Adventures and Oddities

I sat outside to do some homework during my free period this afternoon, where suddenly there was a man with a large blue plastic-y sack yelling up at the third floor window, basically saying "go ahead and throw them down, I'm here". He was standing about a yard away from me. I got up to get out of the way and sort of squeaked- he told me not to worry- it's only paper. Well, those 7 bags of "only paper" made some Really impressive thunks, being thrown out of the third floor window onto the stone pavement below. And now I know how the mail is treated in Israel.

Tonight I went to a short-notice l'chaim for the engagement of a friend whom I a. only found out was here for a few weeks over shabbos from zodiacmg, and b. I didn't know was seeing anyone. His fiancee seems lovely, and it was quite nice to see him. The party itself was a very different cultural experience from the rest of my time in Israel thus far- sort of a frum/hippy mixture experience. I knew almost no one- but spoke to a couple of folks I didn't know, and then had some good times with the couple of folks I did know, and have already spoken more with the friend's fiancee and with her parents and sister than I have with Steve's (you can probably guess which friend this is) wife, after having been at their wedding. (Can you tell that I am in fact still rather frustrated by that reality?)

In the middle, I spent a chunk of time being angsty about the fast, which is the one that I have the hardest time finding meaningful or useful. Fasting is much harder when you don't really feel like it's worth it, and when you're debating it constantly. A set decision is much easier to keep to.