knock knock of the hammer.

The time has come for me to tell y'all about my week. it has been a good one.

Our vacation for Sukkot basically started on Sunday. We had a special day of learning about the holiday of sukkot, the festival of booths. Then I spent the afternoon building our school sukka on the school's roof. It is a pretty chill spot on the roof. you can see into downtown, the hills on the way to bethlehem, into katamon and towards the hills of arnona and talpiot and the direction of the west bank.

Then i headed out of town for what was supposed to be a two night trip to see a guy i have been dating. I headed out for the few hour trek to the coast, where he lives. I met him in Sinai, about a month ago, when i was there with hells-bells, brendan and gino (yes, i have yet to tell you about my trip to sinai and the rest of my travels in august). He is a really sweet guy, smart, vegetarian (super big plus), , loves hiking, scuba, and all things outside, and....not religious. Let me spare the suspense and tell you that i ended things the next day and came home early. It sucks, he was really attentive and fun. long rastot, handsome, super tan from long days on the beach. but i have already done the relationship with someone who doesn't dig judaism....and i cant do it again. there were other issues, but that was the big one. so, i said goodbye to him and headed to tel aviv to spend the afternoon on the beach there, doing a special service called tashlich - where you throw a piece of bread into a moving body of water to symbolize the sending away of our sins in our new year. Our attempts to start anew and live a life free of that which we fell prey to in the last year. I have to say that i felt particularly happy to see my little crust of bread float away into the Mediterranean. the sun on my back and the wind on my face. the sand tickling my feet. it was good.

it was a little sad to leave my newly found israeli, he was looking like a real possibility for a while and man was it good for my hebrew!:) but part of my hope for this new year is that i will do a better job of listening to myself - when something is right for me and when something just isnt a good fit. no matter what context that applies to. if i succeed i will be giving a lot more respect to my own emotions and feelings and other's in the long run as well. hurting fewer people = a good thing.

i headed back to jerusalem for a night of remembrance of a famous israeli poet named yehuda amichai at one of my favorite cafes in jersalem - t'mol shilshom. His poetry has simple language (which i appreciate having a simple, if also solid grasp on the Hebrew language). His family was there and they read some of his poems, telling stories about him. I think there were other famous authors there, although i am not in the know of such things. it was another experience of feeling a sense of progress in this place - the night was totally in hebrew and i not only was able to follow, but i understood and didnt even get a headache from concentrating too hard!:) I will try to remember to post some of his poems in the near future.

Then I went to my good friend Aviva's house after a short time at a friends goodbye party (oh, transient Jerusalem), watched a movie late into the night, and fell asleep slowly as we talked into the early hours of the morning. At 8:15 on the dot we were awoken by the sound of hammers all around us in Katamon ( a neighborhood in Jerusalem where Aviva lives, and I lived last year). It felt like there was a horrible joke being played on our tired bodies as what seemed like dozens of hammers worked their noisy magic around us. But we quickly were filled with giggly joy at what we heard because we realized that the hammers all around us were building sukkot in any place that families could find to put their temporary structures. the time has come to eat, sleep and dwell in those flimsy and meaning-laden structures called sukkot. It was such a Jerusalem morning. Every other building you passed there were people hammering together their sukkot, decorating them, putting palm branches over the top. It was a really special alarm clock!

I then went and bought my four species, which i will hopefully explain at some point this week. it's time to shake that lulav!

I spent the holiday at my friend yael's family's house in pisgat ze'ev. it was a little surreal. it is a neighborhood on the northern edge of the city. it is sorrounded by the separation barrier and a arab villages. during our evening meal in the sukkah the muslim call to prayer rang out and her uncle said, "have you met our sephardi neighbors yet?" yael and i just looked at each other and started to laugh. this situation is just too crazy to even absorb - most of the time! the meals were lovely and her family was so sweet and there were even babies to play with to boot!

i spent the last few days sleeping at night in our school sukkah and hanging out with friends and finding time to do things that are so hard to find time to do when i am not on vacation....like posting on my blog:) tomorrow i get to see varda which is amazing. jerusalem may be a transient city but it is also a place which gets a lot of visitors. tomorrow i get to enjoy the second of those two truths!

yael and i are going shopping for some things in mea she'arim tomorrow morning before i meet varda...here's hoping that i dont get stoned by any over-zealous ultra orthodox men!

I'll let you know how I make out:)

be well.

chag sameach.

moadim l'simcha. Happy times, y'all!

me.