Bombs, Weddings, and Day to Day

So, as I said in my last post which I wrote as the entire episode was happening, there was a bomb in Jerusalem last week Wednesday. It went off just a block from my school next to a bus that nearly my entire school takes on almost a daily basis, the 74. More than 10 of our girls were either running to get on that bus, missed the bus by seconds, got off the bus on a whim, or were right in the area. With tremendous Hashgachas Hashem, nobody was hurt. Some of the girls saw it, a lot of them were very shaken. At the time, a good friend called me, totally hysterical. She had heard about it as she walked into the building only a minute after the bombing. When she saw that I wasn't in and because the cell phones were down she couldn't reach me on my phone, she was really scared that I had been there. When she finally reached me a few minutes later, she was the first to tell me about the bomb. Thank G-d everybody was saved. Most of the Israellie girls didn't give it much thought... they told us they were used to this. They said that a few years ago this is how it was day to day, week to week. It doesn't phase them anymore. I guess I understand it, I too wasn't as upset by it as I knew I should have been, coming from a higher sensitivity level.
As soon as things looked clear the school instructed all the girls to come back from wherever they were at the time. I was at Ariella Zilberman's place around the block so it wasn't so far for me to travel. At the school, Rabbi Meisels and a few other Rabbeim and teachers were saying Tehillim with the girls. As we came in we joined. Afterward the Rabbanim gave us speeches about tragedies and moving on. About taking in the pain of the klal but not becoming depressed. About acceptance. Mainly they were there for us, giving us chizuk and answering any questions.

The next day I went as planned to Michal Epstein's wedding. Tal Erez and Jonathan picked me up from my school. We met Shmulik and Hadassa, and then continued to the wedding together. The wedding was beautiful, the bride was stunning and shining and brilliant, the guests were happy, the dancing was upbeat, and the food was first class. All in all, i think everyone enjoyed themselves and had an amazing time.
Shabbos I went to Rabbi Kornblau's house. He was having a kiddush for his baby daughter Chana Gittle. Mindy and I went to help out but mostly because we really wanted to take advantage of the unique opportunity to spend shabbos with such a Chashuv family. For that reason we even overcame our slight aversion to buses.

Sunday I took a day off of class to work on college essays. Monday I got sick. Tuesday I was better again :D... G-d loves me!!!! And today I had cleanup duty. ;P
lol, tonight is a mechanchos dinner, that should be fun. More info later. <3 y'all!!

EEEEK!!

Okay, so a bus just blew up down the block from my school. It's really scary... the school is trying to round everyone up... i'm around the block inside, so my school told me to stay there and not to go out. trying to reach my friends... trying to reach people... nobody is answering phones b/c the lines are flooded. news is vague. more updates coming. more information later.

AFREILICHIN PURIM E/O!!!!!!!!!!!

Motzei shabbos we left Efrat quickly because we didn't want to do 2 days of Purim but we got to see some cool fireworks while we were waiting at the bus stop!
Sunday, while you people were all celebrating purim, I had a normal day (albeit no class). I took it easy and went shopping for my shaloch manos.
Last night was our Purim chagiga. We started off in school hearing Megilla by Rabbi Meisels son and then relocated to the 'wedding hall'. We had, sem girls, yeshivah guys, waitresses, his side, her side, gypsies, crashers, and I was the flower girl.
The teachers were the Chasson and Kallah and they did a really funny skit about shidduchim (yes its getting a bit old... just a itty bit) Then the heads presented a hysterical shtick vid that they made. Partly it was skit on Yam-LeYam trip which is up and coming (a 3 day hike). Part of it was random takes of the dorm at night. And part of it was them filming the girls dressed up and doing funny random things in the middle of town :)
neways. We got back at about 1:00 in the morning... which was great because some of us were waking up at 3:30am to go to Netz at the Kotel. So basically I got one hour of sleep for the night.
We walked there, right down Yaffo and all the dregs of society finishing their parties and heading back to where they came from. One of the really innocent and naive girls was soooo freaked out and upset by it. It was cute to see that someone can still get so upset at the Kedusha of Yerushalym being violated like this. I guess we've all just become so accustomed to it that it seems like that's the way it is everywhere, so why not in Yerushalym?? We davened Shachris at the Kotel and then walked back. I went back to sleep for an hour and woke up to catch Megilla at Mercaz HaRav. Afterward I delivered my shaloch manos- all 1 of them :) and then rested for a bit before going to daven at the kever of Rabbi Gedalia Moshe bn Shlomo. Then I went to the purim seuda locally at a friends house in Givat Shaul.
The food was good, the people were nice... and drunk :)but the good kind of drunk- the cute kind. All 'toira' and 'just love Hashem'-ish.
When I got back to the dorm I got the unique pleasure of babysitting a couple of drunk girls who were sent back from their various Seudas in taxi's. It was definitely an interesting experience for me, being as it was a first. I can be grateful that at least I did not get thrown up on...
And as a smashing end to the day- i'm sitting here catching up on my blog because when i'm having a great time, all i can think of is you people. :D u should feel sooo flattered!!
<3 <3 <3 Miss you all- especially those of you who are part of our detroit purim party that i missed this year!!!!!!!!!

Trips, Shtick, and Taanis Esther

Week of March 13-19
Monday we went on a trip to reward good attendance. Most of the girls worked really hard to be in class enough to get on the list so we had a big group.
First we went ATVing. There were too many drivers for everyone who had a license to drive the whole time but Mindy and I switched off driving ours. As slow as it was because some drivers can't drive... :D it was a blast. One ATV almost went off a cliff, and one even flipped over! cool to hear about, glad it wasn't me right :P
Afterward we went to a really sick lazer-tag place. We played a game of capture the flag with lazer rifles in a huge 1000 meter forest boundary!!! Before the game started we painted our faces with green and black camouflage... so, naturally, i gave myself a black eye and told e/o "u shoulda seen the other guy :D"
We played 3 rounds. My team won the first round, theirs the second and we tied on the last. It lasted over an hour and was really intense. It had to have been my favorite trip this year though!!
Then we went to get ice cream in Elad... a break off of Bnei Brak, and then headed back to school.

Wednesday we all ditched afternoon classes and went to Gan Saccer (a park nearby). We left a note on the board for Rabbi Meisels to call us if he wants to get us to come back to school. Someone tipped him off that we were in Gan Saccer (as planned) and we ordered 6 boxes of pizza and drinks to the park, to arrive at the same time as he did. When he showed up, he was promptly handed the bill for our dinner :)As it worked out though, he had brought his whole family along anyway so we all had dinner in the park together. A few other girls and I made a spontaneous bonfire to keep us warm once it got dark and then most of the girls went home.
I stayed with a few kids and we made a second, much bigger fire in a pit and burned all the pizza boxes. We sang songs and entertained curious kids and asked people what they were dressed up as, when they walked by. (It was the day before Taanis Esther so everyone was dressed up)
When I got back that night Mindy, Leah G, and I painted our faces demon style and went out to scare people. Wherever we walked we did funky things at the same time (like for ever 10 steps forward we'd take 2 steps back, or freezing in exaggerated positions at every street corner). We went to the window of coffee bean where our friends were inside playing banana grams and froze. The couple sitting closest to the window nearly had a heart attack when they chanced to look up and saw us frozen with scary faces in the window less than a foot away from their faces :) We also pretended to be mannequins in a costume store on Yaffo and scared a lot of unsuspecting costume shoppers.
Taanis Esther we had a Purim Yom Iyun which basically focused on the Coach HaTefilla on Purim. I slept through most of the day since I'm not such a good faster. We broke the fast on... pretty much nothing. Since they forgot about us and didn't make food. But its fine because we found cottage cheese and yogurts in the fridge. And later that evening I did a mitzva with a friend and got another girl take out since we figured out that she hadn't eaten anything and was planning on sleeping it out till the next day.
At night Mindy and I asked for late curfew to go for a walk and I got to show her around Kiryat Moshe. We also found a small kumzitz so we sat in the distance and listened for a while. :)
This past Shabbos I went to Efrat, to Deja and Aviad, with a friend. Their twin babies are really cute and the Ariel and Choshen are too. We had a wonderful shabbos!!

Rosh Chodesh and P'unk-Ninim!!

Week of March 6-12th
Motzei Shabbos we stayed up all night 'Punking' Rabbi Meisels office. The girls covered his walls in plastic wrap and then graffitied. We had our best artists work on it and it turned out really really cool! A couple of girls also tin foil wrapped all of his things. Individual wrapping the desk, every chair, book, pen, and candy. Well- to be honest, they ate all the candies and stuffed the jar with wads of tin foil :) lol
My job was to make him a hat and bling necklace to wear. I paper-mache`d the hat and then graffittied the top. I wrote RABBI across the front in silver foil and then bedazzled the rim. The medallion I made him was a chain of silver foil and foil covering cardboard that said 'P'unk-Ninim' on it.
When he came in on Sunday we were all dressed as punks... all out- hats, bling, and black lipstick. :P
Monday a girl in my seminary got engaged. She had been getting late curfew for two weeks and getting dressed up every day, especially that morning. We were all told about a Lechaim that would be held in the Meisels house and the whole thing was very surprising and last minute. As you might have figured out... it was all a hoax. This girl was head of Chaggiga together with her roommates so it was really easy to make it believable. They broke out the theme of chaggiga(Mock Wedding) at the Lechaim, during which a few girls inconspicuously slipped out and went back to sem to do some messin of their own. When the Chaggiga heads came back to school, all of their beds, closets, and drawers were outside on the porch. :} not my idea... hehe, they weren't tooo happy but we can all take a joke right??
And some time this week I also bought a bucket to do my laundry in since I've been hand washing since i got here. lol... I wrote on it "Shayne's very own bucket- דלי. If anyone even so much as thinks of stealing it- Beware... I have strong friends."
Okay, shabbos I went with 2 friends to a different teacher on Sorotzkin. Friday night we went to the Belzer tish and got to see all the mentchies walk on the tables!! ('all those yoilies came to see- came to see... the Rebba's shabbos table just like royalty, hey-ay!')

Marching marching....

hehe... how korny was that title huh :D
Okay so finishing the first week in March...
So on Thursday, after everyone was semi-feeling better, we had a tznius yom iyun which was actually really inspiring and cool. I think most if not all of the girls enjoyed it.
That shabbos 4 other girls and I stayed at the Meisels' (my principal). I'm not sure if I wrote about it when it happened last, but the last time I went to Rabbi Meisels' house his niece was there. What's Hashgacha Pratis about that was that it was both our first times there and we are really good friends from middle school. I haven't seen her since 9th grade when I traveled to Toronto by myself and stayed at her house!! What's funny is that I didn't even know that she was in Israel, let alone that she is my principal's niece. So this was both of our first shabbos back since the last time and it wasn't planned at all. Hashem really does love me!! <3 <3 <3
Shabbos day we all ate at our teachers' the Simons. Both Rabbi and Mrs. Simon are teachers in the school and are very involved with the students. I think it was all of our first times going there for a shabbos meal.
All in all, we really enjoyed shabbos... especially the riddles.
Riddle from Rabbi Meisels- try and figure it out.
There are 12 weights that all look the same. You have a olden day scale that goes up ad down when you put stuff on either side. The are all equal in weight and size besides for one. It is either heavier or lighter than the others. You can use the scale 4 times before you need to know- which weight is not equal, and whether it is lighter or heavier.
Now you try it :)

Call in the Riot Police!!! Is this how its supposed to be?

I pretty much stayed in this past week since everyone was sick (I have a cold) and also I was working on getting the March calendar finished and up on time. B"H I was able to put it up last night.
O- here's some news. Monday Mercaz HaRav Yeshivah was rioting about some police attack on a kibbutz last week... apparently he just started shooting and killed a bunch of innocent chareidim. So the boys were rioting right outside the sem. There were about 30 police cars around the building. When Rabbi Kahane (our teacher and the Shana Bet principal) showed up to teach us that night, he thought P'ninim was finally being arrested :) lol...
what's not so funny is that 6 of the yeshivah guys were arrested. Later that day hundreds of yeshivah boys came out to riot in support of their friends in custody. When the riot police arrived it was a really not a pretty sight. Unfortunately many of the boys sustained injuries, some more severe than others... O- and don't worry, we weren't allowed to leave the building either.

L'Zicaron

Week of Feb 20th- 26th
Mindy's parents were in for the week so she moved into the apartment they were renting with them. Monday they came with us to Yad V'Shem, the Jerusalem Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our guide was none other than Hanoch Teller. When I was going around on my own afterward, it trully hit me how lucky we were to have that privilage. A guide I had stopped to listen to was giving a detailed analogy of all the art in the museum, who designed it, and their lives.Its scary to think that the guide really shapes your way of thinking about the entire meseum- and the holocaust itself. Whereas we heard facts and true stories (survivor accounts) of what happened during the holocaust- coupled with all the pictures and evidence being presented in the glass cases and exhibits of the museum.
For most people, not surprisingly, I think the most moving part was the children's memorial- even though it presented no facts or stories, had no pictures and no evidence. It was a stone buiding. Inside is dark with a walk way suspended half way through a huge empty room aside from the whole middle being a giant glass case. Inside it and on the walls were thousands of candles seemingly suspended in mid air. One candle per child that was documented murdered in the holocaust. Resonating through this stone building was a deep male voice slowly speaking out the name age and country of every child- one by one. Going across the catwalk took less than 3 minutes but just about everyone who came out of there had tears in their eyes.
Tuesday I crashed Mindy's apartment for the night just to get out of the dorm, and Wednesday night her parents took her, me and my roommate out for dinner at Rimon. It was a beautiful evening and I had a great time.
This past Shabbos I was in Maalei Amos with Leora Gershaw and family. Of course I had a beautiful, relaxing shabbos together with them and look forward to going again.

How Many Balloons....

Week of Feb 6th- 12th
Monday night we had a Mechanchos Supper at my teachers house in Ramat Shlomo.
That Shabbos I also stayed in the dorm. There were only about 4 other girls there this time though.

Week of Feb 13th- 19th
Monday night I went to Karaoke with Mindy which is always fun.
Wednesday, Shalom Task Force came to speak to us. For most of you Michigan people, you have no idea what this is. But its pretty recognized in NY. STF is an awareness program for Domestic Abuse. They help and aid frum women in abusive marriages all over the east coast. They also put together informative and preventive programs for single women who are either dating or even not yet. They focus on recognizable signs of manipulation and that sort of thing. I found the program very interesting, and overall it wasn't at all extreme or assuming. Just down to earth and real.
That night me and bunch of the gals stayed up blowing up balloons and stuffing them into Rabbi Meisels office. 500 balloons wasn't enough to fill it to the door so we started with a balloon wall and tape and then worked toward the door. In random balloons we put water, rice, flour, confetti, and beans. Also we made faces and pictures on the balloons. The madricha made a Baloon Rabbi Meisels and put it on his chair, so that when he broke through all the balloons he would see it. We wrote P'ninim Purim Katan in Balloons on the wall behind his desk too.
We closed the light and left a safety pin on his door. When he came into school the next day (the day before Purim Katan b/c there is no school on Fridays) me and one other girl were sitting outside the office (a common place to be for most students) as if to be waiting to speak to him. When he unlocked the door but couldn't open it, we were right behind him with the video cameras. So we have a full 15 minute video of Rabbi Meisels trying to break through the balloons with the safety pin. The whole thing was a riot and we all had a lot of fun doing it!!
That Shabbos was a Shabbaton in Kommimius (a Chassidish Kibutz). The girls were absolutely enthralled with the scene around us- all the Yoelli's on tractors :P
The theme was Tov LeHodos LaHashem and Gam Zu LeTovah.
Okay, all in all, it was a beautiful 75 degree sunny shabbos that was just relaxing and inspiring. I gave a 'Dvar Torah' on the Gam Zu LeTovah part of the theme during Shalosh Seudot that I was mucho not prepared for. No but I really wasn't... I had zilcho written down. I just had printed out a few pages on the subject from chabad.org and Aish.com... and asked people for some stories over shabbos. It ended up being more like a 15 minute shiur because I had so many cool things to say even without the stories.
Like the whole concept of the Tes for Tovah. If i'm correct its the first Tes in the torah, and just like the Ches represents a marriage, the Tes represents the child in the womb- inner goodness that is hidden. The idea being that all is good but goodness is not necessarily revealed or known to man. Just like to Moshe's request for G-d to reveal Himself- He answered "You may see My back, buy My face- that you will not see"- I believe its the Ksav Sofer who says that Hashem was telling Moshe a rule- in hindsight (at the end of days) you will know why I've done all that I do, but foresight was not given over to man. And I told a few stories about knowing that even when something is bad... and it stays bad... and its not going to change- it too is intrinsically good, whether we can see why or not.

Vacation!!

Week of Feb 1st- 5th
Okay, so the beginning of Feb I was on vacation for a few days. From Tuesday until the next Motzei Shabbos I think.
Wednesday we went on a Tiyul to Rosh HaNikrah. We went on Cable cars, a small hike, some caving, and saw a cool presentation on the formation of the mountain. We also went ice skating. It was just about the worst ice rink i had ever have ever been on but nobody died I guess. Had to hold back on most of my tricks though :) It was a beautiful68 degree day though, right in the middle of the winter.
Thursday night I went with Mindy to Maalei Adumim for the night where we had a little vacation-celebration. lol- i hereby copyright that phrase and officially name it the korniest line of the year ;)
That Shabbos I stayed in the dorm. Most of the girls did too since the whole week was very tiring.