Oy, this blog...

Well, yet again, I haven't posted in over a month. I'm thinking I need to fix the blog, either change the format entirely or maybe just stop.
Anyway, a lot has happened since I posted last. The biggest one being- I finished my Sherut. It was still sad. Actually, it still is. I miss being in Ariel and I miss my friends. But I guess being sad shows that I had a great year, so it's not so terrible. I hope my year in Midrasha is that good.
The last month of my Sherut, I worked in a day camp in Ariel. I didn't like it much, because it was different kids and they kind of drove me crazy, to put it nicely. But it's over, and at least I felt better about leaving my work.
I'm leaving for the US early tomorrow morning. I'll be there for two weeks, most of the time with two of the very few people who read this blog. :-) (Hi, Bubby and Zeyda!) We'll mainly be seeing family, and taking some trips. Well, I haven't been in the country for awhile, so it should be nice.
I guess that's all for now. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Summer's starting...

• There are two more days of school. That is just so sad. It's the beginning of the end. No, scratch that. The end has already begun. I could start rattling off how many of this and that we have left, but I'm not going to. It would just make me sadder. So yeah, after this Monday, there are probably a lot of kids in school I'm just not going to see again, and that's sad. It's been tough at times, but I'm going to miss them. And the teachers too...


• Since my Sherut goes until the end of July, for the next month (almost) I'll be working in a day camp in Ariel. I don't have any details yet, but hopefully it won't be too bad a way to end the year. (*sniff*)


• That was an interesting night. It was a bit crazy at home because my sister Sarah is leaving tonight for the US. As for me, I'm doing the usual come-home-for-20-hours thing before I go back to Ariel for Shabbat tomorrow. My parents were at a Bat Mitzvah. And in the middle of all that, the elementary school near our house decided fireworks would be a nice touch for their graduation. Somehow, everyone else in the house freaked out during the first round, thinking it was gunshots, while I saw the light outside and knew what it was. Then there was a longer round, and everyone else was outside watching, and I thought it really did sound more like gunshots than fireworks and dragged Noam into the protected room in the basement. Looking back, it was a bit funny, but they really shouldn't do that kind of thing.

I think the end of school is the biggest thing that could be happening right around now, so I guess that'll be it.

Hakuna Matata! Shabbat Shalom!

Just popping in to say hi...

I don't have much to say at the moment... I was just in Ariel for 9 days straight, then I came home on Thursday and I'm going back tomorrow. What else is new?
Efrat celebrated its 25th birthday this week. It's not too exciting, but there was an event on Thursday that was OK.
That's it... I'm tired. Shavua Tov!

What a week.

So I haven't posted in two weeks... OK, I'm allowed once in awhile. I got home this past Thursday and will be here until after Shavuot. Woohoo!

I'm recovering from the longest week ever. Not because anything particularly bad happened, just because. Maybe because I was in Ariel for Shabbat, maybe because I had something every day. Maybe just because.

Anyway, you might say the highlight of the week was Yom Yerushalayim. On Yom Yerushalyaim every year there is a huge event in Yerushalayim called the Rikudgalim that something like everyone goes to. It's a really nice thing, and so much fun...

The day before, we had a big thing in Ariel. I guess it was kind of an imitation Rikudgalim, but it was a lot of fun. There was some kind of march (for lack of a better word) which was followed by a lot of dancing and a ceremony, which was great.

What else? Our birds learned how to fly and left. We'll miss them. Though they do come back every night. No, I take that back. I'll miss them, and one of my roommates. The rest couldn't care less. But that's not to say the nest and poop are all cleaned up, or that the risk of bird flu is gone. Not that I really understand that stuff. Anyway, check out our gorgeous babies!

In other news, Ariel turned 30 this week. We actually missed the festivities because we were at a Torah dedication in memory of our friend's father who passed away recently. But I don't seem to have missed much. Anyway, the city is rather obsessed with this big birthday, but the fact is it's a big thing. It started out as nothing, almost. Look how much it's grown...

I just had Esti, a very old friend, over for Shabbat. That was a lot of fun. Except that she's going home to the US in a couple of weeks, and I've only seen her this once. But it was great to see her.

I think that's it. Tomorrow night is Shavuot, which means theoretically staying up all night, and a lot of dairy products. I just won the game of Sfirat HaOmer. The year is close to over, and the closer we get, the more depressing. Our summer plans are quite possibly changing drastically due to some kind of tax thing I don't understand. Anything else? I think we're done.

Mind the Gap. Shavua Tov!

Vegetarian Lag BaOmer, end of year sadness, and bird flu.

Well, yesterday was Lag BaOmer. That means I was in Superland (with a couple of friends) on my father's company's annual "Yom Kef". It's kind of getting old, but it's fun. Every year I say I'm not coming back, but so far that hasn't lasted more than a year. Anyway, it was (literally) a fun day (except for the sunburn), and we'll have to see about the future years...

The night before that, I stayed in Ariel for the bonfires. We manned the food booth at the citywide bonfire, which was slightly lame but we had fun... there was music and good food, anyway. When that was over we went to a bonfire a bunch of the families we know made, which was basically winding down, but we still had time for some singing which was great. Then we went back to the apartments, and I felt really old because we went to bed around 1. You don't go to bed before 2:30 on Lag BaOmer, ever. And I also had no meat that night, just because I wasn't at the right place at the right time, which was different. Lag BaOmer means bonfires, which means meat.

Today we had a bunch of cousins for Shabbat, and that was fun. Most of them are leaving at the end of the year, so it was good to see them all before.

Speaking of the end of the year, it's starting to get sad. Suddenly you realize how short Sherut Leumi actually is. It's just like- next year, I won't be in school anymore, and I won't be in Ariel. It's kind of weird, but life will go on without me, you know? It's not like my life won't be going on without them. And I'll be leaving all the girls, who have become really good friends. That's sad.

In my apartment, we have a nest in our window. In the nest are two baby pigeons. Actually, they're not really babies anymore. In any case, their mommy left them, and we're left to watch them. One of my roommates really loves them, and I'm trying very hard not to admit I feel the same way. The rest of us have been saying for weeks that we need to get rid of them because they carry diseases. I actually freaked myself out the other day by looking them up on Wikipedia to check exactly what diseases those are. I then needed to call my mother and get reassured that there is no danger in breathing the same air as them, and the only danger is coming in real contact, like being bitten. So we're fine.

I think that's all for now. Keep twiddling those dials. The next password will be "bird flu". Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.

:-)

Shavua Tov!

Well, I don't have much to report this week, except that now I've really decided to go to Nishmat next year. Thank goodness that's over. I guess that's about it. Coming up is my first full work week since Pesach, and then a Shabbat at home with a bunch of cousins.

And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night! :-)

Hey!

Well, I did it. I actually managed to post twice in 2 weeks. Good for me!
The big excitement for today is our favorite state's reaching the big 6-0. (To quote the mayor of Ariel: "Our state is 60, we wish it until 120." -as is customary to wish people on their birthday.)
I mean, 60 years is a long time. Wow. But then, for a state, not really.
Anyway, for me, it means vacation, which is always nice (even though I'm going back to Ariel for Shabbat) and tonight we're having a barbecue, of course. Last night we had the usual performance in Efrat, which was nice.
What's new with me is that I've started thinking again about doing Sherut again next year. I'm a bit surprised about this, myself, because I was pretty set on going to a Midrasha. I still think I'll be in Midrasha, but I'm not sure. I don't know exactly what I'll do if I decide to do Sherut, but I want to stay close to home.
Um, what else is new? I think that just may be it. Chag Sameach!

Since February 8th...

I wanted to make a cool post and make a list of big things that have changed in the world (or maybe even only in Israel) since February 8th. But that required me to look at a huge amount of news articles, and I'm tired. Then I thought maybe something big happened that day that I could write, but that didn't reduce my work by much.

So I don't have any particularly interesting way to introduce my first post in almost three months. Or maybe that's better, because then you don't know just how long ago my last post really was.

Anyway... I'm back! I know I've been a very bad girl. Wow, that was horrible. I didn't post anything for close to three months. That just may be the longest I've ever gone between posts.

Well, it's not like I've disappeared off the face of the earth. People who I see or talk to (or even my Facebook friends) knew I was still around. It's just that I've been neglecting my blog.

OK, now I'm going to stop rambling about my lack of blogging. What's new with me?

• Well, there was Purim in the last three months. That was a long time ago. A week before, we undertook a big project in Ariel where we printed up a thousand yellow balloons with smileys and stayed up all night tying them onto cars and decorating the city. That was a lot of fun, though tiring and a lot of work. But the compliments the next morning made it worth it.
• I checked out a couple of Midrashot, and then the whole thing got put on hold (because I didn't get around to making a decision or checking out any other places) but I think I'm going to go to Nishmat in Yerushalayim. I'm not sure yet, but I hope I have a good year!
• Our other huge project in Ariel was a pre-Pesach secondhand bazaar. Again, a lot of work, but fun.
• I've subscribed to a bunch of new podcasts. (Someday I'll list them all.) One of them actually read an e-mail from me on the show and then posted a link to my blog, which, of course, hadn't been updated anytime recently. That's a bit embarrassing, but I'm over it. I would have posted a shout-out to anyone who came here from there, but it's not relevant anymore.
• Right before Pesach, I took my psychometric test. I didn't study as hard as I could have, but I think it went OK.
• Pesach was great! We had the whole family together for the first time in years. And then we all went down to the Dead Sea for the second half of the Chag. I drove. Honestly, (family members, don't read this:) I think the highlight of my Pesach was the driving, especially because on Wednesday of Chol Hamoed I became legally allowed to drive alone. I've actually done that (barely) a couple of times. But it's exciting!
• A piece of news that got me last night was that was the first week since December 1998 where there was no Harry Potter book on the bestseller list. I'm sure they'll be back, but it's just awesome that they've been there for so long- that's close to a decade. And sad that they're not there anymore. In other news, today is the tenth anniversary of the battle of Hogwarts at the end of the seventh book. THE climax of the entire series. The day it all became over. The day the good guys won.

I think those were the big things. It's great to be back. Live long and prosper. Shabbat Shalom and Yom Ha'Atzmaut Sameach!

Where you lead, I will follow...

Hey Howdy Hey! These are my highlights of the past week:

• For the first time in my life, I went to a social gathering for adults. No, that sounded bad. It's just this: The staff of the school I'm working in had a "Gibush evening", and I have no idea how you say Gibush in English. I don't think there is a word. But whatever it is, we had a party at one of the teachers' houses, and I actually had a lot of fun. It was just kind of a "wow, I'm getting old" moment when I realized that I was sitting and laughing with a group of grown-ups (although you can't really say I'm one of them) who are, in some way, my colleagues. *Sigh*
• The other first of the week, and this isn't really a little thing (It's just that the Gibush thing was on Tuesday and this thing was on Wednesday), is that this week I went to the first wedding of one of my friends. That's exciting, no? Talk about getting old.
• The third milestone (Wow, this was a bigger week than I'd realized) was that today I finally finished watching my beloved Gilmore Girls. I only got the last season on DVD a few weeks ago, and apparently I got through it pretty fast (helped a bit by my being sick last week) and I watched the last two episodes today. Let me just say, for all everyone told me about how bad the show got in the last season, it wasn't such a bad season. I mean, nothing beats the first two, but the seventh was just fine. Even if it didn't end wonderfully. Or maybe it did.
• Oh, I decided to go to a Midrasha next year, which means I'll be studying Jewish subjects for a year before I go to university. So I won't be doing Sherut, I think.

Oy, with the poodles already!

I'm eating a clone?

Hey! I'm in a good mood at the moment, although I don't know why. Oh well.
So what happened this week? Well it snowed. It didn't snow much in Ariel, but since Israelis react to the tiniest bit of snow (In Ariel, that means a bit of white on some cars) I didn't have to work on Thursday. My siblings didn't have school on Wednesday either. The bad news was that I woke up sick on Thursday, so I basically lost the snow day, plus the snow made it take me over 4 hours to get home. But then from 3:00 onward, I didn't do anything so it wasn't so bad.
Anyway, this Shabbat was really nice. We had the whole family here and celebrated 2 birthdays- Savta's and Noam's. We're still new with the whole "having extended family members on the same continent" thing, so we make a big deal of Shabbatot together and things like birthdays. But I'm away during the week, so I don't see as much of the relatives as everyone else does. So I had a really great time on Shabbat.
This past Sunday I started the application process for Sherut Leumi out of Israel for next year. I'm still not sure I want to do it and goodness knows the process is terrible and I may not get accepted, but I figure I should go along with it until either I or the people in charge decide it's not right for me. So I have an interview for that this week, I hope it goes well!
I'm experimenting with more podcasts lately, because they're fun to listen to and can be listened to on my iPod. At the moment I'm listening to two women talk about being green, hence the random title of this post, which is also the title of the episode I'm sampling. Apparently clones have the potential to be healthy meat. Sounds gross, IMHO.
I think that's about it for the moment. Have a great week! And don't bite the bedbugs.

Prepare for the most exciting thing that's happened to me lately!

Guess who just passed her driving test this week? Hee hee!
That was over 2 years, 124 lessons, 2 theories and 4 tests. Now I'm done with all of it. I drove home tonight and I had so much fun. Driving an automatic takes some getting used to- it's those long roads where you drive really fast that make you want to keep shifting. Oh well.
So I was basically smiling from Tuesday onward. I'm just so happy! I've been working for this for so so long and with no results, so it was really about time. Actually, my reaction made it seem to me that I really just stopped believing it would ever happen.
So that's the really big news. Next to that, there wasn't really much going on over the past couple of weeks. I was in Ariel last Shabbat (hence the lack of post) but I don't think I'll be there again for a good few weeks. Last weekend was actually a nightmare, because it involved a massive amount of traveling (I was home Thursday night and Saturday night).
Ummm, what else? School is status quo, so I'm fine... We had an activity for Tu Bishvat on Tuesday that went well... That's about it.
I'm still smiling!
Shabbat Shalom!

Awimbawambawe

So, I missed last week's weekly post because I had to get back to Ariel and I had basically no time, so let me catch up on this and last week:

• Last Sunday I got my first ever traffic ticket. No, I don't have a liscense yet, but I got fined 100 Shekel for crossing the street at a red light. There are too many injuries from accidents like that, so they don't give warnings, said the cop. At the time, I was frustrated because she was right, it was completely my fault and there was nobody to blame but myself. Not to mention that one of my roommates had gotten a ticket for the same reason in the same place two weeks before, and I just didn't learn from her mistake. Later that day, however, I was laughing about it and showing off my ticket to the girls in my apartment. And I've definitely learned my lesson. I won't be crossing anything with a red light for quite some time now.
• On Wednesday of that week I went to a wedding. I don't go to weddings much because my friends haven't started getting married yet (soon, but not yet...) and this wedding wasn't actually for a friend of mine. The bride had converted to Judaism that week and the Netzarim community (a community from Gush Katif that has partially resettled in Ariel) made her a wedding. They asked everyone to come because there weren't a lot of friends or family there. It was kind of nice, except that we weren't invited for the food part (oh well) and it appeared that the bride and the groom had no idea what was going on. But it really was a special wedding, and probably one of the smallest I'll ever attend...
• Yesterday I had to go to the doctor in Yerushalayim, and I ended up doing massive and excessive amounts of walking (with my big Sherut bag on my back) due mainly to Bush's visit here and possibly a little bit to my own stupidity. But just a bit.
• That day off was really really awesome. I'm allowed 14 and this was the first one I've used. I think I deserved it, and it was just wonderful. I basically just did stuff like laundry today and that cleared up my weekend, but it was just so great to be home.
• This afternoon, I think the very foundation of my beliefs was shaken. I found out that the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was not just a part of the music in The Lion King. It was actually a pop song in the 60's. I'm shocked. I wonder how many kids in my generation heard the song on last week's MuggleCast and experienced the same thing. Or am I just that ignorant? On the other hand, it did clear up for me why the fun version of the song (as appears in the below video, arguably the best scene in the history of Friends) is never on the Lion King soundtracks...
  
• Tonight I went to a Sheva Brachot for my cousin who got married last week in New York. It was great... I love my family, and it's good that we have these things once in awhile...
• After the Sheva Brachot we went to a production of The Mikado. I really don't like Gilbert and Sullivan much- their music is totally not my type and the story line was also weird. Whatever, the last time I saw one of their things was The Pirates of Penzance four years ago. I didn't like that either. Maybe in four years I'll try again. Maybe I'll like it. Maybe I won't.

And on that positive note, it's very late and I need to sleep a bit even if I'm not working tomorrow. Shabbat Shalom! (Oh, I forgot to mention that the big question on my mind these days is what to do next year. But that's another story for another day.)

Happy Wednesday!

I'm only blogging now because it's cool that I can blog on a Wednesday. I can't blog during the week because Blogger is blocked from the computers at my school. But now it's Wednesday night, and I'm blogging (do I use the word blog way too often on here?) because my week ended early. I'm taking the day off tomorrow- my first vacation day of the year! So I'll be back tomorrow with a more normal post, even though it won't be Wednesday anymore. But I'll be more awake then (wait till I tell you what happened to me today...) and there will be more details about what's going on in my life.