Yesterday, we had an optional trip to a place called Zichron Ya'akov. We started off the day with a visit to the First Aliyah Museum, which help me understood what it was like to settle in Israel in 1882. Cool stuff. So we spent a while there, and afterwards went to a park.
In case you don't recognize it, it's the same company and similar layout to the new side of Graham Hill. It's weird how something so simple as the brand of playground can make me feel so at home! We played around for a couple minutes, which was fun.
Afterwards, we had about two hours of free time to walk around and eat lunch in the main town area. Zichron Ya'akov is such a cute, very European little area. It reminded me a little bit of Leavenworth. There was a paper mill that we visited, and we just walked around and saw all the little shops and stuff. About ten of the sixteen of us who went on the trip had lunch together, at this nice Italian place. SO good. I treated myself to a Norwegian Salmon with grilled potatoes...
SO great! I love when I buy myself presents, especially when it's food.
After lunch, we went to the Carmel winery. I absolutely loved the tour because I learned a lot about wine-making, but also got to try five different wines. Our tour guide was really great at balancing giving over information with remaining engaging and interesting. I learned about the differences between red and white wines and aged and non-aged wines. At the end, we had this awesome dessert wine! I'm not even such a wine person, but I've tried to change that since coming here and it has actually kind of worked. I have developed more of a pallet for wine, and I enjoy it depending on what kind it is. I've always hated that chalkiness to dry red wines, and I learned a word for it yesterday! Stringent. Chalkiness = stringency. But I usually love white wines, always love dessert wines, and sometimes I can go for a red wine. Here's a picture of the red wines which I most definitely did not like. It looks super legit though, so I had to take the picture.
After the tour, I took advantage of the available price and bought quite a few bottles of wine for Shabbatot in the future. It was good stuff.
Oh, I spent Monday grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and working out... What a great day it was. Our room is so clean and perfect, and I have so much food available it's beautiful. Also, I put my crock pot to good use and cooked up a great vegetable/tomato soup which I loved.
In other news, my roommate and I discovered a really yucky amount of mold on the ceiling in our bathroom. The maintenance guy came today to deal with it, which is good. It's quite possible that it is the source of my repeatedly getting sick in this country, so hopefully all sickness will go away soon. My roommate has also been getting really sick a lot, so if all goes well it'll be gone asap. That's the goal.
I've been working out a lot lately, which was been da best. I've also been playing basketball, and it's getting more and more natural again. It's really different to play basketball now, after having put so much focus on boxing, because much of my basketball has changed a lot. Something I worked on in boxing is alignment of the body, and holding myself well. It was so awesome to see all of that work impact a totally different sport in such an awesome way. My shot, dribbling, and defense is so much better now which rocks.
Tonight I think I'm going to get some meat Chinese food with Adina and Emma, which will be awesome. My madricha, Shev, showed me this video, and it's cute enough for me to suggest it to you all. So props to her, and enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o
Have a great rest of the week, people!
No comments:
Post a Comment