I'm leaving...

It's almost 2 AM, and I'm just finished packing for my Sherut. I leave early tomorrow morning- I have to be in Ariel by 10. Wow. I'm way too tired to be writing anything particularly interesting. I've been really neglecting my blog lately, and all I can say is I hope that being away from home during the week, likely without access to the internet, won't keep me from blogging as much as I can this year.
That's all I can write at this hour. I'm off to serve my country...

Wow, I haven't blogged in years...

A couple of days ago, we got back from a trip up north (we=my family). For the first half of it, we stayed in this little house in a Moshav called Ramot in the Golan. It's absolutely beautiful there. You can see the Kinneret from the Moshav, and it's so quiet and quaint and so much fun to be in. We actually took it easy most of the time, but we did a bunch of Tiyulim and other stuff. Then, on Thursday, my grandmother and cousins came up and we stayed in the hotel in Nir Etzion till Sunday. We had a really nice Shabbat and a lot of fun.
On the downside, at some point during our trip, I developed an infection because of an ingrown toenail. It's quite gross, it hurts a ton every time it gets banged, I have to soak it three times a day, and I have to wear socks because I need to keep it covered. (I also have to wear sandals, because closed shoes hurt. So I look like a good little Chorev girl...) Hopefully it should be better soon, and if not, there's always surgery... and it's not like I can't move around.
What else is new? I saw the cutest movie last night, The Holiday. Honestly, I fell in love with it as soon as I heard about it, but I didn't get a chance to see it in the theater. It's basically just another romantic comedy, but the fact is that I love romantic comedies. The story is this: Two women with messed up love lives, Iris in the middle of nowhere, England, and Amanda in LA, trade homes for the holiday season and find much more than they could have hoped for... I was in something of a bad mood last night because of this stupid toe and I said, "Hey, why not rent that movie I really wanted to see?" So I did, and it worked.
So I'm going to Ariel next Thursday, and with that I enter the real world. The following Sunday, I start work in the school. I'll be a staff member, not to mention a role model. On the plus side, there's no homework.
I need to comment on this horrible thing I read today. This guy has had 15 wives, but he keeps divorcing them because Islam doesn't permit more than 4 at a time, and altogether he has 78 kids. He's 60, his oldest kid is 30 and his youngest is 20 days. Right now, he's married to three women, and two of them are pregnant. And now he's aiming for 100 kids by 2015, so he's looking for three new wives. Oh, and he has one leg. Just because.
I guess that's about it... Smile!

I haven't been home in 9 days...

I was at my preparatory seminar for Sherut Leumi, and I have to admit it was pretty good. I had no desire to be stuck there for over a week, and the week went really slowly and took forever to get through. But I did learn a lot of useful (and useless...) stuff about working in a school. And the bottom line is, it was a lot of fun. I already knew most of the girls I'll be living with, because we were in Ariel for a Shabbat a few weeks ago, but it was nice to get to know them better. So we were in this high school for a week, with 500 soon to be Sherut Leumi girls. The quality of the seminar was quite nice, and they did a lot of awesome stuff outside of the classes. It was pretty cool, actually.
Today, after the seminar was over, I didn't go home but went to the movies with my family. We saw Hairspray, which is based on the Broadway musical. I had no desire to see it on Broadway, but now I really want to. It was a pretty cool musical, set in the 50's, about promoting equality (and too much hairspray) and it reminded me a lot of High School Musical, though I'm convinced that this has nothing to do with the fact that Zac Efron starred as "the cute guy". Oh, and he actually has a really good voice! (He didn't sing most of the music in HSM because his voice wasn't right for it, which is something that bothers me a lot because Andrew Seeley, who sang most of Zac's parts, wasn't credited at all.) The music is a lot of fun and the dancing is awesome. Basically, this is great movie, go watch it!
So I have this tendency of posting links on here when I see a good video online, and I just have to plug this one because it's so nice. It talks about the workaholism in the world today and how it can drive us crazy and we should take a break and enjoy this beautiful world...
The other thing about being away for a week is that I had so little spare time. I kept forgetting to call home because the schedule was so packed, but what I found even more surprising was that I finally got over Harry Potter. Although I did have a long talk about it on Shabbat afternoon. Anyway, it's not like I'm completely back to being absorbed in it now that I'm home, but while I was away there was a live webchat with Jo posted online where she answered a lot of stuff about the books. A lot of it I thought was cool, except for the identity of the killer of one of the victims of Deathly Hallows which I thought was quite disturbing. But anyway...