Happy New Year (again)

The funny part about being on both a Jewish and a secular calendar is it seems like we are always getting to celebrate holidays twice over. I feel like I just sent out this massive Happy New Year email for Rosh Hashanah and now it is time to wish everyone again a Happy New Year and wishes for a good year ahead. Well, one thing is for sure...people take to the streets for Rosh Hashanah and to everyone at home it is just another day and for December 31 here people go out kind of like we go out for St. Patrick's Day or Cinco De Mayo (just really an excuse to party) and come 5 a.m. your cell phone rings and your friends from home are drunk dialing you to tell you they love you and wish you were out at the 8 x 10 dancing with them until 5 a.m. Actually, when it all comes down to it, I couldn't have really imagined a better NYE...I was thousands of miles from home and able to be with my mom and sister and good friends and their families and we were able to ring in the new year, even if there was no ball to drop on television.

Actually, as I sit here and get ready to start semester no. 2 and start to put together plans for my return home and the upcoming summer it takes visitors from abroad to come and remind me just how much adjustment and change has taken place having been here for over 6 months now. The things that I've had to become sensitized to, like horrible drivers, traffic lights that don't match up, more horn honking than new york city at rush hour, food ordered never ending up being what you envisioned it and pickled something served at every resturaunt, including the sushi place on rehov shamai come back to remind me that just a few months ago these things made me want to pull my hair out. "Welcome to Israel" I found myself saying over...and over...and over.

Besides, where else can you be in a place where you are standing in front of the walls to the Old City and turn to your math major mother and say..."Mom, there is nothing rational about this place. It's the religious home to the three major mono-theistic Western religions and nothing about this place comes together easily or with precise answers." Where else can you make a stop at the kotel and then ascend to the temple mount to take in the breathtaking Dome of the Rock and Alaq-Sa mosque and realize only after its too late that you exited from the wrong door and were now lost in the Arab quarter of the Old City, with eyes on the walls trying to find the exit and not wanting to let on to your tourist mother and sister that you didn't know exactly where you were and JUST at that point you run into the Arab flea market and a funeral processsion in which the casket is open and the body that is about to be buried is covered in nothing more than a white sheet as it passes over you because there is no room to move to the side? Oh, Jerusalem.

After a few days of weather the Israeli's welcomed and my family couldn't believe they arrived just in time for we left the snow covered Jerusalem and headed for the Dead Sea. There is nothing like climbing to the top of Massada and running into one of your old teachers from home who is travelling with her family. Only in Israel is it really possible to run into someone you know every place you stop. We managed to have some nice weather for the Dead Sea spa although when it came time to get in the water to wipe of our full body mud masks, I think wherever you are water is colder than desirable in December. We spent our last two days in Tel Aviv with a bit more rain and some welcomed sunshine on the last day of their visit. And, remember that Israeli author I wrote about a few week's back and how I wrote a paper on him? Well, again, only in Israel, would I be walking with my mom and sister through the old port of Jaffa and see him and a friend sitting outside at a Cafe drinking coffee. After walking away I decided to go back and introduce myself, glad I didn't pass up the opportunity to make the connection after the correspondance we've just had while writing the paper.

I dropped of mom and Lindsey at the airport on Tuesday morning and came back to an empty and somewhat messy Jerusalem apartment. I caught up on laundry and attempted to clean my room before finding myself wondering the streets, now alone and without having to be tour guide, happy to be back in the place that I have been for the last few months and looking ahead to realize that there really isn't a great deal of time left. There is a lot I want to do in these next few months and between school and plans to travel and visitors still to come, I know that time is going to run away and soon it will be May and time to come home and put this whole year abroad behind me. But, for now, I'm looking forward to that time still to come. I know that the summer and my return home will be great and much anticipated, but today it is sunny in Jerusalem and it is almost Shabbat and I know that as the new semester begins, I am in a place that I am so happy to call home right now and will be very hard to leave when the time eventually does come.

For those of you who made it to midnight on NYE...I hope this year brings only good things, happiness and forward movement. If you make a resolution, good luck keeping it beyond January and I hope that wherever we travel, our paths will cross in the year to come! And, ofcourse...sending all my love to each and everyone of you!