Purim!!!!

It's been a rather unexpected Purim weekend for me. Israelis told me to be here for Purim instead of trying to jet off to somewhere. No, seriously, that was before I begged you to let me visit Prague, Mom! In some ways, I'm glad that I did, in other ways, I felt pretty homesick and was not glad that I did stay.

I'd rather not talk about my day on Sunday since it was rather ruined- didn't get to do what I really wanted to do. Plus, seeing a friend's pictures of his visit to NYC for a month made me feel rather homesick for New York, and he gave me some personal issues that I needed to think about.

Anyway, Monday was a better day. To make up for not going out the night before with Wendy, I enjoyed in a wonderful, wonderful Purim party, hosted by Rebecca and Tamara. But, before the party, I went up to Wendy's apartment to hang out with her for a bit since I hadn't seen her in a while. She and a couple of people read the Megillah in Hebrew... I can't wait until I can read that well! Obviously, I didn't read. Wendy dressed up as a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Somehow she found a Steelers t-shirt in Hebrew!

At the party several floors up, we feasted on wonderful appeitizers, some kind of tomato-based soup, grilled veggie kebobs and veggie burgers, and loads of desserts. Seeing all the hamanschatens made me SO happy as you could only buy them in bulk. We also did some hard liquour shots and several people talked about their perspectives on Purim. Tamara told us about some of the decorations that she had put up around the room. There were probably at least 15 of us squeezed in the tiny space, faciliated by sitting on sofa cushions and using coffee tables. It was set up like inside a Bedouin tent- very festive. I sat with David and Ellen... I also found a girl with two cochlear implants- I didn't really get to meet her until I was on my way out. Now I have to track her down. Amy and her roommate, Kate, dressed up as Arab women... I felt a little offended by their costume choices in terms of wanting to cover their heads and wear veils... but Amy did strip down to an Arab dancer's costume with all the jingles on it- like what bellydancers wear.

Unfortunately, I never made it down to downtown Jerusalem to see all the festivities because of Tamara's party being held in the afternoon. And, well, I got a little sick.

Mom, I missed your hamanschatens as they only have the chocolate filling- none of the poppy seeded ones!!!

By the way, I made my final class selections today:
1) Hebrew
2) American Jew-Israeli Jew: A Comparative Analysis (honors seminar)
3) history of Eastern European Jewry (with Wendy!)
4) Holocaust seminar

Yeah, got to stick with that Holocaust seminar in order to keep the internship... I decided after today, there was no way I could stay focused for 3 hours in an environmental policy class as interesting the topics were. What's funny is that I made a vow to myself to try taking this semester off from history and just enjoy the other kinds of classes out there but I found myself drifting to this history class.... there's just no way to get rid of the history buff inside me.

Melissa and I agreed that Israel has given us gifts beyond our wildest dreams. There's just no one word to describe how we're feeling about our stay in this amazing country so far.