Thanksgiving

The beginning of Thanksgiving week started off with me being very angry at everyone's Facebook Statuses about going home for the holidays.

Then came a gratitude assignment from Positive Psychology. I almost always hate these assignments, but this time I had to write a letter to anyone that I wanted to about why I am grateful for them. I wrote about Grandpa Chuck. Ideally, we were supposed to send the letters to the person, but I'm pretty sure that grandpa still got it.

Then comes Thursday morning with a 7AM wake up call from my father. I'm skype is now forwarded to my cellphone, and now I am missing calls all of the time. I have to figure it out. Once it was a more reasonable time to get up, I went to the gym, showered, changed and got all of the stuff that I needed ready and headed for Sheva Shook, to get a chicken for Joseph (the butcher tried to get my number, but I received a good price on the chicken), then the walk to Tiv Tam, to get the turkey with Joseph. So I asked the butcher (in hebrew) for the turkey that is reserved for Talya. He turns to Joseph and asks him if he speaks Hebrew and to translate what I said! He says the same thing, and the butcher goes oh! the 8 kilo turkey! 8 kilos! that is more than 16 lbs! I have the little chicken. Joseph has the giant turkey, and we are roaming around the store looking for some other spices that I didn't have and aluminum pans. We bought 6 of those, some to cook in and some for transport.

We go to Joseph's, he has a normal size oven. He prepares his chicken and we start plucking the random feather tips that are stuck in the turkey, to occupy our time for the next 45ish mins. It was a lot of fun. Then we prepared the turkey with Thyme, Rosemary, a little bit of garlic powder, and some salt to make it brown. Once the chicken was done, it was time for the turkey. The Turkey was in and we had some errands to go run. We came back after a hour and still had like three hours to kill. Off to the balcony...it is in steep competition to being my favorite place in Herzliya with Talya's balcony. I change into my Thanksgiving clothes, and the turkey is ready and we head to get a cab to go to Anna and Sarah's apartment (a 4 min walk from where I actually live, or a 1/2 hr walk from Joseph).

Thanksgiving dinner was amazing. It was a bunch of psych kids and a ton of food: smashed sweet potato and regular potatoes, greenbeans, salad, my turkey, shnitzle, joseph's chicken, wine, sangria, cookies, apple pie, and good company.

After dinner we were all planning on heading to Theodore's, local bar, but when I got home and finished plucking the rest of the meat off of the turkey and put it away in the fridge, I wasn't in the mood so I cleaned my apartment and went to sleep...only to wake up bright and early for ulpan.

This was the first friday after Ulpan that I didn't take a nap. For I had things to do because Olivia was coming for Shabbat. And most importantly she did not get lost walking from the bus stop to me! Together we made my mother's thanksgiving sweet potato recipes, and it was amazing! For shabbat, we were at my neighbors/my real apartment, we had left over turkey, my sweet potatoes, some salad, challah, humus, and Rebeca's apple crumble. It was a very nice thanksgiving shabbat.

Saturday morning/lunch was repeat of friday night. After breakfast, I had to pull Olivia away from their porch, also my favorite spot in Herzliya, and we left for the mall. Shivat HaKochavin, Seven Stars, is open on shabbat! and I have never seen that mall more packed in my life. Shopping with Olivia in Israel was an adventure, to say the least! But she got stocked for a winter in Jerusalem, even though winter has yet to arrive here. Upon return to the apartment it was time for round 4 for turkey.

Saturday night the turkey was completed. It was 200 shekels and worth every agura (or penny). It was really nice having Olivia stay with me for thanksgiving/shabbat. And it just reminds me how nice it is to have close family when I am so far away from my family. And that I cannot wait for Erica to join us here. It is going to get crazy!

I cannot believe that it is almost channukah and december! boy has this year flown by!

Speak soon,

Rachel

Yhiyeh Tov (David Broza)

(just a note about this blog's title, I just learned that David Broza's son goes to my school)

Okay so a lot has been happening since Halloween. Pretty much everyone in Israel knows everyone else, and it is a scarily small world, especially after being on Year Course and meeting so many people. Either people that I met at different Shabbatons are meeting friends in the army, or have mutual friends with people at IDC and I'm just bumping into people all the time, at parties or even just on the street.

The airport on shabbat is a very empty place. Not only are things not open but its really hard to get there without a car. Talya, Keenan and I took Guy to the airport to go back to South Africa. It was really sad saying buy to him and hopefully he will be back sooner than the next school year.

Jenni's birthday was yesterday. We pregamed at their/mine apartment and then tried to go to a club, but it was 25+, so none of us could get in so we went to Carmelle's, amazing house in Kfar Shmulyahu. It was more laid back than the club would have been, so more my scene. We were all sitting on the patio when the sprinklers came on. I was going on for a while about how I wanted to go through the sprinklers but no one wanted to come with me. then Talya came out and she brought up the sprinklers and then we ran through them!!! everyone thought we were just doing it because we were drunk, but there is something about us Californians, that we would do this anytime of day.

I had a Bio quiz this past sunday. Looking at the quiz it looks really easy, ten questions, fill in the blank. But we have learned sooooo much about the cell, neurons, DNA, and more that anything could have been on the quiz. So after studying a lot during the week and going out friday night after the Hillel dinner, Talya and I needed a relaxing shabbat/study session. So we walked to Joseph's for shabbat lunch, followed by a studying session. Hopefully I did well on the quiz!

We, Talya and I, had another Shabbat dinner at her place a couple of weeks ago. It was a very hectic day leading up to dinner, but dinner was very nice and then we went to a bar in Ramat HaSharon that we had heard about, and after a very interesting cab ride we found it. It was a pleasant evening with the girls and then we decided to walk back to Herzliyah. It was probably about a hour walk but didn't feel like it. and of course instead of going straight home, we went to Theodore's, the student bar, there was like no one in the bar, (2:30 am fri night), so we were going crazy...then we left the bar and danced our way home.

[That week in Communications we watched a movie about hypereality called Rising. Its a documentary about the crumping scene in L.A. oh and tali, lil C from SYTYCD is in it. So our dance repertoire increased a lot]

Classes have been good. I'm really enjoying Bio. I hate, hate, hate our applied psychology workshop (3.5 hrs after 3 hrs of Stats), its a bad time of the day after an already long day. And it just isn't that interesting. I always behave in all of my classes, I'm a good student. But I swear this teacher hates me.

Going to an international school in Israel, makes you forget that you are in Israel. Everyone is from everywhere else, and they are now more interesting to get to know than Israelis. And I am just studying in English and almost never speak in Hebrew, except for Ulpan and occasionally with friends.

and can i just say how exciting it is taht the Beatles are now on iTunes. I said this in class, and someone was like wait, you pay for your music? hahah no, but they are now there.

oh! and Olivia crashed with me on her way up to Tsfat. It was really nice seeing her, once she finally got to me, another crazy bus story for her to tell. And a friend from Efrat that I had met exactly a year ago also crashed with me. Thank G-d for the three couches in the living room. Everyone left bright and early Friday Morning and then I had lunch with Rebbeciah and Talya at the Mall (I FINALLY ATE AT AROMA) and then we did some errands. Rebbeciah bought me a new sweat shirt since she had lost mine. It was becoming colder so I needed a jacket, but now its back up to the high 70s/low 80s. Its crazy! Mid November and I'm still wearing shorts. Not to say the other students are trying to bring out the boots, and sweaters. But I wont do it until it is actually cold out!

Till next time,

Rachel