Happy Tu B'Shvat!

Happy Tu B'Shvat (well actually it was on Wednesday but I have been kinda busy so hadn't got around to blogging about it until now).

Tu B'Shvat is basically a new years celebration for Trees.  It's also called Rosh HaShanah La'Ilanot which literally translates to 'new year for the trees'. It's a minor holiday meaning no time off school but it's super cute.

To simplify what the holiday means (because it's kinda confusing), Jewish law says that you can't eat fruit from a fruit bearing tree until it's third year of production.  But how on earth do you figure out how old a fruit bearing tree is or when you can start eating the fruit? By Tu B'Shvat!  (It's genius really).  You can only eat fruit which ripens on or after Tu B'Shvat of the tree's third year.

To celebrate the holiday, school kids in Israel usually each plant a tree, except on the 7th year becayse that is the Sabbath year (or something).  People also have a seder (ceremony) where you eat specific pieces of dried fruit and nuts with each of them having a different blessing.  Dried fruit has also been on sale for the last month and with special varieties appearing like sun dried apple, peaches and pear without added sugar and candied pecans (which are honestly the greatest thing ever).

The kids at my school also put on a super cute play and had an hour of activities relating to Tu B'Shvat.

MM x

I went to the coolest kids party ever today!

My host sister had her 10th birthday last week and to celebrate, she had an amazing race themed party today.  It was possibly the coolest birthday party I have ever been to!  This is how it went:

The kids got into groups of 5 or 6 which each group having the relevant coloured hand band.  My host Mum had organised six different stations.  The stations were:

1. balloon station: each group had 12 balloons that they needed to pop.  Inside each balloon was a piece of paper; 11 balloons had a sad face and one balloon had the riddle in it.
2. puzzle station: the kids had to complete a puzzle which had the riddle on it.
3. flour station: each group had a tray of flour which had 6 wrapped lollies in it.  They had to fish the lollies out of the flour without using their hands and then run them about 20m and drop them in a bowl.  Once they had all six candies, they got given the riddle.
4. bird station: the kids were given a puzzle with pictures of birds on it and they had to match the bird to its name.  Once they completed the puzzle, they got the riddle.
5. spoon station: the teams had to stand in a line and each kid was given a spoon.  They had to pass a small ball down the line with the spoons without using their hands.  Once they had got the ball to the end of the line, they could open the ball which had the riddle in it.
6. gross food station:  The kids were each given a gross food and each member of the team had to eat it.  The options were chocolate with ketchup, marshmallows with mustard, crackers with eggplant dip and mayo (not gross in my opinion), olives and sugar, apple and tomato paste and soy sauce and sprinkles.  Once each member had at least tasted the gross food, they were given the riddle.

The riddle which once solved, told them where their coloured flag was located.  The team then ran to get the flag and handed it to us and we gave them the next station.

The party was awesome! My favourite stations were the flour and the gross food.  With the flour station I literally saw kids face dive into the flour to get the candy! There was a cloud of flour surrounding the table.  We also saw some pretty dramatic things with the gross food station.  Some kids actually threw up hahahaha.  The photos I got from today are hilarious:

The stations

MM x

Buying pumpkin in Israel 101

I woke up this morning feeling all inspired to be healthy (after eating a billion and one pastries on our Jerusalem weekend) and decided to make myself my favourite veggie soup - pumpkin! Hurrah!  I walked myself to the supermarket but to my utter horror and despair they were fresh out of pumpkin.  Now, pumpkin isn't really something that you can really replace if you're trying to make yourself pumpkin soup, so disaster had really struck.

After reviewing my options (including attempting to make some sort of broth pumpkin soup sans pumpkin), I decided that my best chance would probably be to visit my trusted veggie man.

Now I'll admit, I've never seen pumpkin on his veggie shelves before but he really was my last chance if I wasn't going to abort my pumpkin soup mission.  After getting my groceries at the supermarket, I popped over to his store and asked him whether he had any pumpkin in the hope that it was out the back or hiding under a palate of onions or something.  And, thanks be to G-d, he replied yes and called his fellow veggie man (we will call him veggie man B for the purposes of this story) from the back to help me.

To my surprise, the pumpkin had been there all along basically staring me in the face under one of his veggie shelves and it was legit the size of a two year old child.  Veggie man B bent down to face the small child pumpkin and pulled out his carving knife (I am not kidding) as veggie man A asked me how much pumpkin I wanted.  A little shocked, I sort of motioned a decent square sized piece of pumpkin and bam - veggie man B cut me up a fresh slice of pumpkin and handed it to me upwrapped all ready to be taken home and turned into soup.  

So.... basically ... pumpkin shopping complete (of course I had my phone out the entire time to document this experience because it was too amazing).

I guess it goes to show that if you don't ask, you'll never know.

**pumpkin soup was a massive success.

MM x

It's storming in Israel!

Today, Israel experienced a decent winter storm with wind, thunder, lightening, rain and hail.  This, is a fairly normal occurrence in Israel during the winter butttttttt this was the first decent storm in a while so Israel sort of went nuts.

For example:

• There were at least 10 kids missing from each of my classes today because of the storm;
• Posts were all over Facebook about the death of umbrellas, whether people should go to work and requesting fellow ark builders; and
• News story after news story about how we all needed to prepare for power outages and objects flying through the streets.

In saying that, it did snow in Jerusalem which is only meant to happen every couple of years (and it snowed last year).  So schools and roads were closed in Jerusalem and they mobilised their fleet of 150 snow plows to take to the streets to clear the snow.  But in Rishon, it was just your average mildly serious winter storm.

There were no school or road closures here :( which meant I was at school today but it ended early because there were so few students (#lessstruggle).  It was easy enough to get the bus home but on the 20m walk to my house from the bus stop I got violently hailed on.  It was quite painful tbh.  Tiny pellets of ice coming at me from every angle.  I was legit running down my street holding my umbrella and screaming.  It would have been quite the sight.  And honestly, I'm surprised I made it home in one piece.

The after math of my near death hail experience

Tiny pellets of pain

I followed this up with a visit to my host families house for some much earned beef stew for lunch and a game of Jenga, the perfect rain time activity.

 

Then, after braving the cold to get home again, I baked some winter-inspired chocolate chip cookies, if I don't say so myself.  They were butter-free and had walnuts in them so were very healthy.

MM x