Israel Beauty

For those of you that have not seen the movie American Beauty, I would recommend seeing it. It is about how strange life can be, but also how beautiful death, or the simple things can be too.

It has taken a while to have time this week to upload some picture, but here it goes. It is a mix of different things.

The first pictures, I hope will not affend or turn the tummies of the readers. Last weekend I was on the beach, and you can see what a beautiful day it was. But there was something very sad, beautiful and amazing on the beach. A dead sea turtle had washed up onto shore. What an amazing thing to see. Sea turtles live to be really old. And I found out that the beach here is one of those beaches where the sea turtles come to lay their eggs and the babies have to run as fast as they can to reach the water. I was very excited to hear this, because I remember watching a movie about the sea turtles and how they only pick specific beaches to lay their eggs. So many things could have killed this one, or maybe it died on its own, but it is very sad.
















So on Sunday I went to an Orthodox wedding with one of my co-workers. Sofit (hummingbird in Hebrew) took me along. She use to be good friends with the groom, before he turned religous. And he came to the Kibbutz to invite her. But she couldn't really take her husband, because they would not be able to see each other. See, at an Orthodox religous ceremony the men and women are separated by a big cloth.

There are many injustices such as the men can come to the women's side, but women can not got to the men's side. After the wedding when the women were watching the bride and groom leave the ceremony to go eat, there was an announcement that if the women did not go back to their side, the music would not contiue. Wow.

But it was interesting. The bride and groom both fast for a period of time. There was much dancing and singing. The food was great, too. We ended up staying for about 4 hours and I am sorry the pictures are so aweful, but it was night and I was so far away from everything.



Here you can see the woman dancing with the bride.



And here are the men coming to the woman's side to get the bride. They had the actual ceremony on the women's side, not that we could see, because first the men stand and then the women stand behind them.