spring

This past Shabbat, January 30, we saw the cherry trees in bloom.

Today is exactly 6 weeks til my flight home.

bad reputation

i feel like such a whore
walking around the dorm
in these plastic shower sandals.
i suppose i shouldn't have bought them
with high heels

Loada falafa

Had a shwarma laffa for supper today. Should have had a falafel laffa, because it sounds funnier.

Last night ate dinner with the rabbi and 4 other students in his home in Betar, which is behind the "Green Line," which means that it's in the West Bank. Betar is the town where Bar Kochba fought the Romans. Drove along a walled highway, which is part of the wall that you hear about in the news. It's a really high wall, and the top half tilts over the top of the highway. Betar itself is a walled city of 35,000 people, with shops, and even a set of buses. All the residents are religious (mostly Hassidic) so it's crawling with kids. One of the local buses went by completely full of kids, riding around at night.

Looking forward to Friday very much: sleep late, then go out to a new little cafe that I just found, to get some squeezed-on-command OJ, a cafe fuque, by-the-pound baked goods, and the English-language Jerusalem post. And the guy who works there is super nice.

I have a local US number that connects to my Israel phone. Calling it costs you only the cost of a call to 212 area code (I pay a bit on my end to receive the call). If anyone wants to call, let me know and I'll give you the number.

Strong Man

My roommate came in last night at about midnight and started watching a DVD on his laptop. He was using earphones, but after a while the giggling, the screen light, and the rattling potato chip bag started to get to me and I got up and asked him to watch outside. To his credit, he did, no fuss.

Walking home from yeshiva at night takes 40 minutes, door to door, which is about what the bus takes. Getting rainy and colder now, but I can use the exercise.

Got a line on some people who might be able to fix me up; going to make some calls tomorrow.

Hobo Jo(sh)

I was warned
That trying to shave my beard with fingernail scissors
Would look bad
They were right

wheeeee

i'm living on caffeine these days, which is new to me. i doze off constantly in class, which can be embarrassing in a class with 4 students and a teacher around a table. once as i fell asleep i started to ask a question. it wasn't a question, actually: two or three question words just popped out of my mouth as i dozed off. luckily the rabbi held up his finger and finished a longish discussion, so by the time that he finished ans asked me what my question was i was able to claim that I'd forgotten it.

Small Things

Bought a sixpack of socks and two pairs of underwear, and I have a new lease on life. Previously, I had to do laundry every 7 days or recycle. Doing laundry here is a chore--have to be here for an hour as it goes through the wash, then move it to the dryer and wait another hour, and I get home after 9pm most days. This give me two whole extra days. Amazing how $10 on undergarments can make life so much easier.

On closer examination, though, it appears that the socks are dissolving inside my shoes. Wore another pair of socks from home today, and they came out covered with black lint, suspiciously the same color as my $8 sixpack of socks from the street vendor. Doing laundry with 2 pairs of them now, mixed in with a bunch of white underwear. This could end up in tears.

Yesterday drank a cup of wine with kiddush, and after 20 minutes had a nice buzz going. Never tried that before--all the voices in my head: gone! I could learn to like that! However, tried it again after the meal, and found out that the wine trick only works on an empty stomach.

Pocketknife

Been looking for a teensy pocketknife for ages. I need something able to help me peel an orange, and small enough to carry around. Finally I found the world's smallest swiss-army-style pocketknife in a hardware store. It comes on a keychain, which is just what I was looking for. It was also a lot more expensive than I wanted, and then it was worth, frankly (24 shekels), but--hey, i guess that's only six dollars.

You can see how small it is here:

And here am I, for scale:

Wow, that's a small pocketknife.

Trip back in time

Last weekend was a shabbaton to a yeshiva in a small farming community north of Tel Aviv, just a few miles from the coast. The theme was "hard decisions made by people during the holocaust." On Sunday we got to drive to the beach and walk to a few areas where Jewish settlers were smuggled ashore, trying to avoid the British blockade that existed before the creation of Israel. We talked to an old man who, as a child, witnessed a few of the battles between the British and settler Jews, and between the varying Jewish military factions.

On the trip home, the bus pulled off the highway and we all piled out to daven mincha (afternoon prayer) before it got too late. We passed by a bunch of lovely fields, and ended up davening by a graffiti covered bus stand on an exit ramp. A few moments after we pulled off, another car pulled up behind us and the driver hopped out to daven with us. That was very cool.

My bestest big toe

Scary roommate has taken to staying up late, watching DVDs on his computer with the bright screen facing my bed, drinking soda pop, snickering, and farting loudly.

The other roommate seems to have disappeared. He was staying out later and later, and has finally ceased to come home at all. He wore hair spray and smoked, so I suspect a party.

Last night scary roommate told me that he thought party roommate had found an apartment in another neighborhood, and was moving out permanently. "So I guess it's just the two of us from now on," he says to me, as I'm lying in bed.

[shudder]

Fire

Fire is like property - Reish Lakish

Fire is like an arrow - Rabbi Yochanan

Fire is like a relationship gone bad

blind

a student just came up to me and said he'd accidentally looked at my hands during the kohen blessing this morning and asked if he would go blind.

give it up

spoke to a rav today and learned that there might be an escape hatch from being a kohen, in order to marry.

Shabbat in Nachlaot

Last Shabbat got to visit a family in Nachlaot, one of the only "mixed" communities in Jerusalem, where "mixed" means all sorts of groups, from hassidim to black hat, and all levels of observant from Haredi to non-observant. It's apparently the only neighborhood in town where everyone gets along. There were kids playing basketball when i was there, some in kippas, some without. It was very cool.

My dorm has mosquitoes. At night I hear one or two buzzing around my head, and I hide under the covers and breathe through the fabric.

More roommate excitement

Got to hear my latest roommate pleasure himself in bed last night.

Tomorrow I'm going to start looking for new housing.

:(

Bad week