Shabba tov l'at, v'at v'at v'at

Let's see. Where to begin?

Yesterday I did a lot of random things, including but not limited to: serving breakfast, transplanting various plants, making jam, and helping build these giant arches for a new construction project. So I guess I should begin by telling you about breakfast.

First of all, HOLY COW, Israeli breakfast (or at least in this lodge) is HUGE. Let me see if I can list everything these people get to eat:
-fresh baked bread
-4 or 5 kinds of cheese
-jam
-omelets
-quiche
-bruskas
-stuffed eggplant rolls
-two different vegetable salads
-tuna salad
-juice
-unidentified veggie dish

it is mildly ridiculous, but surprisingly appetizing to one who doesn't normally like breakfast such as myself. Anyway, Lila prepares all of this every morning, which I think is insane. And woe is me, I am there at 7 am with her. Sigh. Today I had the job of prepping the cheeses and making the salads, which, be as it may, required a lot of chopping onions. I was not happy. This was also not my only onion encounter of the day, but more on that later.

We then prepped like, several hundred strawberries for the jam. My hands are now so stained, it looks I killed someone.

Part of the transplanting went fine, as we were just putting them into window boxes full of nice, happy soil. But then Lila wanted us to plant some on this ridge by the road, with not quite so happy soil. Not trying to be a pessimist, but I am pretty sure that those plants are going to die.

Making the arches is kindof an interesting process, and requires an obscene amount of glue and staples. We worked on this with Guy and Daniel, who works here. Daniel's pretty nice and is very tolerant of me, given that I'm afraid of staple guns and I may or may not have gotten glue in his hair.

Today Giselle left for Eilat, where she will be spending the rest of her time in Israel. This means that I now have the house to myself, since the mysterious Katherine still has yet to appear. We secretly think that she is not coming back, but Lila keeps saying "eh, probably tomorrow" when I ask her about it.

After breakfast, some more jam making, and watering of plants, Lila invited me to go hiking with her and Rez and Ziv through the ruins of Nimrod Fortress, which is this fortification dating back to the Crusades. This was interesting experience with a 3 and a 5 year old, as it involved a lot of steep rock steps, but it was fun and had a lot of nice views of the Golan, the Galilee,and Lebanon. About five minutes into it Rez and Ziv decided they'd had enough and wanted to go back for ice cream ("IIIIIMMMAAAA! RATZITI GLIDA!") but they surprisingly managed to make it through most of it.

Afterward we went to McDonalds, which I found hysterical. Can you imagine a kosher McDonalds? Apparently they exist! I did make the mistake of trying to order a cheeseburger, and the woman at the window looked at me like I had grown a third head. So I ordered a plain hamburger with ketchup, and then guess what was on it? LOTS AND LOTS OF ONIONS. How does that even happen?! I would like to point out, however, that their hamburgers were like, three times the diameter of a McDonald's hamburger in the US. I thought we were the supersized ones! I proceeded to eat about half of it, and then on the very, very windy drive back I threw it all up. Lovely. Golan Heights: 1, Jane: 0

I have also concluded that I am never going to adjust to this time zone, because of my inherent weakness for napping. Remember that time I hated napping? Like, until I lived with Marissa Zerbo? I have been sleeping, on average, three hours during the daytime and six at night. Right amount of sleep yes, timing, no. Le sigh.

I also apparently need to eat more for dinner, because last night I went to bed hungry and dreamt I was pigging out on junk food. So weird.