I am going to live on a hilltop with a shotgun and a giant dog

Ah, my first full week back in Israel and it was soooo good! I got to hang out with my brother, I got to see my closest friends, I got to go hiking, I got to waste hours lounging on my couch reading, and I got to eat sushi :) Oh, and it started with a holiday and is ending with one. I love holiday season!

So starting with the beginning, Shabbat with Barak was chill and nice and I beat him 3 of 5 times at Yaniv. We went out for sushi Saturday night, and oh, how I had missed the restaurants here! Sunday Barak went back to Yeshiva and I slowly realized that throwing together last minute Yom Kippur plans would not be as easy as I had thought. So I went to Efrat and my adopted family welcomed me with open arms and lots of food. Services on Yom Kippur were beautiful. The chazzan (cantor)

sounded like he was in an opera or a musical. And not in an annoying "I wish he would stop trying to show off his voice and let me pray" kind of way. He sang with such feeling that I truly felt like he was leading us, helping us reach inside ourselves for true repentance and send our prayers up to God. It was an uplifting Yom Kippur that left me looking forward to the coming year.

On Tuesday I had a meeting with the army to discuss my financial and familial situation and got to once again straighten out some small clerical errors like, "no, I did not become an Israeli citizen when I was five" and "no, I am not joining the army for two years". Still dont know what I will be doing though.

Wednesday Barak and I headed to Efrat to go hiking with Eli and Judy (from my adopted fam). We had planned on a short morning hike, starting at 10am. Well, we left at 1:30 for Tekoa, a settlement near Efrat, and got back at around 6pm. Our short hike wandered past some old caves from the time of the Chashmonaim (when the Jews were rebelling against the Romans) and we ended up crawling through caves for about 2 1/2 hours. When we had finished the hike we drove through the four neighborhoods in Tekoa, and I have to admit, I fell in love.

Tekoa is a settlement of religious and non-religious Jews that was started in the 70's. The town is small, isolated, and has one pizza store that is open once a week. They are one of the many settlements on the chopping block for disengagement (making it next to impossible to get a mortgage there) and most of the homes are converted caravans and shacks that make it difficult to tell where their house ends and their sukkah begins.

They sit on a hilltop with one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen.

I am going to live there.

Thursday, we spent the morning helping the Auerbach's build their sukkah and then went to a ceremony for their son Shlomo. He just finished his army training and is now officially a paratrooper! The ceremony was on Ammunition Hill in East Jerusalem and Barak and I ran around in the trenches pretending we were fighting Jordanians while someone important droned on in Hebrew. If you count the caves as battlefields (which they were in a way, all twisting and confusing so as to lose the Roman soldiers), that was two battlefields in two days making me an incredibly cool sister for my war-obsessed baby brother.

Sukkot starts tonight and all of Israel will be partying it up in the huts for a week. I have been watching little huts pop up all over Jerusalem- one of my neighbors has built one to perfectly fit in his parking spot, and more than half the restaurants I walk by now have little shacks perched on the sidewalks. Anyway, lots of good things to look forward to next week :)

East Coast Tour Review

Exciting points of my trip:

- Doing the crossword with my Bubbe. (Really, it was exciting!)

- Snuggling with Gypsy and RoPo

- Dancing in the rain with Skversk

- Aharon walking down the aisle at his sister's wedding to the theme song for Darth Vader

- Aunt Z cake at Shabbat dinner

- Catching the (potentially swine) flu from my lovely brother

- Going to the MFA in Boston and the NGA in DC (twice!)

- Having Izzy say my name, even if he doesnt remember the countless hours we spent together

- Visiting my elementary/middle/high school teachers who still love me

- All the cries of "What are you doing here?" when I walked into Hillel

- Explaining Israel to the fourth graders at my Aunt's NH elementary school

- Free tickets to "Taming of the Shrew" at the Shakespeare Theatre in DC

- Driving up and down the east coast

- Grabbing beers in Washington Circle with Shawn and Michael

- Super fancy meat dinner with the ladies

- Rosh Hashana with mi familia

Things in America I had really missed:

- My momma's cooking

- Target

- Nut House Pizza

- The UMD art department

- Maariv behind McKeldin Library

- Snuggling with Gypsy and RoPo

- DC

- Driving up and down the east coast

- How everyone has dogs

- My family

- My friends

- Introducing my friends to the craziness that is my family

Why I am glad to be back in Israel:

- Chummus

- Im home.

Shana Tova!

It has been so long and I hope you all pardon me for replacing my emails with my presence in America (I like to think I am equally entertaining in person). It has been such a wonderful trip and I am so happy I got to see so many of you and catch up on what is going on in your lives! (I have also found it much easier to avoid repeating the same stories as you all have already read them in my emails).
I am still in the States for a few more days, partying it up in the mary land but I wanted to send out a quick word before the Jewish New Year. I personally feel very much on the brink of something new and exciting, a whole new adventure that I am only slightly terrified of. I dont really know much about it or what will come in the next year, but I am ok with that. I know so many of you are going through what I have deemed the pre-life crisis and the coming year is full of uncertainties and worries. And those of you who didnt just graduate into the highest unemployment rate among college grads since 1982 are probably facing uncertainties and worries of your own.
I wish you all a new year where those uncertainties become more eye opening, if not more clear. Where those worries become less prevalent if not less present. Where nervousness becomes excitement and strangers become friends. May you embrace whatever changes life is throwing at you and find happiness in every aspect of your life. And of course may you stay safe and healthy and not contract swine flu.

When I am married and old I will wear ridiculously large hats

This week has been all about enjoying the small pleasures of being an adult with no job. There was alot of dancing around my apartment in my pajamas, alot of sleeping in and staying up late, and alot of cereal because I didnt feel like cooking. Twas wonderful.

I did get out of the house occasionally, and went to the arts and crafts festival outside the old city. They have booths from all over the world selling clothes and art and jewelry (I got to try on some craaazy hats- see attached pic), and performers set up throughout the fair. I got to watch some Korean dancers shake it to "Celebrate", and most importantly, I finally got to go to a fair where I could eat the food. Unfortunately no one in this country has ever heard of funnel cake :( but I had some excellent cotton candy AND I got my face painted :) Yehudit Ravitz was also playing, but I got there too late and couldnt get into the concert, so I had to dance outside with the few hundred other Israelis that didnt make it in.

Today was a day for Israeliness. I spent the morning at the Shuk marvelling at the hairy Israeli men trying to outshout each other and the Bubbe's pushing their carts through the crowd, while loading up on the amazingly fresh veggies. Then I prepared an Israeli salad for 25, cutting all of my vegetables into very tiny pieces (all 11 cucumbers and 9 tomatoes) and eliciting quite a few "my how Israeli of you" compliments during dinner. Why, you ask was I making salad for 25? Well tonight, four friends and I hosted a Sheva Brachot for David and Davida. (The week after a Jewish couple gets married there are seven meals hosted for them, at which, if you have ten men, seven blessings are said for the newlyweds.) Unfortunately, this was a Sheva Brachot for all of Davida's friends, and we ended up with only four men and were not going to be able to say the brachot (blessings). But, as the determined young souls we were, we did not give up. First we called the Rabbi and made sure that we couldnt do it with ten women, and then, we scoured the park where we were eating trying to wrangle up some Jewish men. After about twenty minutes and a slightly awkward interruption of a Tai Chi class, we had gathered the necessary men (we even got one extra!) and were able to say the Sheva Brachot. My favorite part was knowing that we could walk up to strange men in a park and tell them we were trying to make a minyan (a group of ten men), and not only did they know what we were talking about, but they eagerly came to participate.

Anyway, I am headed up north tomorrow to go camp on the beach so I am going to go to bed now. OH! I forgot to tell some of you. I am flying to America next week :) I will be landing in NY on the 20th, and heading to boston for the weekend. I will then be visiting the g'rents up in NH, coming back to NY for shabbat and from then on Im all MD!! Ill be in the DC metropolitan area for about three weeks and would love to see everyone! So email, fb, after the 30th I will have a cell phone. I should warn you, that I cannot plan anything too far in advance. So sorry if that makes me kind of flaky.

David/a's wedding

Was Beautiful!! Check out the pics!

Ding Dong the bells are gonna chime!!

I have found that I am astonishingly busy for a person that is does nothing.

This was the pre-wedding week, and I spent a good amount of time helping Davida out with the various things that she had to get done. I spent one day with Davida and her dad working on the house that she and David are moving into, we had a rather spectacular bachelorette party one night (and I spent the next day recovering from it), I designed a frame for her Ketuba, and spent most of today with her and two other friends. We went Mayan-hopping (a mayan is a natural pool of water), hung out on the Tayelet (park that overlooks most of Jerusalem), and then frantically called around trying to find a notary to sign off on their pre-nup tonight.

The wedding is tomorrow morning and I will be going straight to Efrat afterwards, which is why I am sending this email tonight.

So basically, this was a week for Davida and I have been trying to help in any way I can to alleviate some of the pre-wedding stress. I have never been this up close and personal with a bride (and groom) the week before their wedding, and I have learned that it is both scary and amazing. Everyone is stressed, but it comes out differently. Some people become short and temperamental and fight about small things. Others get quiet and keep it all in until they hit a breaking point. And everyone becomes very self-focused. I guess what amazes me is that through all the fights and stresses and breakdowns, they still want to get married!

I know I am at the age where my friends are going to start getting married, and I am supposed to be thinking about it as well. And while this is not the first wedding of my peers, it is the first where I am so close to the couple and had a chance to witness a relationship develop into a marriage. And I wanted to talk about all I have learned right now, but I am having trouble articulating my thoughts. Unclear whether that is because I am tired or just havent formulated any opinions yet. What I can say is that it amazes me to see two people so committed to being together, that are so happy that even when they are miserable or fighting they still see their future together clearly. I envy that certainty. I am not that sure about anything in life, or rather, any certainty I do feel is tempered by a heart-wrenching fear that I am wrong.

Anyway, that is my thought to ponder. I am going to sleep so that I can fully rejoice in the certainty and love of my two friends tomorrow morning.

Summer Pics!!

Here are some pics of my summer adventures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2442923&id=5727708&l=b8fa207fdd