Costume Ideas, Soldiers, and More Apples

It's been one hell of a tiring day. Someone called the phone outside my room at about 5.45am, waking me up and putting me in a bad mood for the morning.

Work was punctuated with a surprising amount of excellent tunes on the radio - most unexpected and deserved! We wore fruit boxes on our heads and boogied to delights such as David Bowie, Nirvana, The Darkness etc. etc. etc. One elderly Kibbutnik kept turning around and looking at me strange. Maybe he was just astounded by how amazing my Justin Hawkins impression is...

Maybe...

In other news, I came up with the (brilliant, I admit) idea of attending the Purim party as a rag doll. All I need to do is get the bus to Tzfat on Thursday (my day off this week) and purchase some false eyelashes, and some face paints (I originally wanted to attend as Alan Partridge, but then quickly realised that only the British guys would know who I was. To everyone else I'd just be a middle-aged dorky man). However, this now appears to be an impossibility due to the unrest in the area. Due to the terrorist alerts, we have a big military presence on our kibbutz. Noone is allowed to enter or leave via the main gate - it is completely guarded by Israeli soldiers. The buses are not coming to the kibbutz because of this. We are warned to go nowhere near the Lebanese border (which is actually a 5 minute and not 15 minute walk away, as I first thought) as we probably would be shot. One of the volunteers said she saw an explosion in that direction earlier on today. I'm not completely clear on the situation - something about Lebanon wanting to claim back some of Northern Israel, but Raviv, who is also in charge of security on the kibbutz, is very stressed out. One of the guys called him earlier to ask about the bonfire we were supposed to have tonight. Apparently he just barked 'There's a war on at the moment' and hung up.

A couple of months ago, apparently there was an alert. Everyone was at the pub and the alarm sounded to go to the bomb shelters. From the story I heard, the Koreans were all scared and praying, and the Brits... true to form, were drunk and bashing a tennis ball around and goofing around.

Hmmm..

It's hard for the situation to feel real here. I feel cut off from reality. Watching the news and hearing everything that is going on in Israel, it takes a while to register that that is where I am.

There is a bonfire going on, regardless. Tuesday night. Everyone drinking, apart from me. Wonder how long that will last.

Gotta dash! Bye.