Pesach, Zihkron and the WaterCompany of Israel

Hey All,

Right now its the Pesach holiday here in Israel which means that many people have vacation, some stores are closed and that you can't buy any bread that is leavened. Since I wrote the last time a couple of things have happend. On monday all of the family(uncles, grandparents, cousins) gathered in the apartment of Adi's grandmother to have the special Pesach-feast meal. For someone like me that has never done it before it was really nice. Everyone was sitting around the table and the oldest man at the table read from the Haggadah, the book that tells of the jews escape from slavery i Egypt. During the reading you drink some glasses of wine and in the middle of the story you eat the great meal. Which is a lot of typical good food, when the food is finished the story continues and ends with a lot of singing and a last glas of wine. It was a really great night and we had a lot of fun and ate very good food.

At the Pesach dinner =)

Last night me, Maya, Shay (Adi's brother) and Danit (Shay's fiance) and her family met up in a city next to Haifa called Zihkron where there was sort of a carinval/market in the main street to celebrate the holiday. We where also there to check out a band for Shay's and Danit's wedding later this year. It was fun evening seeing a lot of people, music and art in the street.

Local band playing old jewish songs on the street in Zihkron.

Today me, Maya, Danit and some friends of Maya went to the WaterCompany of Israel to get a tour at their site. As you might know there is a lack of fresh water and fresh water sources in Israel, they have ONE larger lake compared to Sweden that has well over 7,000 lakes, so they have to have really good technology to be able to clean and find it the little water they do have. The biggest sources is the ground water that has to go through many cleaning stations before it can be used, the second source is the lake. Because of the lack of water there is only one company, which is owned by the government that has the right to work with this. The tour was all in Hebrew but thanks to some translations, pictures and models of the plant I understood most of what was going on. After the tour we went to some small village close by and ate really-really good Humus, with pita, meat, sallad etc.

As I said in the beginning its a holiday period here so tomorrow most of the Ronen-family are going north to what you in Israel call a "zimmer" which is a large cabin in the nature. Exactly what is going to happen there I dont know, but I've been told that there is a pool, a river and that it has beautiful surroundings so I'm guessing its going to be awesome, I'll let you know what happend when we get back.

Til you read again,

Carl