamed around the kibbutz and found an amazing view of a valley leading into the Sea of Galilee. We then ate breakfast which consisted of many different veggies and yogurts, pudding, hard-boiled and scrambled eggs. Yum yum in my tum tum. We then sat through one of many of Chen’s inspirational, very informative talks with thrice repeated and over emphasized points and the lack of ability to condense a story into the normal human length. But don’t let that sentence fool you, Chen knows his stuff and is the best tour guide I could have ever imagined having. The reason we had this talk at the kibbutz is because it was raining and we couldn’t do the hike we were supposed to do. After the talk we headed to Tzfat, the Jewish mysticisms place. It was foggy but a nice little quaint place on top of a mountain, which would have had a gorgeous view if we could see more than 10 feet in front of us. We had a presentation by an artist who is from the US but moved to Tzfat 30 years ago to learn more about the Kabbalah. His artistic talent was good but nothing to write home about, but he explained Kabbalah through and in his work which made the pictures 10X more interesting. He was a little creepy because it seemed like a spirit would take him over for seconds at a time and send him into a blank stare that would burn a hole in the back wall. After the artist we went to a synagogue. Walking into the synagogue I got yelled at by this little old man for having nothing on my head, so he gave me a kippah. On the way out he was begging for money from everybody, but for some reason he didn’t ask me. Luck shows its face in many forms. After the synagogue we at lunch. I had a chicken shwarma in pita with hummus and this weird sweet/spicy sauce. It was actually quite delicious. After Tzfat we left to Yraon winery for a tour and tasting. I was tempted to get Dad a drinking wine at the shop and Jake a cooking wine. I then realized not only that I don’t know the difference, but I know nothing at all about wine in general. So there goes that. We took a tour with a lady guide who told us about everything. The best part was the barrels and how they were stored. For some reason that room seemed cool to me. We also watched a movie about the company that was absurdly cheesy, with a man (I would personally categorize him as a tool from my first impression) smelling and tasting wine and a random girl in a red dress dancing all over the screen. After that we went back to the kibbutz and ate dinner. After dinner I played cards with Viktoria, Dan and Eugene. Viktoria taught us “fool”, a Russian card game that I can’t remember the Russian name for. We played for a while and then headed to the bar where most others were for a couple minutes before heading back to hit the hay.