This post is dedicated to Ilana for her birthday, even though it was two days ago. I took some pictures of my room, and I have lots of exciting things to write about everyone’s favorite topic—celiac disease! Here’s what I’ll be writing about, in no particular order:
Zumba
Maayan
Yom Kippur
Sukkot dinner
Pictures!
One of our madrichot, Maya (who went to Wellesley College, where I’ll be going next year), has a friend who is a zumba instructor. Zumba is a really good dance workout that involves a lot of movement of the hips and whatever else the instructor decides to throw in (jumps, lunges, salsa, etc.). Maya has offered a few zumba sessions (based on a zumba video her friend made), but tonight was the first one I did. I am by no means the most coordinated dancer, but I had a great time and got a great workout. I felt really tired at the beginning but now, two and a half hours later, I feel completely energized. (Actually, that might not be a good thing since I have to go to sleep at some point, but I still have a lot of homework to do, so no worries.) One of the most exciting things about this zumba sessions was that one of the dances was to the Official World Cup 2010 song, Waka Waka. We were taught the dance to this song at camp this summer but I never learned it. I picked up a few parts though, so it was nice to know a small part of the dance we were doing. After the hour long zumba session, I and two other people decided to stay and do some of the dances again (specifically Waka Waka). We did about fifteen more minutes of zumba and then some ab exercises. It felt really great to do such an intense workout after not having much opportunity to exercise lately. And now I can’t wait to join Ilana at her zumba class when I come home!
Between dinner and zumba today, I found out something very exciting: the receptionist at Beit Nativ, Maayan, has celiac disease! She gave me a brownie that she made from a gluten free mix (from the US…if anyone wants to send me some GF brownie mix) and it was great to have some good GF food that wasn’t crackers or rice cakes. She’s also just really sweet and said she would tell me about all the places to get food in Israel, so that will be helpful.
Yom Kippur in Israel is a big deal. There is no one on the street and the whole country shuts down. Disappointingly, I didn’t have a particularly spiritual Yom Kippur, but it was relatively exciting. For Kol Nidre I went to a shul called Kedem. Kedem is one of the few conservative shuls in Israel; most are orthodox with a mechitza. At Kedem there is no rabbi, but services are led by members of the congregation. To my surprise, Kol Nidre was being led by one of my Tanach teachers, Zac Johnson! It was a great surprise to see him, and the service was really nice. Fast forward to the next afternoon: Yael Nurko, my best friend since kindergarten, was in Jerusalem for the weekend so we were finally able to spend some time together and catch up on everything that had happened in the last three weeks. We decided to go to the Kotel for minchah and then back to Kedem to meet Yael’s friends for Neilah. On the way to the Kotel, we ran into the Gann juniors on the Alexander Muss program. It was really exciting to see them, especially because one of the kids I’m friends with, Ilan Radbil, also has celiac disease! We talked about what foods we’ve been eating and commiserated about how hard it is to find good GF food in Israel. Once we got to the Kotel it was nice to be there, but it’s supposed to be more of an experience for men who pray there (because of the mechitza). We left the Kotel with enough time to meet Yael’s friends at Kedem, and stopped along the way to take in the amazing view. However, as we kept walking, the route that had initially seemed so familiar to me just became more and more foreign until I finally realized that we were walking through the Armenian Quarter. We eventually got out, but not without walking around a large part of the Old City and making ourselves late to meet Yael’s friends. With some serious speed walking and extreme thirst, we finally made it to Kedem just before they blew the shofar. The only problem was that Yael’s friends were nowhere to be seen. It turns out that they didn’t know which shul is Kedem and were actually at a different shul. Luckily, Mr. Johnson had happened to be at dinner with Yael the night before, so he showed us the way back to her host family’s house and I went back to Beit Nativ. Dinner was dairy which is my least favorite here since I can’t eat pasta, bread etc., so afterward, I decided to get frozen yogurt with my friends. To my dismay, when we got to the frozen yogurt place, they said it wouldn’t be ready for a few hours. I settled for some overly sweet cappuccino ice cream and thought about how much I would rather be eating BerryLine.
I’ll finish this another time since I REALLY have to do my homework now.
Gmar Chatima Tovah!
No comments:
Post a Comment