Catching Up

Disclaimer: There have been some mutterings of malcontent regarding the maintenance of my blog, and I would like to clear up a few points. Navah's blog, Seven Daily Reasons, is just what the name suggests - a daily blog in which she lists seven reasons why her day was good. MY blog, on the other hand, is meant to keep the fans back home apprised of the goings-on of my life. It is not a daily, so much as a whenever-convenient account of events, along with some useless musings. I hope you enjoy, but I never did promise regularity. All this said, I DO highly recommend Navah's blog and suggest you click over there whenever your daily (hourly?!) checking of my blog yields no new posts.

All this week was the first week of classes. I enjoyed all of them, though there are some major weirdos in my Talmud class (maybe a few anecdotes to follow about them, but I'm not sure if I feel comfortable posting those online). I actually enjoyed class too much and spent a significant portion of this week worrying over which of my four classes I would be dropping (it's ultimately going to be Islam). Wednesday night I walked over to my great aunt and uncle's house (Naomi and Mordechai), and we got in a taxi to head out to Chashmonaim for Avigail and Ariyeh's engagement party. It was VERY overwhelming (there were at least a hundred people there and the fact that they were all speaking English flustered me for some reason. Plus, there was this old guy with a handgun tucked into his belt - crazy!), but not unfun. It was a good introduction to that side of the family, who I have never really known.

Thursday afternoon, Ariella woke me up from my nap and reminded me about our museum date that we had planned. We were going to go to Museum on the Seam, but we weren't entirely sure how to get there and the bus just wasn't showing up. In the end, we gave up on that and decided to go to the Bloomfield Science Museum. We looked at a lot of optical illusions, wandered around an Einstein exhibit for over an hour, then played with the hands on exhibits. We had very limited time there, but we look forward to taking our friends back there sometime soon (and going to other museums all the time).

I was home again for Shabbat, which is getting a little old, but there were great people home for Shabbat which was fun and chill. Friday night I went to Shira Hadasha, and then later that night I played Risk with a bunch of guys which was great and something I've missed. I was going to go with Aaron to Kol Haneshama this morning (a Reform shul in the area - it just sounded like a good experience to have), but we couldn't find it, so we ended up going to Yemin Moshe, which was nice (their kiddush is spectacular!), and walking and talking with Aaron was nice. At lunch, Noah announced that there would be parshat hashavuah study and mincha at 4:30, I asked him who was teaching and he responded with "you can!" Then he also asked me to read Torah. I got Debbie and Jordana to come back to my room to keep me company while I prepared. That stuff went fine. After Seudah Shlishit, Joey and I had a catch with a baseball which was something I've missed so much. It was great to just stand and talk and joke with him while tossing the ball back and forth (too bad he's a Phillies fan). After Shabbat I went out for bagels with Ariella, Debbie, Shara and Adina - I'd really missed bagels - then we all went out for Max's birthday.

That's about it. Hope everything is good by you.

Talk to you soon,
Seffi