my life right now:

in one word: sweaty.

haha, no, I'm kidding. (kind of.) It's shabbat, and I'm writing you from a cute little cafe about 4 store fronts down from my apartment. I swear, their to-go iced latte cups are so damned cute, I may actually take up cold coffee. Maybe.

In a word, I am, at peace. Everythings a little mishegas here, but that is to be expected. I have embraced it. As you will read, I am letting it roll off of my feathers. Yes, that's right, I have feathers.

Good news folks, our AC is FINALLY FIXED. No throw-back-to-summer-camp-anti-Cold-air here! Now our porch is sweltering because our inverter has decided to output air at about 145F, but that's a "duh, we're in Israel" moment. I am becoming SOOOO good at figuring out those moments: Today, Michal and I decided to totally rearrange our kitchen to attempt to give ourselves at least 1 square foot of counterspace. We dragged a hall entryway table into our GALLEY kitchen, and made it work. Tim Gunn would be so proud.

In other news, I am really settling into life here. Our parents should be so proud: we youngadults took it upon ourselves to organize another shabbat potluck, and although it was a little all-over-the-place, we did it right. Pats on our backs. Shabbat has also been a welcome day in my life: nothing is open except for the AM/PM (our downstairs convenience store) and the coffee shop, so we get to have a chillaxin day. Oh, and the Mediterranean is open, I forgot to mention that. Saturdays are un/official beach days, even though today I made an exception for my mental health (I needed a day of organizing/cleaning/getting my shit in order). Sometimes it's hard for me to chillax if I have pressing matters. Like my blog. Of COURSE you take precedence over my LSAT studying, of course!


Ulpan has also been going well/interestingly. Although I may find it weird that we're learning to say "prince Charles is the prince of England" before the number nine, I'm sure it makes sense to Israelis. I can also now say "The chocolate is from Belgium" and "Madonna is from the United States." So useful, I know :)

I'm also still working on a dance class to take: trying to be e-to the-conomical, but still shake my groove thang. Yep, I got one of those. I found a studio that had some promising looking classes, but got a bit turned off when the secretary tried to sell me on the fact that irish dancing and tap were the same thing. The nerve!! haha.


Incidentally, this studio is right below my "work". Now, I use that word in quotation marks becuase I haven't actually DONE anything yet. The doctor who I am working for seems absolutely wonderful and brilliant and nice, but in his teeny office of one doctor and 5 secretaries, they literally seem too busy to have us help them. The language barrier is obviously a big issue, and will be a hurdle with anything that I try to do, but I am going to try to find something more productive to do than wait in a waiting room for 5 hours asking "is there anything I can do now?" at 15-minute-intervals. Don't worry, I'm ok. Keeping my mind and options open, and optimism is always the goal. The goal, I say.


I have also managed to find the equivalent of a "dollar" store in one of the main commercial centers here--I am fully planning on unleashing my artistic side on some canvasses and proudly nailing them to my wall. (well, maybe gumming them to my wall. Since they are concrete. And I dont have a hammer.) I also found the prettiest spools of ribbon in this one store and plan on throwing ribbon and superglue at my wall and seeing what happens. Just kidding. Maybe.

That's about all, folks! I would like to share one final revelation that I had this week: we were cooking our peasanty-shakshuka dish, which was unfreakingreal, and just throwing things in a pot to simmer, when it hit me: how spoiled I felt. Literally, not just lucky, or blessed, but honest-to-goodness spoiled. And that totally threw me: I can be here, with the bare minimum to my name, but be totally more-than-fine. And, to know that when I finally go home, I will feel spoiled also by all of the luxuries that I don't have here. Knowing that I can have such an amazing life when nothing is familiar and I have next-to-nothing just makes me very happy. Didn't really explain that too well, but the recap is that I feel spoiled here. And am ok on my own. And needed to know that. And now do.


p.p.s. Applying early to Georgetown Law. Gulp. Wish me luck, and DC-i-ans better get ready for this whirlwind.


hebrew word of the day: ramzor. It means stoplight! These are mostly disregaurded in Tel aviv, just so you know when you come here and drive and want to be a true tel avivian.