Youth Village ,Kibbutz and Ceaseria

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On this day we spent far too much time on the bus, but we first went to the Youth Village spnsered by Hadassah which is by Carmel, it was amazing. They started by serving troubled youth and now serve 250 youth in a boarding school type program that either are referred by social services or come from other countries and meager backgrounds wanting to move to Israel, as well as 300 youth from the area who are exceptional students who come as a day program---the school has a technical program, an agricultural program, and arts and performing arts program and a science program, they are winning awards all of the time and the students we met were truly exceptional! They havea much higher matriculation rate than the rest of the country and many students come back when they are in the army to visit on weekends, considering the school to be their home.
After that we drove up to the center of the country to a Kibbutz that is one of the oldest Kibbutz and is about to change from their communal ways. Most Kibbutzim now allow members to keep the money they make while still contributing to a fund to help those in need and maintain the community life. This Kibbutz is on a mountain where it's the only place where this one very rare deep purple Iris grows, which was all over the hillside. We could see the security fence and the west bank from the kibbutz and unlike how it is described in the news it's actually just a short wire fence, not some huge wall or baracade.
We then drove to the Mediterranean sea to Ceaseria where we saw the Archeological digs and all of the history of this amazing port. We then had dinner at a winnery there on the sea and it was amazing...very good food and wine and a beautiful place.
We drove that night to Jerusalem where we stopped overlooking the city to say Shehekianu and as we arrived in whatwas becoming a terrible wind and rain storm, the power went out over most of the city! We were shivering in the cold but we said the prayer and had some wine and challah and then made it to our hotel.

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