Hi again! I'm back in the swing of things! A few more stories, and I should be all caught up. I am currently sitting at an adorable cafe down the street, Loveat, drinking tea and writing since our internet is down. Again...
I'll start with Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, we all left work a little early to meet Vivian and her boss at their office. Her boss, Gad, used to work as Rabin's press secretary and media advisor. He gave us some background information on his consulting firm and his background, and then opened the floor to questions. It was nice to have a perspective other than Sheldon's offering us political opinion. We asked him about Gilad Shalit, Israeli settlements on the West Bank, his views on Obama, and basically whatever was on our minds. He had some great insight, and strong opinions. It was incredible informative, and I didn't feel like he was forcing his opinion on us. I'm glad he was able to share his time with us. As we were leaving, Ricky offered a few of us a ride home since she had extra seats in her car. On the way she pointed out the landmarks, an amusement park and gas station, that would help us find her on Tuesday for the siyur. I jotted down what she said, and therefore ended up in charge of leading the group that Tuesday. That's where the fun begins.
We were told to meet her at the gas station she had pointed out near Yarkon Park to go boating and have a picnic. We all left the apartments at 10, as we had been told, and waited over 30 minutes for bus 28. When it still hadn't come, we called Ricky, and she said we could also take the 42. One pulled up, and we all piled on. When we had been on for the half hour I had expected, and I still didn't see the amusement park, I called Ricky, asking her where we should be. She asked for a landmark, we told her the mall we were passing, and she goes "You're in Ramat Gan. Get off the bus!" Haha. So we did. She hadn't bothered to mention that to take the 42, the landmarks we had been looking for wouldn't show up... We had gone too far. So she directed us to walk across and find the nearest stop going the other direction. We all waited at a stop outside of the mall, and asked the first bus that pulled up if he went to the place we were looking for. He said no. The next bus came, he also said no. At this point, I resigned as PM (or got impeached) and we called Ricky. Not 5 minutes later she pulled up in her car and shuffled a load of us to the park. She came back one more time, loaded everyone into taxis, and took one more trip in her car. Turned out we were pretty close. Wasn't my fault, I promise, but we got to the park about an hour or so behind schedule. No biggie.
We were hungry, so we voted to eat our potluck picnic first, and boat later. What we hadn't eaten while stranded at the bus stop, we chowed down on on a nice big sheet blanket on the lawn of the park. We had brought pasta salad with grilled veggies, another apartment another kind of pasta salad, some fruit salad, cucumber sandwiches, and Ricky brought jachnun. Jachnun is a traditional Yemenite Jewish dish made from rolled dough which is baked on very low heat overnight. It is traditionally served with a crushed/grated tomato dip and hard boiled eggs. This answers the question, Mom and Dad, of what we ate at our hotel in Eilat. We missed the topping though. Now I know!
After we ate, some people played a soccer esque game, and I along with some others took a little nap on the grass, then we went boating. Although we had been told "sailing" and "canoeing" we found ourselves in paddle boats, ya know the ones with the foot peddles. Super cute. We rode around an artificial lake with a cute little island. I was in a boat with Amy, Jacob, and Ricky. My ulpan class, plus Ricky! After about half an hour, the guide came around in a put put tossing out balloons. We had a contest to see which boat could gather the most balloons from around the lake. It became quite competitive. To prevent them from flying away, we tied all of our balloons in a bundle. This was a great plan until, in a mad dive to get a balloon before the boys, our entire bundle fell back into the lake. Oops. We raced to go pick them up before another boat got all of our hard work, and I managed to snatch them up just in time, losing only 1 in the process. It was quite fun.
We managed to get home with much less trouble. We took a different bus though, and ended up near the Shuk, so Chelsea and Melanie and I decided to take a little detour through Nachalat Benyamin, the craft and artist market. As soon as I walked in, I looked up and recognized a face from High School. Jeff and Brian Glickman. Turns out they were here on Birthright, and had been given some free time to shop. We caught up a bit then headed on our way. Not 10 minutes later, I look over and see Teri Herbstman. Assuming she was with them, I stopped to say hello. Teri also went to DHS, and was a participant on WUJS in Jerusalem last fall machzor. She was not with them in fact, and was equally as shocked to have seen 2 separate groups of people from High School. It was like a mini Deerfield Reunion, all by chance. I love this country.
Worked from home on Wednesday, since Tomer is in London and Maayan was at class all day. Got a lot done actually. Thursday I had my year course class, and we started working on our show. I'm not sure how much I have explained about this, but I'll go again just in case. I have found myself teaching an acting class for Year Course, another MASA program for post high school students during their gap year. There are 6 students on the performing arts track in the class which I co-teach with Amy Gross. We have elected to do a short play festival with them as their final project, and after a few weeks of fun acting exercises and scene work, have finally begun working on that. We started with The League of Semi Superheroes. It's a play I bookmarked a while ago, but hadn't yet found the right group to direct in it. This was it! It was a perfect cast of 6, and they really have done a great job with it so far. I'll be sure to update you as we move further on teh rehearsal process and get closer to performance. It is really nice to be directing again, and working with people. As much as I love my internship, I am so not cut out for an office job, and being back in the classroom had confirmed this. I need to work with people. Yay. I chose the right career track.
Friday was an excellent sleep day, and today Michal, Chelsea and I had a wonderful adventure. We went down to the port for this clothing and accessories sale we have been seeing posters for forever. It reminded me of the jewelry shows Mom and I went to with "Things Boutique", but not quite so cheap. Only cost 15 sheks to get in, and everything was on a discount, but still designer merchandise is designer merchandise. Lots of clothing boutiques had booths, and we saw some awesome pieces as well as of course some crazy stuff. Michal and Chelsea both bought cute headbands and I treated myself to a cute pink belt. Can't wait to wear it. It was a wonderful way to spend Shabbat, and gave me a much needed excuse to get out of bed and do something with my day off. Yay for roommate adventures.
Well, I think I have officially caught up. I'll try to get back on schedule from here on out. Next course of action, label pictures. I am trying to figure out why the link to the right doesn't work, but regardless when I have captioned and arranged, I will post a new link here. Hope all is well, and can't wait for you to see all my pretty pix! Love!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment