I'M AN AUNT!!!!!

Who cares what else happened this week? MY SISTER HAD A BABY!!!!!

This Wednesday, August 4th (Barack Obama's birthday), my amazing and wonderful sister, Shoshana, gave birth to my brawny (8.4 lbs!) and beautiful new nephew. And she did it without any drugs. (Setting a really high bar for me, but I think I have some time before I have to worry about that one.)
She is understandably exhausted but headed home from the hospital today with the little one. My fantastic brother-in-law, Ez has been fielding all my questions and endless phonecalls and taking amazing care of my sister. My mom is headed up to NY to join them on Sunday and then everyone but me will be there for the Brit Milah (circumcision) and naming on Wednesday. Oh, lordy, I cant wait to meet him!!!

I got home from base on Wednesday and found an email saying that Shosh had gone into labor. My roommate laughed at me as I ran around the apartment screaming for like five minutes and then sat down and start to worry about them. That wasnt so good for me, but thankfully I had plans to go to the wine festival with my friend Elodie. So we headed over to the Israel Museum, bought a 60 shek wine glass, and then proceeded to be really classy and taste all sorts of fancy Israeli wine. Every 30 minutes or so we would try to check my email on Elodie's phone, but not much was happening and I was getting more and more nervous and excited. (A side point about the nervousness: I understand that childbirth these days is pretty safe, and my sister definitely has the hips for it, but there is still so much that can go wrong! And its painful! And I worry. So thus, the nervousness). Anyway, towards the end of the festival I had tried about 8 different Shiraz's (mmm I love that wine) and an excellent Gerwsomethingorother, and, shall we say, a few other wines, and had just run into some friends who were generously sharing their cheese-sampler plate with me when Elodie checked her phone and yelled "Kfi, theres a mail from your mom!". I, in a totally mannerly in polite way, grabbed the phone from her, opened the mail and proceeded to scream like a 13 year old girl. And jump up and down. Alot. Anyway, as soon as my screams became coherent "OH MY GOD IM AN AUNT MY SISTER HAD A BABY BOY!!!!!", my friends started to jump up and down with me, we all refilled our wineglasses and made everyone in the area l'chaim with us to my new nephew :)
At this point I wanted to get home and call my family, so we headed out, stopping at a few booths for some more l'chaims on the way, and then I practically skipped through the park, calling everyone in Israel and forcing them to l'chaim to my new nephew with me. I would like to put in the disclaimer that those calls WERE NOT drunk dials. I was drunk on happiness, I tell you, HAPPINESS!

Anyway, I am not positively ITCHING to get home, I cannot wait to:
1) meet my new nephew,
2) see my sister and tell her in person how amazing it is that she made a little person,
3) Call my parents "Grampa" and "Bubbe"
4) watch my brother-in-law imitate his offspring's "poop-faces"
5) oh just look at him and hold him and touch his tiny little baby hands and feet and fall absolutely and totally in love with him.

I CANT WAIT TO COME HOME!!!!!

Countdown to Vacation

So I realized I have been kind of lame lately and not really putting so much effort into these posts. I mean, I forgot to mention my birthday! Really? Thats just sad. Anyway, I apologize for that and have taken special time today to try to make this email more exciting and interesting than the past few weeks.

 

We'll start with this past Shabbat, which was a flurry of social activity. Rafi was with me for Shabbat and I hosted another 14 people for dinner. It was loud and hot, but the food was great and the company greater. This theme continued Shabbat day when we went to my friend Jay's and had a giant delicious lunch and hung out there most of the rest of the day.

 

Sunday night was Tu B'Av, the Jewish festival in which young single ladies used to dress up in white dresses and go dancing in the hills so that young single Jewish men could grab them and take them home to be their wives (kinda weird story, but have you ever actually read about St. Valentine?). Today it is treated like the Israeli Valentine's Day. So, in very modern fashion, I went out dancing with my single lady friends (no white dresses- I mean really? Who owns a white dress?). Stayed up way too late and was totally pooped the next day, but it was worth it. Or at least it was until Shachaf started arguing politics with me and I was ganged up on my all the crazy-ass leftists in my office. So I spent most of Monday hiding in the computer room so I wouldnt have to go over ONCE AGAIN, why the disengagement from Gaza clearly didnt work.

 

Anyway, Tuesday I got the super exciting job of updating the airplane manuals (read: going thrugh 20+ binders and replacing random pages), which of course I got to do with Shachaf. This man is apparently not used to going to school, because I managed to do 18 binders in the time it took him to do 4. This may be explained by the fact that he was way to busy complaining about the army and saying things that made me want to strangle him.

 

So, needless to say, by Wednesday I needed a vacation, and since Rafi is leaving on Sunday I took the day off to hang out with him. We were planning on hiking from Jerusalem to the neighboring city of Mevasseret Zion (where our family lived when we were little), but ended up not quite making it. This was due to the fact that we started our hike in Lifta, an arab village in the valley next to Jeruslaem that was abandoned in 1948. Today it is sort of a national park, but they havent renovated or restored anything, and the place is kind of a dump. There is a maayan/pool there where lots of people go to swim, but the part that interested me and Rafi was the old houses. There are dozens of old crumbling Arab houses that were clearly beautiful back in the day. Now they are falling apart and have trees growing in the middle (and in some cases homeless people living there), but Rafi and I spent a great 2-3 hours wandering about and exploring the houses. We couldnt stay too long as I had a wedding that night, but it was enough to get a sunburn and some great pictures (which I will have to attach in the next email).

 

 

Thursday was a half-day so again, Rafi and I hung out (the lazy bum slept until 2PM!!). We headed to Efrat to see my fam and stayed up way too late hanging out with them. We are going to Alon Shvut, the neighboring settlement where my friends David and Davida live and spending Shabbat with them.