Thursday night after my last post, I walked to a medical clinic with Shira and Rachel to get our flu shots. The clinic is all for Americans, and the people all speak great English, and it is very clean and nice. The flu shot was not so nice, however, and for the past few days is has been swollen, red, hot, and painful on my left arm. Oh well though, it's better than the flu.
I walked home with a different Rachel, and Gabe and Michael (it's weird to call some people by their first names here, but for the sake of other people's privacy, I decided to just do that a long time ago), and we had amazing pizza squares for dinner at Beit Nativ. If you have been following my food adventures, you may remember how much everyone hated the food at home before, but now that we have stipends and are responsible for about seven meals of our own per week, Beit Nativ food is so great! Never thought I'd say that...
After dinner, the time was ripe for d-boating. We got dressed up, we went to the park, we encountered sketchy dangerous people so we left the park, we hung out outside bars, we danced on bars, we took pictures, we partied. I bought myself a chocolate bar since I wasn't drinking, but all my drunk friends thought it would be really appropriate to ask me to share the ENTIRE thing, and this made me very upset, and then Joshy noticed I was upset that my chocolate got away before I could even enjoy a third of it, and he bought me Reeses Pieces (I am adamant that the pronunciation be "reeseeees pieceees") and that made everything much much better.
I emerged the next morning at noon, just in time for lunch at home. I showered, went grocery shopping, bummed around, and got ready for Shabbat. I went to Yakar with Razie, Shara, Ariella, Max, Jonny, and Aaron, and of course it was beautiful. The Friday night services at Yakar are so incredibly spiritual, and I know pretty much all the tunes at this point. Services here vary from the US in many ways, but one thing that is hard to get used to is that no one calls page numbers because everyone brings his own siddur. It makes the service flow better, though, for sure.
Shabbat dinner, football, and tisch followed services. We ate, we threw, we caught, we sang. I played football for another three hours, or something ridiculous like that, because more and more people kept coming over and wanting to join! And how can you turn people away from a game of catch? You can't. So we kept expanding the circle and reordering the catching cycle. I never thought catch was fun before, but it turns out that it's super fun, and endlessly entertaining. It is, however, horribly demoralizing to chase after a football that has gone astray, because of its unpredictable path. There were definitely some embarrassing moments.
I ended up staying up until 6 am, which in retrospect was a very bad idea, since I woke up at 7:25 am to go to Shabbat services. I went to Yedidya with Judah and LeeAnn, and even though it's a 45 minute walk, it went by really quickly with such great company. LeeAnn and I went to the women's Torah service too, which was really cool since it was a Bat Mitzvah, so the BM girl read the whole thing, and she was good! The portion was interesting too-the flood and the Tower of Babel-what more could you ask for? I read the English and commentary for the portion before dozing off here and there.
The service finished with Mussaf and kiddush, and a delicious one at that. We walked home and discussed Torah and life. It was perfect. I had lunch and schmoozed and lounged, and I ended up napping in Josh's bed for five hours. I had originally planned to hang out with Seffi and Debbie in Seffi and Josh's room, and since Josh wasn't home, Debbie and I snuggled up under his really nice down comforter, and immeeeeediately fell into deep sleep.
I woke up after Shabbat was over, felt exceedingly refreshed, and went for a run with Meir. It was mostly successful, and he slowed down for me for the first two-thirds of the run, and then it was uphill for the rest of the way and I didn't want to keep such a fast pace so I told him to run on ahead. We both passed a group of Nativers a few minutes apart on the way, and they laughed at us. After a very necessary shower, we went to meet that same group of Nativers who were having dinner for Becky's birthday. We got there just in time for dessert!
The dinner party broke into groups afterward, and I walked with Becca to the next celebration, this time at the bars. It was much like any other night out, but this time, there were two additional birthdays and more flaming alcoholic beverages (it seems instinctive to not drink poison that is also on fire, but apparently not). We all usually sit at tables outside of this one particular bar that has good deals for happy hour, but Liza needed to go to the bathroom so we went inside, and what did I find but the POPCORN machine!!! I made best friends with the popcorn machine attendants and succeeded in scoring mad amounts of delicious and salty puffs of perfection. It made the whole night worth it.
The birthday party walked around the area for a while, carrying speakers and blasting hip hop, so it was an amusing event to be a part of, and then it was time to go home. There was more football to be played though, at one am, and then finally I could sleep.
I woke up this morning at ten, stalked my own facebook, and ate some rugalach. Today is a big day of Art History, football practice, and Idan Raichel!
No comments:
Post a Comment