Watching the World Series

As many Dallasites know, the Texas Rangers made it to the World Series 2010. This is an amazing experience for us. But as you all know (because you read my blog) I'm in Israel. So watching the World Series has been very difficult mainly because of the time difference. I didn't get the chance to watch Game 1 because I had classes the next day.  All I saw was that my team lost and I learned that Aaron Sherman (a madrich) is a Giants fan. I went out until 2 in the morning so I could come back and actually watch the game. The TV room was locked so I sat with some friends until 2:30. Then I went up to my room and watched the game from my computer. I started watching at the bottom of the 3rd inning, the score was 0-0. I watched until the bottom of the 5th and I almost fell asleep. So I exited out of the game and went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw the unfortunate score. The first thing that popped into my head was a line from the Sandlot, "You're killing me Smalls." However in this case, Smalls is equivalent to the Rangers.

I appreciate that my mom sent me the ALCS shirt and a pair of Texas Rangers earrings just in time for the World Series.

Ne'ot Kedumim

Today we Nativers went to Ne'ot Kedumim. It is a Biblical artificial nature preserve. We split up by track and had a series of leadership tasks to complete. We had to start off with herding goats and sheep. (as you can see in the picture). We then walked to a different area of the park and had another leadership exercise where we have to get a circle through a hoop. Then we went to a log, received numbers (1-15) and had to switch sides by number without falling off the log. After the log exercise, we figured out who was Be'er Sheva's Robin Hood. We did archery. At first, I couldn't get the arrow to go but then when I got a little bit of help, my first shot was a bull's eye. After that, we had to make food. Thankfully I've watched my dad attempt to make bread so I knew how to make the dough for pita. It was really good. We got back at 15:10 and started getting ready for Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom

The Bomb Squad

So I get home at 17:00 and put my bag up in my room. I step out of my room to say hi to people on my program and people start screaming about how the bomb squad is on its way. Being the naive American that I am, I run to my porch to see what's going on right outside my building and because I wanted to see the robot. Our director said we could go to our porch and observe, but once my roommates and I got up there, the police had told our director, Yossi, that we could not be on the porch so he waved us back inside. Many of us naive Americans and Canadians were trying to come up with clever ways to see what was going on. We tried a porch that's hard to see from. We couldn't see anything, so we tried the library in the old building right under my porch. Well the police saw us, but didn't say anything. Unfortunately, we still couldn't see anything. We then found out the suspicious package was inside the synagogue in the gates of base. We discussed if we'd actually be safe or not should a bomb go off. One person said yes, others said no. The streets were completely blocked off however. By 18:00, the bomb squad finished their job, the police opened the streets back up and now the hustle and bustle that is Jerusalem rush hour has started up again. As it turns out, the suspicious package was just a bag of books. It's a bit of an adrenaline rush to get to see (well not really see as much as have the experience of) this. If it were to happen again, I don't think we would be quite as excited as we were tonight.

First Week

Well I survived the first week of school. I finalized my classes. In case you were interested, my schedule is as follows:

SUNDAY
no classes
MONDAY
8:30-10:15 Hebrew.
12:30-14:15 Israeli Literature
14:30-16:15 Jewish Jesus to Christianity
TUESDAY
8:30-12:15 Hebrew
WEDNESDAY
12:30-14:15 Israeli Literature
14:30-16:15 Jewish Jesus to Christianity
THURSDAY
8:30-10:15 Hebrew
12:30-16:15 Evolutionary Psychology

This is not a bad schedule in my opinion. I'm very happy with it. The first rehearsal for Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat went well last night. Michael, the director, told me I'm choreographing "Close Every Door to Me",  "Those Canaan Days", and " a section of "Go Go Joseph"

I'm pretty excited for all of this

First day of school! First day of school!

You get a prize if you can figure out the reference for the title!

Today was the first day of school. I only have one class on Sundays, and that is Art History.  My class doesn't start until 2:30 so I had the morning to myself. I spent it with some people who don't have class on Sundays and some people that do. For lunch, a group of us spent 73 NIS on a pizza for the 6 of us. At 1:30, Jennie, Yedidyah and I got on the bus to Hebrew University. Along the way, Jennie kept freaking out about how much time we had left until class began. (These are Israeli drivers, what they drive is more important than the other vehicles on the road, including bus drivers). We got there in time. Art History was a good class. Tomorrow I have Israeli Literature and Jewish Jesus through Christianity. I will most likely have to drop Jewish Jesus because I can't take 4 classes. Thursdays I have Evolutionary Psychology. Thursday, I'll post my official schedule (including rehearsals for the show)

Simchat Torah, Assassins, Sculptures, Sushi, Crosswords and more

SIMCHAT TORAH
Simchat Torah was a lot of fun. I didn't go to shul erev Simchat Torah, but in the morning I went to an Egalitarian Orthodox shul called Yedidyah. When we girls were in the women's section, we met a girl a few years older than us who happened to have been on Nativ 24. She told us "if you guys get fat on Nativ, you will lose it by the end of the program." We found that to be very random. Also at shul, we ran into Chaiim. It was so much fun to see him again and again and again (too bad he's going to Australia now).

ASSASSINS
We have just begun the game of assassins where we all receive a clothespin with someone's name on it and the goal is to grab the clothespin without anyone seeing you take it. If you take it, you killed someone and go after their target and so on...
I was killed and I've been helping those that are alive and joking around with my friends still in the game about how they can see dead people

SCULPTURES
There is a sculpture in Liberty Bell Park of an alligator. Last time I was here, the task was to look at the entire sculpture from the tail. ( it's quite amusing and I encourage you all to come to Israel not just to see the sculpture but to see how fantastic it is)

SUSHI
Girls night out was originally to a sushi bar called Japanika. Because there were 6 of us on a Saturday night, they didn't have the room for us and were taking people before us even though we were on the list. So we ditched Japanika and walked down the road to another sushi bar called Tsunami. It was delicious. So many combinations. The edemamme bowl was enormous. It was superb.

CROSSWORDS
In the lobby of the old building (my building) there is the largest crossword puzzle in the world. The challenge is to have the most words in your track, so they separate each track by color. It's quite the challenge when there are 5 people all looking to solve the clues in the book and there are only 3 colors.

MORE...
I finished my finals for the minimester. I am getting my cartilege pierced today. There are bed bugs at Beit Nativ (no mattresses right now). I bought stickers. and finally...
I MADE IT INTO THE ISRAELI LITERATURE CLASS!!!!
Let me explain. This class is limited to up to 25 students. All the students who signed up for this class were wait listed. Because the semester starts on Sunday, they had the lottery of all the students last night. Today they sent out emails to those who for sure got it. I am one of the lucky 25. It's like getting the Golden Ticket only 5 times better...[haha joke 5 times better because 5 X 5 = 25 and there's 25 in the class]
I love my humor sometimes