Tiyul

A tiyul is the Hebrew word for hike or trip. Today I took off work today with a friend of mine and we went on a hike. We started out walking through the fields of the kibbutz and then through some really pretty meadows and hills. After we ventured onto onto the fields of a neighboring kibbutz. The aforementioned meadows looked like this:

After that we hit the highway and walked for a bit along until turning onto another highway. At this point it was raining quite heavily, but that would never dampen our spirits. We continued going on the highway for a solid two hours before we found the stream we were looking for. Named Nachal Kibbutzim, the stream is a cute little stream with some trees and picnic spots around it. On one tree we found a little swing that looks like this:

After we hung out around the stream we followed it across the highway and then stayed right next to the stream until it ran into the ancient ruins of Beit Sha'an. Unfortunately the gate to the ruins were closed so we were forced to jump the fence. The ruins are from roughly 5000 BCE and were controlled by Romans, Israelites, Egyptians, Crusaders, and more. They were amazingly intact and there was also the biggest amphitheater in the middle east.





We walked through the ruins and then out the entrance without anyone noticing the illegality of our visit. We walked to a shwarma restaurant, had lunch, and went home. All in all we were walking for about 6 hours starting at 10 in the morning. It was a really fun tiyul and I'm thinking I'll take another impromptu tiyul next week.
I have one more week of kibbutz life before I go on a Poland trip for 9 days. Then I'll be moving into an apartment in Bat Yam, a city south of Tel Aviv, where I'll be doing community service and taking Hebrew classes, Ulpan.
Right now I am really enjoying being on this kibbutz. It's a lot of fun and it's a very relaxed atmosphere if you don't mind doing hard work with people who don't speak English.