Wine Before Noon

I realize I never wrote about me field trip last week!  This will be a quick one.

Chelsea wasn't able to join us this week, she was taking her LSATs.  We wished her good luck and hit the road.  We left early as usual, and after a bit of a bus ride up North we arrived at a gorgeous Binyamina winery.  We got off the bus, filed in, and all started taking pix and taking in the surroundings.  About 5 minutes later, after talking with the guides, Ricky called for us all to get back on the bus.  Apparently, we were at the wrong winery.  There are 2 in the town.

Anyways, we drove a bit more and arrived at Tishbi Winery.  We got a tour of the facilities, learned a bit about the process of wine and brandy making, and saw all the barrels and presses etc.  We then sat under this gorgeous leaf covered terrace and had a wine tasting.  She showed us how to properly open a bottle of wine, as well as the steps to a tasting.  I feel like I can be really cool at a restaurant now! We tasted a semi-dry white French Reisling, 2 Cabernet Sauvignons, 1 aged in oak barrels one not to see if we could taste the difference, and a delicious sweet dessert wine, Muscat.  She gave us the option of spitting the wine into the tub things or drinking it.  It was about 11am, so we did a combination of both.  It was a nice relaxing morning, and we learned some really cool stuff.

 Our next stop was interesting, but not my favorite of our trips so far.  We went to the Ahronson house and the N.I.L.L museum.  N.I.L.I. or נ.י.ל.י is an acronym for נצח ישראל לא ישקר or in English, "The Eternity of Israel will not lie".  It was basically an underground movement to help liberate Palestine from the Turks during the Ottoman Empire.  We watched a movie learning about the movement and the important figures, mostly members of the Ahronson family and their associates, and then got a tour of their houses on the estate.  Although it wasn't the most exciting our our trips, I am glad I learned about this new part of history I was pretty unfamiliar with before. 

On the way home, we got stuck in horrible traffic behind a truck that had overturned on a ramp.  We sat in the same place for probably 45 minutes before moving an inch.  Needless to say we all got a nice nap time on the bus.  I watched an old Grey's Anatomy on my ipod.  When we finally got home, we had our group meeting.  We always have them Tuesdays after the siyurim.  We played Jeopardy that Ricky had made with the categories Israel, Tel Aviv, Florentine, WUJS, Staff, and Other.  Some of the questions were really easy, like "what they sell on our street" (furniture, furniture, and only furniture) or "What is Becky's boss's name" was one of the questions since most people had met him, but many were really hard, "What is Mike's (our program leader who we've met once) wife's name".  It was fun and I was surprised by how much we knew about our neeghborhood and about Israel so far.  Ricky passed out our 1 month goals that we wrote on the first day to see if we accomplished them.  I wrote "see a play in Hebrew and get a basic understanding".  I did see a show in Hebrew, but it had English subtitles.  Does that count?  I don't know, but it was shocking to conclude we had been here a whole month already.  Time is flying by, but I am savoring every moment.