ni hao, it's nika on tour: 2016-04-24

Hey world,

my next adventurous trip began. After being 7 months to Asia working as a model and traveling the metropolises Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta and Singapore and the nature all around, of what I piblished blogposts every week, I decided to do something completely different. I wanted to gain another experience in a field I've never worked in such as helping people in need and challenge myself by doing that and see where my limits are.

As I was in Israel a year ago with the organisation Taglit where I travelled the country from North to South in 10 days (if you're interested reread my post about it here: Taglit 2015 ), I fell in love with the country and wished to come back for some more time or even live here for a bit.

Now, I live in Petah Tikwa, a city close to Tel Aviv together with other girls from Germany and volunteer with them in Ramat Hasharon caring for autistic people. In our free time we travel the country and walk around Tel Aviv relaxing at the beach or sitting in Cafés and bars.

The first days were really hard for me because I never had to deal with people such as these and was shocked when I saw them first and scared that I won't manage it. In addition they don't understand English and I felt even more disable then them when I couldn't express my thoughts and things I want them to do. But from day to day lerning on my own and with the help of my nice roommates and co-workers I learned the most important commands quickly and started to understand more of Hebrew.

In my first month I walked around Tel Aviv-Jaffa a lot. I discovered a lot of beautiful corners of the city, made a few bars and cafés to my favourites and made up nice routes all around the best places that I will walk when I have the mood to. For example, if I have a free morning and just work from 3pm up to 9pm, I go hungrily to the city to do sports on the fitness machines at the parks or beaches and then run around a bit until I find a nice café to have lunch before going to work. If I have the morning shift I take all my bathing stuff with me and go for a swim after work and stay over for long walks and drinks information the evening at the famous bars where a lot of young people from all over the world meet each other. For now, my favourite night is "Blues and Booz" at "Pasaz" on Sundays where I fell in love with the Music. Moreover, we do picnics at the beach with typical Israeli tapas like Pita bread, matzah, humus and several fruits and vegetables. By doing all that besides the work I have a good compensation of obligations and free time.

I also have some friends and relatives outside of my work and spend time with them too. The half-brother of my mom and his brother live very close to Tel Aviv and work here.

One of the highlights of this month was when my half uncle, his girlfriend and their little son took me to the very traditional dinner of Passover ("Pessach"), called the "Seder" night where the whole Jewish family of his foster mother came together to celebrate it. The importance of that evening is comparable with Christmas in the Christian religion where he whole family comes together too, gives each other presents and eats traditional food. In addition, the strongly religious people pray before they eat. The Jews even have rules of how the food is supposed to be eaten, so it needs to be kosher. For example kosher food is when diary products are eaten separately from meet, with a minimum of a 6 hours break in between. The rules during the Passover are even more strict for several reasons. The following information is partly taken from chabad.org

Pessach commemorates the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. By following the rituals of Passover, the Jews have the ability to relive and experience the true freedom that their ancestors gained.

From midday of the day before Passover until the conclusion of the holiday, the religious Jews don't eat or even retain in their possession any chametz.

They do it to commemorate the unleavened bread that the Israelites ate when they left Egypt. Chametz means leavened grain—any food or drink that contains even a trace of wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt or their derivatives, and which wasn’t guarded from leavening or fermentation. This includes bread, cake, cookies, cereal, pasta and most alcoholic beverages.

Instead of chametz, they eat matzah ("Jewish bread")—flat unleavened bread, which is think is very tasty on every normal day too, so I usually always have it at home. It is a mitzvah to partake of matzah on the two Seder nights and during the rest of the holiday it is optional.

The highlight of Passover is the Seder, observed on each of the first two nights of the holiday. The Seder is a fifteen-step family-oriented tradition and ritual-packed feast.

The focal points of the Seder are:

• Eating matzah

• Eating bitter herbs—to commemorate the bitter slavery endured by the Israelites.

• Drinking four cups of wine or grape juice—a royal drink to celebrate their newfound freedom.

• The recitation of the Haggadah, a liturgy that describes in detail the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

The Haggadah is the fulfillment of the biblical obligation to recount to their children the story of the Exodus on the night of Passover.

I had the huge luck to take part in the first Seder, on the first night of Pessach and we went through all the focal points even though the family is not that religious (they don't eat kosher except for eating the matzah). I really enjoyed this night in the beautiful city of Nahariya in the north of Israel. We stayed over for night in a Moshav, a type of Israeli town or settlement, that is similar to a kibbutz with an emphasis on community labour. It is a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms.

The morning afterwards was beautiful too: we had a huge breakfast all together with typical Israeli food. Which is small plates with a lot of different choices of spread and tapas that you can put on your matzah and different kinds of omelettes. Afterwards I collected a few fruits from the trees such as Shesak, small orange fruits with several seeds inside, very sweet. Closer to the noon we drove over to the the beach side of Nahariya to walk a bit with my 1,2 year old half-cousin, eat ice cream and breathe in the fresh sea breeze and relax before they brought me back to work again.

Another highlight this month was when of of my first friends from work and her Israeli friend took me to the north, to the Sea of Galilei where the Jordan river flows. Much of the ministry of Jesus occurred on the shores of Lake Galilee. He showed us a quite small hidden place where we could lie down and catch the sun in the pure nature. We had a bottle of wine 30 degrees and freshwater to splash in.

On yom shishi (Friday), the last day of Pessach a friend wrote me. He is a soldier, now even officer and accompanied the Taglit group last year where i met him. He learned German of his own accord and speaks it fluently now. He and 5 of his friends planned a trip to a party in the north and a hiking day on Shabbat (Saturday). He offered me to join and I could take my roommate and her two friends visiting her from Germany for a week. So we were 10 in total and 2 full cars. We drank wine and bear and drove to in Yodfat, a Kibbutz in Misgaw. The party was great, it was private and open air with lots of young people from all around the Kibbutz. We were dancing a lot and had fun until 3 am. The two sober drivers brought us to a place where we could build up our tents and fall asleep like stones under the open sky around 5. As it started to get hot at 9am we woke up and the guys already cooked the famous Israeli meal called " Shakshuka" what is a hot tomato sauce where raw eggs are put inside to get ready to eat. Together with some Pita and Thina it was a perfect breakfast to start the day with and forget the hangover. After finishing it, we all made our way up the mountains wits the cars to a water stream in a national park called Nachal Achmud. We hiked through a beautiful nature with gigantic views passing the water sources where we could refresh ourself after the hot walk. It was a very fun and beautiful trip. After the productive day we deserved a good dinner which were burgers. Israeli seem to love Burgers a lot. I don't eat meat and had to order a veggie burger out of spinach, lenses and cheese for me, which was tasty indeed. What a great trip ended my first wonderful month in this beautiful country.

By the way, if you are interested in more details about my work here, visit the wonderful of blogpost of my flatmate Anna who gave her readers a perfect overview of the the working place here: Israellyamazing.