Kibbutz Gal-On

We spent a month in Northern Israel and tried to really see a good chunk of it, even though there were endless hiking trails we could've explored.  But, it was time for us to leave the lush, green North and travel Southward to Kibbutz Gal-On, near Qiryat Gat.  We'll be staying on the kibbutz for 5 weeks.  Four days a week, we spend 4 hours in an intensive Hebrew class, 2 hours volunteering in the kibbutz community, and the rest of the time is full of various other activities.  One day a week our group goes on a trip to a cool site in Israel and once a week a speaker comes and lectures on an Israel related topic.  The weekend - Friday and Saturday - we generally get to ourselves.

The kibbutz life is truly fascinating!  The community of Kibbutz Gal-On dates back to 1946, prior to Israel's independence in 1948.  Kibbutzim were a major part of the movement in building the country's agriculture and framework for society.  The kibbutz has changed a lot since those days and there are people here from that generation to tell us about it!  The kibbutz originally was founded on very communistic ideas - everyone shared everything; clothes, furniture, cars, even gifts someone gave you.  New homes were given to those with the most seniority and children stayed in one house together so they could be protected as a group.  There were communal kitchens since it's more efficient to have one large kitchen than small kitchens in every home.  I'm no expert on the history they've been teaching us here, but I think after the Yom Kippur War, life in Israel started to settle down at least a little bit.  Life was safer, the economy was a little better, and people started to want their children sleeping in their own homes and they wanted more ownership of their possessions.  There was kind of a great migration of people moving out of the kibbutzim into the cities in Israel.  They were looking for better jobs and for new opportunities.

Moon pictures never do the moon justice!

During the last 10-20 years, the kibbutzim moved more towards a capitalist community - agricultural goods were (and still are) sold to support the kibbutz, but children began to stay with their families in their own homes, and people began to own their own cars and possessions.  Kibbutz members can work on or off the kibbutz and keep their own wages, they just need to pay their membership fee and taxes.  However, the kibbutz tries to keep the wage gap between the person making the largest income to a maximum of 5 times the income of the lowest income earner.  Back in the communistic times, no matter what your job on the kibbutz was - cafeteria worker, field worker, mechanic, daycare worker, not-doing-much-of-anything worker - everyone was paid the same.  Now, a human resources firm came in and gave each job position in the kibbutz an associated rate of pay and individuals are paid based on their job.

With the movement towards a more capitalist community, younger generations started moving onto the kibbutzim again.  The kibbutz is a great place to raise kids.  Kids can pretty much wander freely within the entire kibbutz and you know that they'll be safe and that someone you know is watching out for them.  What we see today is a generation gap between the original kibbutzim members who are roughly over 50 years old, and the younger members with young children.  For awhile there were no young families.  Now the kibbutzim are attractive to young families again and people are starting to move back from the cities.  But, many volunteers have come here throughout the years - many unique people with different backgrounds - and they end up staying in the kibbutz and becoming Israeli citizens!  We are finding how easy this could be!  The people in the kibbutz are so nice and welcoming, something you don't get in the outside, metropolis world.

Kibbutz Gal-On has endless fields of chickpeas (for Hummus!), corn, wheat, avocado, clementines, etc.  Plus, since our program coordinator has been here, they've figured out how to genetically improve their cow's milk production, to the point where the amount produced has doubled in the last 20-ish years.  They also have chickens!  Besides the livestock, the kibbutz is bursting with wildlife - bees, birds, gecko things, snakes, butterflies, and the local dogs and cats that seem to always be at war with each other here.  We've heard that some of the dogs and cats have been abandoned and kind of just wander around the kibbutz.  Some of them are so sweet, it's hard not to become attached to them.

My first-ever attempt at milking a cow.  Harder than it looks.  Cow - 1, Me - 0.

Chickpea fields and some of those sweet hummus makers in my hand!

Holy grasshopper!  Is it a grasshopper or a cricket?!  I have no idea, but it's way too large for my liking!

This litter of kittens hangs out on the roof of the daycare with their Mom.  Somehow they can get down, but I still haven't figured out how.

Our friend Yoel found a hedgehog.  He has some little, yellow flower petals stuck to him.

There's a pool on the kibbutz that we can do laps in and cool off in the hot afternoons!  We usually eat lunch in the cafeteria every day.  Thursday and Saturday night there's a pizza restaurant with delicious pizzas!  I ordered a pizza including all the toppings completely in Hebrew a few days ago, which was a milestone for me!  We get really excited to use our Hebrew and talk to the locals whenever we have an opportunity.  There's a South African restaurant, which is run by a South African chef who moved to the kibbutz!  There's a small pub in an old silo, which is open Friday nights. There's also a little market on the kibbutz with pretty much anything we need, so we rarely need to go into Qiryat Gat.  We can safely hitchhike to Qiryat Gat, since the only people driving on the country roads are kibbutz members.  Once a week we take our laundry to the laundry room and a woman does the laundry for the entire kibbutz in these giant, commercial washers and dryers.

Chilling at the Pizza Restaurant with some of our new friends in our program with us.  Sitting here, on our first Friday night, we saw a UFO!  We later found out it was a Russian missile test.

BBQ and Pool Party!

We went to a disco (dance party) at a neighboring kibbutz and had a great time dancing amongst the hay bales and silos!  It was also a great opportunity to get to know the members of our kibbutz better!

Jeremy and I have been involved with the community first with working and then during extra-curricular activities, like soccer on Wednesday nights.  I've really enjoyed working at the old folks home and meeting the truly wonderful people there, from all walks of life, who ended up in Israel on Kibbutz Gal-On!  Also, Jeremy and I have been working with a group of 8-11 year old kids every afternoon playing baseball, soccer, and American football!  I absolutely adore the kids!  They help me with my Hebrew and whenever I see them on the kibbutz I get a big hug!  Also, our program coordinator is the Mr. Everything Man in the community and Jeremy hit it off well with him since Jeremy is skilled in so many ways.  So, Jeremy has also been Mr. Fix-it on the kibbutz!  The more friends we make, the more links we find between people in the community - brothers or sons or sister in-laws!  Jeremy helped a guy move and we got to talking with him and his wife and we've been playing sports with their 2 kids every afternoon!  Connections like that happen every day!  It's a small, pleasant community here on the kibbutz!

Jeremy sewing the button back on his shorts, like a real kibbutznik!

Here we are helping Marty expand the fence around the cemetery, so we need to take this one down.

That giant, red thing is the pool filter!  Jeremy helped Marty move the pump and re-plumb where everything goes.

Jeremy fixing the picnic tables!  This was just a stack of used lumber 30 minutes earlier.

He can make one sturdy picnic table!

I have been loving working with the kids.  I get lots of special pictures, like this one!

Since we've been living in unfamiliar cities, it's been a new and interesting challenge trying to get a workout in.  We joke that every time we try to work out, something interrupts us!  But, it's always something or someone worth spending the time on.

They have free, outdoor workout equipment all over the country, including on the kibbutz!  The workout resistance on these machines is your own body weight.  When you pull the handles, the whole seat you sit on lifts up.  Our body weight really doesn't do much, but if I sit on Jeremy, that at least makes it a little more challenging for him!

Jeremy's working out with some weights we borrowed.

The ladies behind Jeremy just got done running around the kibbutz.  We're a pretty active group!

We play soccer with the guys once a week.  I'm in the pink shorts!

Here I am fighting for the ball with the goalie.

So, there's a dog here that I've gotten really attached to, and I wish we could bring her home to live with us and Macy.  We have called her tripod and snake bite, but those aren't fitting for her sweet personality.  Jeremy and I call her limpy loo.  She was bitten by a snake about a year ago and she doesn't want to use the paw that was bitten, so she hops around on 3 legs.  We've also heard a different story from every person we meet - the general consensus is that she was abandoned on the kibbutz and she doesn't have an owner (which is the story about many animals here).  She sleeps outside, which makes me sad, but it's always warm here, so it's not too bad.  I want to bring her home with us, but we don't think we can afford the expense of taking her to the vet here to get all of her shots, buying an airline carrier for her, and flying her back to the United States.  Also, we're not sure how traumatic that would be for her. She's used to living outside, doing what she wants, getting scraps from everyone on the kibbutz, and chasing cats.  We don't know if she would be happy living in a house with a fenced yard, in a place where it's generally way colder than Israel.  Life for a stray isn't so bad on the kibbutz.  A family takes care of her -  she's bathed, has a flea collar, and everyone here feeds her scraps.  So, for now, we enjoy cuddling with her.  We think about Macy May all the time, we miss her so much!