REAL POST!!!!! I know, I know. You love me.

Peace sticker at the Rabin Rally

random artist whos stuff I like
fresh pitot!

herd them sheep.

Hyssop and Sumac and Sesameseeds oh MY!


So much to say, so little time. WHOOF time has flown by here!! ive been here almost 3 months and it feels like nothing--i am having a blast and kinda-sorta getting into the swing of things.

Im going to try and update just a weensy bit on what I've been doing, etc, so you dont hate me. Don't hate me, K? Just because Ive been delinquent? Dont hate. Busy life ova hea.

Ok, so I guess the first thing to tell yall about is about a week and a half ago, there was an annual memorial for Yitzhak Rabin, who was shot in tel aviv by an extremist for his peace policies. The memorial is held in Rabin square, and Obama, Shimon Peres, etc all talked (well, Obams sent a video message. He wasnt actually there) and there were TONS of people and peace now signs, and i got a lot of cool stickers, and it was generally a really cool experience. Would have been cooler if i knew what all the speeches meant, but eh. The singing afterwards part was cool--the Israeli national anthem always gives me shivers its so beautiful. We also went to a gelatto shop and had the BRILLIANT idea since we are all living like poor college kids to instead of getting a kids gelatto for 13 shekels, fill up a HALFKILOOMFG of gelatto and split it and it would be 10 shekels each! We are SUCH good jews. hahaah. So, that was really fun and we had a very Sex and the City moment with us 4 roommates sitting outside of a gelatto shop chatting and fighting over which charachters we were--I know i got VOTED miranda bc of the whole law thing, but i SO do not have bad hair. Or a kid. Harumph, so there. After the memorial we had to walk back cuz no busses were running thorugh Rabin square, and i decided it was the perfect time to photograph my favorite graffiti that ihave ever seen EVER. and, as I approached, HORROR: the city of tel aviv had painted over it. In grey. becuase of the memorial, Im sure. WTF TEL AVIV SO NOT COOL. I cant really describe what it was like, it was a womans face, but just the cooolest piece of art i had ever seen. I would seriously hang it in my house. Sad.

I guess the BIG BIG piece of news is my new job at the Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance in Tel Aviv. Um, I LOVE MY FREAKING JOB. Everyone is so nice and its so fun and i am already making a huge difference there and just WOAH. I really really, lucked out. Im so glad i sad screw it and decided to work somewhere I wanted, somewhere fun. Right now I'm helping organize an international expo for works from tel aviv and people from all over are coming and I talk to this one dude in Belarus like 4x a day. Shweeet. I also get MAD FREE TICKETS TO INSANE DANCE PERFORMANCES. My life is amazing.

The first performance I got to see (ahem, THREE DAYS after I started working) was from Seoul that I already told yall about. The second one I got to go to was the world premiere of Barak Marshall's new work, Rooster. A little about Barak: hes from Israel/LA and he is very famous here and went to HARVARD for f-s sake and teaches at UCLA sometimes when hes not off being brilliant. It was a pretty spectacular piece, which my roommate incidentally made some of the props for (the opening was at the opera house), AND after the performance I got swept away by my coworkers to the back private reception in the depths of the opera house and got to meet Barak and OH i love adventures. Barak is also really close with my boss, apparently, and has showed up at my work. We chatted. Hes pretty awesome.

In other news, we've had some pretty good meetings with Sheldon, our teacher-dude-middleeastconflictexpert-exisraeli intellegence dude. Hes such a badass. And he knows a lot about alot--i cant tell you how good it feels to actually be able to understand a bit of what is going on with this super complicated conflict and to be able to describe to someone what the "middle east conflict" actually is. I know, right? Me liking history + geography? Go figure.

Speaking of history.....our siyur last week was to the biblical reservation. It was a place called Neot Kedumim - check out their website. Yes you read that right--a parcel of land here where they have tried to plant and keep everydamnedthing mentioned in the bible. Prettty cool. We played some games, herded some sheep (no im not joking--there was legit sheep herding. And goats. And that ish is HARD. For future reference, in case anyone ever needs to herd some shit in their life, pick the goats. They listen SO much better than the sheeps. Damn sheeps.) So, other than learning leadership lessons by herding things, we got to something even MORE FUN (I know, right? what could be more fun) and make our own za'atar. Za'atar (ok so thats the correct spelling, from now on its zatar becuase those damn two a's are just too hard to type over and over. i'm lazy, we know) is a spice made from hyssop and sumac and sesame seeds all ground into a powder. It is like THE spice here in Israel and we all are addicted---it is so good on EVERYTHING, pizza, eggs, chicken, toast... everything. Yay zatar. So, we got to make our own--walk on over to the hyssop plant growin in the rocks, pick some, walk on over to the (not poison) sumac plant, pick some, and grind it all up with a mortar and pestle. FUN!!!!! She gave us little baggies, which we filled with our new green spice, made the obligatory "can't go through customs with this" and "200 shekels a bag" jokes, and pocketed our fresh, homemade seasoning. After, we got to make our own pita over an open fire with these things that are really popular here that i can only describe as black, maybe cast iron, upside-down woks. you stick em over a fire and thats what ppl here make pitot on. Well, i got to make pitot and we cooked them and ate them with our zatar and it was soooo good. After the biblical part, we switched gears and went and volunteered with the Jaffa Instititue in Jaffa (DUH), a group that provides food for needy familes in jaffa and after-school meals and activities for underprivledged kids. We got to assemble boxes of food for families, and we also got to go to an afterschool center and play with kids for awhile. It was really fun, and nice volunteering like that which I havent done in awhile.

This week our field trip was about the Palmach, the pre-IDF israeli army when israel was not allowed to have one/attacked the day it was formed by like 5 armies. It was SO COOL the first part--they had a kibbutz, a real life kibbutz, and underground through a hole in the laundry room floor was a bullet factory. and no one on the kibbutz who didnt work there knew about it. How cool is that???? You all knwo me, I love secret passageways and doors and stuff. So in one room, the laundry machine slid out and there was a ladder down, and in the second room (the bakery), the whole huge OVEN slid across for like a bigger hole if needed. They just had to be so so sneaky!--they even had an ancient tanning salon in the basement so the workers wouldnt look like they were working underground all day. super cool. Then we went to the palmach museum which was pretty cool but too hi-tech for its message, i think. still really fun. On Tuesday we came home and tried to see the meteor shower, but it was REALLY cloudy and rainy=bummer. We instead watched the Wizard of Oz since it was the ANNIVERSARY of its release!! 70 years!!! and my roommate becky is obsessed.

Ulpan- Ulpan is going well. I think i am doing better, still trying hard to learn (I learn about 30 new words every day and about 2 stick. such is life). But I got a 92 on my first ulpan test so i feel like im not doing so bad!! yayy.

In the meantime, I'm just stickin to the daily grind--i love my walk to work every morning and afternoon through the BEAUTIFUL Neve Tzedek neighborhood in Tel Aviv, I am busy finding great new little local restaraunts on the cheap and finding amazing new food I havent tried, and am SO EXCITED TO HAVE MY MOM AND JOEL join me in Israel next week. I cannot wait!!!!


Oh, and...DUM DUM DUM. I had to put on a jacket for the first time this week. What a pity. Its still hot here, but I think ive acclamated, so 65 is cold for me now, lol. Hope yall are bundled up and surviving whatever nor'easters or other things that come your way!!

Im not sure if i did it before, but I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone who coordinated to send me birthday cards. I LOVE getting mail, and it was so special to have those lovely momentos from everyone in the states who thought of me. I love you all so much!!


HWOTD: mayim. As in, OMG there is a ton of mayim coming from the ceiling in my bathroom. Funny event this week--to this day we cant shower without the now=hole in our ceiling leaking. fuuuun times.