Rain and fog and cold!

Yesterday, it started raining, just as predicted. And it has been either raining or foggy or (most of the time) both ever since. Much of the time, the fog has been so heavy that we can barely see across the street! We did make it to Nahariya and back yesterday without any problems, though. I just had to drive more slowly than usual, especially in the areas where the fog was pretty thick.

Today (Shabbat), we're just staying home. This morning I fed the snakes, and this afternoon, I'm relaxing. This weather is now predicted to last at least through tomorrow, and there's even a possibility of rain on Monday and Tuesday. Much as I dislike rain, I have to admit that we REALLY need this, so I won't complain, especially since it's also bringing snow to הר חרמון Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon, the highest point in the country).

The temperatures are staying from just above freezing to about 6˚C (about 43˚F), at least according to the weather forecasts (I don't actually have a thermometer to measure them).

4th post of today's trip -- individual animals

In this post, you'll see pictures of individual animals. All of them are birds except for the last one.

We saw quite a few birds like the one in this picture. They were NOT too shy and let us get fairly close before flying or running away. Still, the zoom was very helpful. :-) I got several nice pictures of them, but this one seemed to me to be the best.

I think that this is the only bird of this species that we saw. I saw it fly over and perch in a tree, and, luckily, my camera was all ready to go, on maximum zoom! I snapped 2 great pictures of it, but I think this one is just slightly better than the other. Isn't this a beautiful bird!

This isn't the most common duck that we saw, but we still did see many of them. I thought that this picture came out exceptionally well.

This bird was standing quite a long way from us, on the other side of the water. Nevertheless, I managed to get this nice shot of both the bird and its reflection, again thanks to the great zoom!

I actually don't know if this bird was about to land or had just taken off. It was just a lucky shot!

Isn't this little guy cute! He's actually about the size of a small cat, but he's really a rodent, called a "coypu". They are originally from South America, where they are valued for their fur. For this reason, they were brought here many years ago. However, because of the warm climate, they don't actually grow that great fur here, so the hopes of the importers were dashed.

3rd post about today's trip -- groups of birds

Okay, now we get to the main reason for Agmon Hula -- the birds, thousands of them. According to the brochure they gave us, about half a BILLION birds migrate through this area every year! Here's a view of just a few of those.

Many of the water birds like to stand on tiny islands in the lake, like this one. Isn't this a lovely group of ducks? By the way, I have the maximum optical plus digital zoom on my camera to thank for this picture. :-)

Getting pictures of birds in flight is much trickier, though. I discarded at least 3 or 4 pictures that turned out to contain only empty sky instead of the birds I was hoping to capture. However, some did turn out. Here's a group of 11 birds flying together. I think that they may be cranes, but I'm no expert on this at all. In any case, they were LARGE birds, and they made a lot of noise, too! In fact, all the birds at Agmon Hula were making noise, and it was quite a beautiful chorus.

Here's one of the pictures where I got REALLY lucky!

This was another very lucky shot. In fact, I had intended to photograph this pair as they stood on the ground, but just as I snapped the picture, they took off. In reality, I cropped this view from almost the extreme upper right corner of the picture my camera actually got.

Here's another interesting group of birds. The zoom also gets a lot of credit here, since these birds seemed to keep far away from people.

2nd post about the trip today -- views of Har Khermon and Menara

In this post, you'll see several views of the snow-clad Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon) and of Menara, which is at the top of the hill behind Kiryat Shmona, right next to the Lebanon border.

So, here's the first pic, with Har Khermon in the background and thousands of birds in the foreground!
Here's a very lovely pastoral scene, with Har Khermon again in the background. By the way, the forecasts for tomorrow night, Shabbat, and Sunday all predict even more snow for Har Khermon, which is very good news, since much of Israel's water ultimately comes from the snow that falls there, and Israel is currently experiencing serious water problems.

Here's a view of the hill on which Menara sits at the very top. There is a cable car that goes up from the south end of Kiryat Shmona to Menara. We always get there by driving on the northern road, though, which is the only thing separating Kibbutz Menara from Lebanon.

After we had finished the circuit and turned in our cart. We drove a short distance over to bottom of Nahkal Kedesh, where we found a small park and ate our lunch there. Of course, I had to take a few more pictures. One of them is the picture you already saw in the last post, the one showing the cliffs through the flowering tree.

A little further over, there was a group of 3 guys who motioned for me to come over and take their picture. I don't really know why they did, since they didn't even attempt to get a copy from me. Anyway, here's the picture of the two of them who wanted me to take it. In the background, you can again see Har Khermon (which is why this picture ended up in this post!).

A trip to Agmon Hula

Today, we took advantage of the beautiful warm weather and the fact that I had no classes until 7:00 in the evening to take a little trip to Agmon Hula. This is an area to the north of the Hula Reserve that also features migrating birds. We had been there once before, but only to the parking lot that time, since we didn't have time to make the circuit. This time we had plenty of time. The circuit is about 11 km long, so it's a bit far to walk. Therefore, they rent out electric golf carts and various bicycles and other pedal vehicles. We decided to opt for a golf cart. In this and several subsequent posts, I'll show you some of the pictures that I took.

Let's start with various views to the west and south. In this first picture, we are looking south and slightly west. The farthest hill that you see is Har Kna'an (Mt. Canaan), which is the hill that Tsfat, where we live, sits on.

Here's Keren Naftali, a hill which is not so tall but is very prominent and very visible from many angles all around it. In the foreground, of course, you can see the cart that we rented, with David sitting in it.
Here's another view of Keren Naftali, together with its reflection in the lake, from nearly the opposite point on the circuit.

In this view, you can see Keren Naftali on the extreme left and the cliffs of Nakhal Kedesh on the extreme right. The tree reflected in the lake adds to the beauty of this scene, I think.

Here's another, closer view of those same cliffs. In the foreground in this picture, you can also see a building that serves as a "bird blind", for observing birds without disturbing them.

This picture was actually taken from a different place, over at the base of Nakhal Kedesh. In this view, we are looking up at the cliffs through a flowering tree.
In the next post, I'll show you some pictures of Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon) and Menara.

Hebrew cartoon cliffhangers

Two of our favorite Hebrew cartoon shows today ended in cliffhangers.

Will the Princess Neri, her little dog Mikro, and the handsome Chuba be able to get הבדולח HaBdolakh ("The Crystal") away of the evil Elgar who is also getting carried away by a giant monster?

Will המומינים HaMuminim ("The Moomins") be able to paddle fast enough to get to the ship ahead before the giant נחש nakhash ("snake") catches them?

We'll just have to tune in tomorrow afternoon to find out. At least our Hebrew is gradually improving! :-)

Attending a one-man show, in Hebrew

Last night we went to a one-man show in town called ניקול ואני Nikol v'ani ("Nicole and I"). The presenter was an actor who was once in a mental hospital, and the show dealt to some degree with that, I think. It was entirely in Hebrew, so I really didn't understand a lot of it, but the general emotional flow was pretty clear, and I did pick up a fair number of words and phrases. We really need to go to more things like this, because eventually it will help to improve our conversational Hebrew.

The new anti-Semitism

I read a really good article today in the Jerusalem Post entitled "The New Anti-Semitism". Of course, the ideas in the article are not new, but I think it's a particularly well-thought-out and well-organized presentation of them. Here's the link:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1233304849224

Enjoy!

"Survivor", Israeli style

Last night, we watched a program that we had seen many promos for but had never previously watched. The program is called הישרדות Hisardut, which literally means "survival" but which is obviously the Israeli version of "Survivor". Now, of course, there's plenty of "eye candy" on the show, as I'm sure there was/is on the original American version, although I never watched that.

Naturally, this show, being Israeli, is entirely in Hebrew. I caught some of it, but mostly I really didn't understand what they were saying. The part I got the best by far, though, was something that I'm quite sure never happened in the American version: lighting Shabbat candles and a Shabbat Kiddush, complete with the appropriate blessings from a siddur! Now, mind you, I'm pretty sure NONE of these good-looking young people were religious. I didn't see a single kippah on any of them, but clearly these traditions have survived even among the חילוני khiloni ("secular, non-religious") people in this country.

Snake update

A week ago when I was preparing to get the mice out to feed the snakes, I discovered that the heat was not working in the rack system. This is where we have been keeping all the non-adult snakes, the ones who are NOT "down" for the winter (i.e. those who are being kept warm and fed). Since they were not warm, I couldn't feed them last week. Instead, I had to move them to terraria, which have heating pads that can be plugged in. This isn't as good, because the room is cold, and they really can't get as warm as they need to be.

Today, after they have been back on heat (such as it is) for several days, I fed them. Nearly all of them ate, and now I will have to keep that entire basement room somewhat warm for several days to try to ensure that they have enough heat to digest their meal.

Replacing the rack system would be far too expensive for us to contemplate at this point. We had paid several hundred dollars for it years ago in the States and had brought it with us here to Israel. It is particularly useful for housing the large number of baby snakes that we get each year from our breeding. It's also the warmest place during the winter for snakes who are not yet old enough to breed and who therefore don't need to be brumated (kept cold without eating for 2 to 3 months) during the winter.

As we thought about it, we had to fully admit to ourselves what we actually have known all along, that we have been gradually losing money on the snakes, since we cannot get enough from selling the babies to cover the costs of feeding all the snakes year-round. The time has probably come for us to begin to sell off our collection, though perhaps we will keep 2 or 3 of them. However, it will probably take us some time to find a buyer or buyers. Hopefully, this will all work out to help us raise a bit more money and to stop the slow drain, which we really can no longer afford. I'll miss the little guys, though!

Wintery weather

The weather has turned cold again here. On Friday, we went to Nahariya early and took our friend, Cynthia, out to lunch in Karmiel. Cynthia just returned this past week from a trip to Australia. Just as we were leaving Nahariya, some very heavy rain hit. Today here in Tsfat it has been rainy much of the day. This morning, as I was feeding the snakes, I noticed that it was hailing for a while. Lightning and thunder have kept Kitty Katom a bit on edge. There has also been a lot of wind. The bad weather is predicted to last another day or too, as well.

Har Khermon with snow

In case you all those pictures of flowers made you think winter was completely over (despite the fact that it's only the the 14th of February), here are a couple of pictures of Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon, the highest point in Israel) covered with snow.

I took the first one just after I got up, at about 7:00 a.m.The 2nd one was taken about 3 hours later, around 10:00 a.m., just before we drove off on our trip to Monfort.

Flowers along the trail to Monfort

Here are just a few of the most beautiful pictures that I took of the absolutely gorgeous flowers that were everywhere along the path down to Monfort. First, some lovely lavender ones that are shaped like Greek crosses. These were very common there, and I've seen lots of them all over the Galil, as well.

Next, a very nice red kalanit (anemone) with a small yellow flower near it. The kalaniot (plural of "kalanit") are found all over northern Israel, including our neighborhood, and they are probably my favorites because of the extremely vivid red color. What a treat they are!

Here's a lovely sunny yellow flower with a shy little purple flower near it.

Here's a beautiful pale blue, crinkly flower with a bug paying a visit. I didn't even realize that the bug was there until I got home and looked at the pictures!

I saw lots of white flowers like these, but I think this was the prettiest picture that I got of them. They're difficult to photograph because they are so pure white that they looked washed out very easily.

Trip to Monfort

Today was a beautiful day here in Israel, so we decided to take a little trip to Monfort, a crusader castle in the western part of the Galil.

I took LOTS of pictures, so I thought I'd share a few of the best ones with you here.

First, a little overview of the scene. In this picture, you can see the ruins of Monfort in the lower left corner. The cliff on the right side of the picture is where Park Goren is located, on the opposite side of the nakhal (deep valley with a stream). In the distance, you can barely see the blue of the Mediterranean Sea. In the upper right is Rosh HaNikra, the extreme northwest corner of Israel.

Here's an overview of the ruin of Monfort itself.

In this view, you can see two huge arches on the left which support a platform above. You can see a couple of people standing there on the top. On the right side of the picture is a tower.

This picture is looking almost the opposite direction of the one above. In this one, you can see the edge of the tower on the left and the arches supporting the platform, which is in the middle.

Here's what it looks like up on the platform, on top of those huge arches. On the left, you can again see the cliffs of Park Goren, and on the right you can see the remains of a huge pillar or tower.

In my next post, I'll show you pictures of some of the gorgeous flowers that I saw all along the trail.

Our shrinking world

I've been thinking recently about how much our world has shrunk. When I was a kid (in the 1950's and 1960's), we often remarked on how small the world had become, but we could hardly have imagined how small it is now! My grandparents (my mother's parents) lived in Arizona and we lived in Southern California. It took about a day to drive to their place (as it still would, basically), so we didn't go too often. We also didn't call them on the phone very often either, because long distance telephoning was VERY expensive. We saved it only for special occasions or big news, and even then we very carefully limited the length of our conversations.

Today, I sit here in my comfortable, beautiful home in the Galil ("Galilee" or northern Israel) and talk every day for hours with people in many countries, mostly in Europe. I have students in Norway (one north of the arctic circle!), Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and even China regularly. Just yesterday, I was the moderator for a discussion group that included 3 students in China and one in Spain, all discussing appropriate meeting behaviors and the recycling of company waste products, in English! I don't think we could even have imagined such a thing when I was growing up!

Gaza war story

I heard an interesting and telling Gaza war story today.

Our neighbors' gardener, like many Israelis, was called up for army reserve duty and was sent to Gaza. He and his platoon were patrolling in Gaza City when they observed something suspicious. Although the streets were generally deserted, a woman began approaching them holding the hand of a small child. Sensing that somethings was not right, they ordered her, in Arabic, to halt, and she did. Then they told her to raise her dress, which she also did, revealing a suicide belt! After consulting via radio with their commanding officers, they had no choice but to shoot her dead. By killing her before she could detonate herself, they saved the life of the child, although, very sadly, she was probably his mother. They examined the belt, and it definitely DID contain plenty of explosives. The child was turned over to the Red Cross.

The haunting and pressingly important question is: how do you fight an enemy that resorts to such shocking barbarity?

Wildflowers, Caterpillars, and a Cow

This afternoon, we decided to take a little walk near our house. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the flowers are definitely beginning to bloom. Here are some of the pictures that I took.

To my mind, this is the most beautiful of all the wildflowers here in Israel: the כלנית kalanit ("anemone" or "wind flower" according to my dictionary). These beautiful red flowers beginning blooming early and continue to bloom for quite a while. And they are EVERYWHERE here in the North!

This is an extreme close-up of a big pile of caterpillars. These may not seem so beautiful to you now, but the butterflies that will come later are really nice, and we have quite a variety of them here, too.

Here's a picture of a cluster of pretty yellow flowers. In fact, most of the flowers blooming this early in the season are yellow flowers, including at least 3 or 4 different kinds.

Here's a nice cream-colored cow who was also out enjoying the lovely day.

This is a very tiny orange flower which is blooming now. On our walk, we saw hundreds of them. They are really very small, and this picture is an extreme close-up.

We saw quite a few of these maroon flowers blooming today, as well.

So, I hope you enjoyed the pictures. Actually, this is still early in the season. Over the next 2 to 3 months, there will be many more beautiful flowers blooming right here in our neighborhood! I'll certainly post more pictures throughout the glorious Spring season here!

Another trip to the Golan

Today is a beautiful day, so we decided to take a little trip to the Golan. First we drove up Har Avital (Mt. Avital), which is one of the highest places in the central part of the Golan.

In the following picture, looking north, you can see snow-capped Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon). Towards the left side of the picture, you can see Har Bental (Mt. Bental), the twin peak of Har Avital and our next destination. These twin peaks are prominently visible in the view of the Golan from our house.

After Har Avital, we drove over to Har Bental. Here is a picture of Har Avital taken from Har Bental.

Here is another picture of Har Khermon, this one taken from Har Bental.

From Har Bental, there is a great view into Syria. This is a view of the Syrian city of Kuneitra. This city was originally located slightly closer to the Golan, but it was destroyed in one of the wars. In the armistice agreement, Syria was supposed to rebuild it in its original location, but they instead built it a little further northeast. Nevertheless, you can see it quite clearly in this picture (thanks to the 5x zoom on my camera!)

Birya Fortress

Yesterday, we took a short tiyul to Birya Fortress. This is a fort near the north end of the hill on which Tsfat sits, from which there are some great views. To the west, one can see Har Meron (Mt. Meron), the highest point in Israel outside the Golan, and Har Adir (Mt. Adir), another peak just north of Har Meron.
To the north, one can see Bint Jabal in Lebanon, the town of Dalton, and the grave of Talmudic Rabbi Yosi HaGlili on a beautiful hill near Dalton. Well, actually his grave isn't quite in this picture; it's just to the right of Dalton outside this view.

To the northeast, there is a great view of Keren Naftali; snow-covered Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon), the highest point in Israel; and the northern Golan.

Warmer weather!

Yesterday, it was very foggy here in the morning, but today it was sunny and a bit warmer. In the middle of the day, David and I took a nice walk, and we noticed that many flowers are blooming now, especially several kinds of yellow ones. But the kalaniot (bright red anemones) are also starting to appear. I didn't take the camera with me today, but I'll plan to do so in the near future, and, when I do, I take some pictures to post here.

Watching programs in Hebrew on TV

Lately, David and I have been spending quite a bit more time watching programs in Hebrew on TV. Besides the children's show, a couple of which I have already written about here, we have also watched a number of adult programs, including news shows. We still both miss the bulk of what is being said, but I'm beginning to be able to get a very general idea of what they're talking about.

With the Israeli election approaching in just one week, there has, of course, been a lot of talk about politics. I've also seen a few of the political ads, which, not so surprisingly, are somewhat easier to understand (they want as many people as possible to be sure to know what they're saying!). There has also been a public service announcement about voting. The slogan is מי שמצביע משפיע Mi she-matzbiya mashpiya ("Whoever votes influences" - but, of course, it's has a MUCH better ring in Hebrew due to the similarity of the 2 verbs).

Speaking of the election, here in Israel, election day is an official holiday. Because of this, Berlitz is required to give us the day off if we wish. On Sunday, they called me and offered to pay me double for the hours I work on that day, something which I readily agreed to, of course! There will still be PLENTY of time during the day for me to get over to the polls and vote.

New favorite TV shows

We have 2 new favorite shows on TV. Their names are: פרפר נחמד Parpar Nechmad ("Lovely Butterfly") and דובי רופרט Dubi Rupert ("Rupert the Bear"). Of course, these are programs for little children, but they have cute stories, and, most importantly, the Hebrew is simple enough, clear enough, and slow enough that I can pick out quite a bit of it. Finally, I may be able to improve my understanding of spoken Hebrew!