Shalom,Another busy CAARI day and a great way to start the week. First of all the sun is shining and we love walking out of our hotel, looking to the right, for a view of the blue Mediterranean Sea! Our day started, of course, with breakfast and conversation about what we did over Shabbat! Some of us visited with family and friends, others went to shul, others went to the dancing along the board walk and others just rested!
All of us leave for our community service work in taxis in groups of 2 -4 people departing the hotel from 7:30 – 8:30. The children are so excited to see us and we are excited to see them. We feel we are making connections with them and see the progress in the their English conversation. Each of us has a different experience that we share with the group over our next meal – lunch – back at the hotel.
This afternoon we drove to an orchard in Rehovet to ‘glean’. And…glean we did – we picked over 200 pounds of clementines. We were assigned to finish picking one of the fields. Not such an easy job picking fruit – you have to gently turn the clementine so not to damage the stem. MMMMMMMM – some of the damged fruits had to be eaten by us – pretty sweet and tasty! We did a ‘mitzva’ today! Natalie and Ron thanked us for our hard work – they were surprised that we were able to pick that much fruit – and they gave us all T-shirts – which we shall proudly wear!
Our evening activing was a speaker, Nicki Maor, from the Israel Religious Action Committee. She brought us up-to-date on the conversion issues which has been controversal here in Israel and the States and Canada.
Another great day! Tomorrow – a day in the JNF forest.
Shalom,
CAARI 2011