The Adventures Continue!

Yesterday was a pretty great day. I woke up and killed some time before going over to HUC to take an "off-campus" tour of Jerusalem. Basically, Leslie showed us some great shortcuts, some of her favorite cafes and restaurants, and how to get to important places like the shuk.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures during our tour.

Luckily, I'll be going to all of those places again. So you'll still get to see them, just not today.

During our tour, we were over in the Ben Yehuda area, and we got falafel at this DELICIOUS place called Moshiko. Actually, we were standing there and they brought us out freshly-fried falafel samples. It was even better than being at costco during sample time. The thing about falafel is that it needs to be a really vibrant green color inside for me to like it, and the Moshiko falafel was, in fact, the perfect color. And in Israel you can get it in laffa, which is superb. It's basically like having a falafel burrito. Unreal.

So after we enjoyed our falafel (with harif, the only way to eat it--harif is "chili-type hot sauce, eaten with falafel. Also refers to anything spicy" via http://www.gemsinisrael.com/e_article000039495.htm) we headed to the shuk.

Now, for those of you who have never been to the shuk, or who don't know what that is, it's kind of hard to explain without photos. Basically a shuk is an open-air market, but the big shuk in Jerusalem is called Mahane Yehuda and it's partially covered and partially open. There are tons of vendors selling only the freshest fruits and veggies, as well as random home wares and textiles and just a million billion random things. I promise the next time I'm there I will take an excessive amount of photos, because it's truly a beautiful place to be. It's like foodie paradise. You walk around and you can sample this season's freshest cherries (you haven't had cherries until you've had cherries in Israel. I promise.) and there are dried fruits and nuts and fresh juices. It's seriously an incredible place.

After an exciting but exhausting hike around with some of my classmates (I say hike because everything is uphill in Jerusalem. You can walk uphill to the supermarket and your walk home is somehow also uphill.) I came back to the apartment and awaited the internet technician.

I would tell you about my internet fiasco, but I won't. It isn't exciting. Basically, I don't know enough computer vocabulary and the people I was talking with didn't speak much English at all. After a few moments of blank stares, exaggerated gestures, and teamwork, I have great internet in the apartment. If you have an ipad/iphone/ipod touch/macbook/etc with FaceTime, then please feel free to add me to your contacts because FaceTime totally works. And is awesome.

So anyway back to my day. After a quick (ha...2 hour) nap after the internet guy left, I met up with some classmates and we went down Emek Refaim towards the German Colony for gelato. In Israel, there's a gelato place with several locations called Aldo. At Aldo, you can get gelato by Max Brenner.

Max Brenner is one of the most brilliant chocolate restaurants ever. In NYC, sometimes the Meshuganotes would go to Max Brenner's Broadway location (sample menu here). If you love, like, or are even lukewarm about chocolate, you should try a Max Brenner location. Nom. Anyway so luckily you can get Max Brenner gelato etc. here. I opted for lemonana (lemon and mint, my very favorite flavor combo) and blueberry gelato. And was too excited to take a picture. Whoops.

Yum yum yum.

After our trip down Emek Refaim we went over to the Gimbels' apartment for Nana (mint) tea and some schmoozing. I am absolutely loving getting to know everyone. Even though we've all done different things so far, it's nice to know that we've got at least SOMETHING in common since we're all going to the same school. It's pretty great.

This morning I got up and went to the supermarket first thing. In Jerusalem, everything shuts down for shabbat. This means that if you want to get groceries for the weekend, you basically have until early afternoon on Friday. So I took my shuk cart (pictured below--a brilliant invention) to the store and picked stuff up. The shuk cart is really an incredible thing. I feel like I'm doing a lot more schlepping than normal here in J'lem, so the cart really helps. A lot of them look like the same sort of tartan material you might find on Minerva McGonagall, but the previous tenants in our apartment left us this really cute blue polka dotted one. If you're not totally clumsy like me, then these carts are very easy to navigate. I, however, manage to step on mine like every 10 steps. It's fine.

Tres chic shuk cart

Tonight, I'm hosting a few of my new classmates for shabbat dinner; we're having chicken stir fry. Don't worry, I'll include pictures in my next post. I'm really looking forward to share shabbat with everyone that's coming over! I think it'll be a great opportunity to get to know people a little bit better, plus it'll be an adventure in trying out my kitchen.

Also, as a sidenote, in Israel they have chocolate with poprocks. It's no pow-pow-cacao, but it's pretty epic. The "Elite" brand chocolate has little cows on each piece in the chocolate bar, so when I was younger I used to call it cow chocolate. It's everywhere here and it's really awesome. The label for the poprocks one translates roughly to Milk Chocolate with Jumping Sugar. THAT TOTALLY RULES.

Milk chocolate with jumping sugar. Are you kidding me.

...moooo...

Another sidenote: we have 4 chairs at our kitchen table, but I'm hosting 5 people tonight so we need more chairs. We have this closet in our apartment that I'm pretty sure is actually the room of requirement. Earlier today I wanted an index card, walked into this little storage closet, and found index cards galore. I was trying to figure out the chair situation, walked back to the closet, and found two folding chairs. It's really unbelievable.

Alright that's it for now. I hope everyone has a lovely, lovely shabbat!

Breakfast with Andy Bernard.

Another Gorgeous Day!

Right now I'm sitting in my room with my windows open listening to the live music that's happening in the park across the street.

It's been another lovely day here in Jerusalem! I woke up around 5:30 (still too early for my liking) and killed some time until it was a reasonable hour to go to the grocery store. I was able to get a lot of delicious food for only 125ish shekels (which is roughly $30 today) which was a huge success. The only thing I really messed up was getting this weird whipped yogurt instead of regular, but at least it was strawberry flavored.

yum.

After the grocery store I came home and made myself breakfast, and then later it was time to take a tour of HUC.

Now, since I was a University Ambassador at THE Ohio State University, I have pretty high standards for tours. While Amy (one of our hilarious summer interns) did a great job showing me and Kenny (a cantorial student) around the campus, she did not walk backwards. Although Jerusalem stone and lots of stairs make the campus a tricky situation for backwards walking, so I'm not actually judging. Shoutout to the ambassadors. (or, coolbassadors.)

On our tour, I learned that the campus that HUC has in Jerusalem was purchased in 1963, and the building where we began doesn't have any windows on one side because it faced the Jordanian territory of Jerusalem at that time. The building was quite literally a stone's throw away from a very dangerous area of the city, but luckily now it's a gorgeous and secure place to be. So don't worry.

Beautiful piece of campus

Anyway, I am of course obsessed with the campus. It's gorgeous and serene and I can't wait to start learning there. After the tour, Kenny and I schmoozed with the interns (Daniel, Leslie, and Amy--they are all awesome) and had a very sassy time hanging out. Following my time on campus, I decided to explore some other areas around my apartment. I am living in a great location; there are parks everywhere, and there are seriously a million types of flowers growing absolutely everywhere.

Fountain area in one of the parks

I read a little bit in one park, and then I discovered Yemin Moshe, which is a large windmill right across the street from me. It marks the neighborhood Mishkenot Sheananim, which was the first Jewish neighborhood built outside of the walls of the Old City (circa 1860). The area was swimming with school groups singing Israeli songs, which was totally awesome.

The windmill

Additionally, the view was incredible. I stood there for a few minutes, listening to the songs and taking in the view. It's really starting to hit me that this is where I'm living, and that these ancient stones and buildings are the stuff making up my home now. It's unreal.

View from the windmill

After some great time spent at the windmill, it was time to head over to the Gimbels' for dinner. Sarah and Jeremy are awesome, first of all. They made some VERY delicious food (if you're curious, we had french onion soup, these really yummy chickpea patties that were somewhere between latkes and veggie burgers, and freshly baked pita, along with some perfect Israeli salad--bonus points for mint leaves and lemon juice), and it was really nice to get to know some of the people I'll be spending this year with. I love that everyone I've met so far has had a great sense of humor and is totally personable. Everyone is so easy to chat with! I loved the hospitality Sarah and Jeremy had to offer; even though I feel like I'm adjusting pretty well to moving here, it's still nice to have a place to feel like home, and there's nothing quite like a home-cooked meal to do the trick.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds!

Walkway to my apartment

Determined to Beat Jetlag.

Oh, hello there.

It's been a busy day of napping.

As it turns out, jet lag is a very strong force to be reckoned with. I made myself stay up until 8:30 last night (impressive, right?) and was up early enough to watch the sun rise from my bedroom window.

There is something so unbelievable about having all of your windows open, feeling the cool morning breeze, drinking some tea (thank goodness the previous tenants left me something caffeinated because I should not be allowed in public until I have had at least one caffeinated beverage) and watching the sun rise over a city like Jerusalem (as if there is another city like J'lem).

The downside, however, was that I was wide awake at 5 a.m.

What's a girl to do that early in the boker (morning)? Well, if you're lucky you can talk to Brian at 6 am and then you can wander around to Ben Yehuda street (what's up great sense of direction! got us there on the first try!) before anything is open.

In the Ben Yehuda area

Luckily, this little place called Sam's Bagels (סאם בגלים was it's Hebrew name, I think) that had delicious coffee and bagels etc. I somehow didn't take any pictures of this delicious and necessary breakfast, but there is almost nothing as perfect for breakfast as an everything bagel with cream cheese and cucumbers with a cappuccino. FANCY. (sidenote: expect to hear lots about food in this blog. both this post and future posts. shout-out to my foodie father/family.)

So after a successful stroll around Ben Yehuda, we found Independence Park, which is just a couple of minutes away from my BEAUTIFUL apartment. There was some great people watching to be had, despite the early hour, and there were these weird looking scraggly long-haired greyhounds walking around with their owner. They were totally strange.

Israeli graffiti is great because it's snarky. Here you see "b'emet?" which means "really"next to President Bush's name.

Also, for those of you who haven't been to Israel, there are stray cats EVERYWHERE. Seriously everywhere. It's kind of creepy actually.

So then after a couple of hours of walking around it was 9:30 a.m. so clearly it was time for a nap. And then after a few more hours of being awake and organizing my books etc. it was time for another nap. I had a rough day with staying awake. Oops. Part of me feels like I'm wasting time, but then another part of me realizes I have s e v e r a l months left of being here and that I actually can afford to catch up on sleep.

Alright so after my naps it was time for dinner. I went over towards המושבה הגרמנית (the German colony/village) which was absolutely beautiful. I am loving getting to see the different areas of Jerusalem! Over in the German colony we found a little restaurant called Waffle Bar. It was absolutely delicious. I'm getting used to the rapid-fire Hebrew that hostesses use and was able to answer when she asked how many people and if we preferred English menus. Either I'm communicating more clearly after my naps OR the blank stare approach is working swimmingly. Either way, I will be going back to Waffle Bar. Because anywhere I can get a goat cheese/pesto/roasted red pepper crepe for dinner is a place I will be returning to.

And what's a girl to do after such a nap and food-filled day?

Watch Harry Potter and relax with some mint tea, obviously.

The pretty little flowers right outside my apartment building.

Thanks for reading!

Shalom Shalom!

Hello from Jerusalem!

Right now it's 5:01 p.m. but it feels like 10 at night but it should feel like 10 in the morning. Traveling is disorienting but SO WORTH IT!

How about a travel update? Great idea!

Let's start at the beginning of this particular journey. On Saturday (excuse me in advance if I switch the days up, this time change thing is hard to do without any sleep) my entire family took me and my mom to the lovely airport that is CVG. We got to spend some incredibly tear-filled moments together before my mom and I headed to NYC for the evening. Once there, we got to spend some time with the cousins and enjoy an evening out together. Not only was I preparing to move to Israel, but my 9 year old cousins were leaving the next morning to go to sleep away camp for 4 weeks for the very first time! They were feeling mostly excited but also nervous, which was something I could of course relate to.

Jules eating his pizza on top of the playset.

Big man Eric driving around in his cool wheels.

After spending the night in New York, Mom and I got up pretty early to head to JFK. There, the tears continued. It's been a long few weeks for the Muhlbaums; Yaffa had her bat mitzvah at the end of May, and Abe graduated the very next day from Mason High School. Two weeks after that was my graduation from THE Ohio State University, and then after another two weeks (filled with packing etc) it was time for me to move. So much chaos, but all for great things! Anyway, Mom flew with me to NYC to make sure I got to Israel okay (and so we could squeeze in a few more minutes before I had to leave) which was awesome. However, it also meant that I was effectively saying goodbye to family members for two days straight. This is emotionally exhausting. Moving to Israel was very bittersweet, and I feel truly lucky to have a family I feel so close with that it's hard to leave. (You guys rule. Special shoutout).

Anyway, I am also lucky because I had a travel buddy both to NY and then also to Israel, since everyone's favorite ginger Brian is studying at Pardes this summer. Brian and I (finally) made it through security (note to all people: taking a super awesome travel ihome is a great idea, but don't put it in your carry on. especially because then they will go through all of your stuff and touch all of your camera lenses but not be careful. oy) and made it to our flight.

I had never flown El-Al before, so this was quite the experience. Lots of great people watching. For those of you who don't know, I am an incredibly enthusiastic people watcher. Sometimes to a fault. There was some tefillin laying recruitment happening, which is always an interesting thing to watch. I always feel very safe when flying to Israel. Maybe it's because of the extensive security, maybe it's because I'm superstitious and I know that there is a higher-than-average amount of Jewish prayers happening, or maybe it's all just perception. I was seated next to this awesome man of a certain age from Haifa. Joshua was an interesting fellow who managed to be simultaneously charming, bizarre, and borderline creepy. He was really great though, and we schmoozed (schmooze: to converse informally, make small talk or chat (from Yiddish שמועסן shmuesn 'converse', from Hebrew שמועות shəmūʿōth 'reports, gossip') about everything from religion to politics to musical instrument repair. Throughout the 10.5 hour flight he referred to me as both his newly adopted daughter and his mistress. And his wife, Nomi, was in the seat in front of him. What a character! I was absolutely blown away by his hospitality, though. Somewhere over the Atlantic he handed me his business card and instructed me to travel to Haifa at my earliest opportunity; he said he would be more than happy to host me and find me a nice Jewish boy. What a mensch.

So finally we landed (at 5 something this morning in Israel time) and it was time to go through customs. Now, I don't have my student visa yet, and my siblings are both named after my Israeli grandparents, so I was incredibly nervous (read: having nightmares on and off over the last few weeks) about going through customs. I was terrified that I would make it all the way to David Ben Gurion airport just to be told I couldn't actually go to Israel. These are my fears. Anyway customs wasn't a problem, and then Brian and I waited at the wrong carousel for our luggage. Hey, we were exhausted. So we got our luggage finally (for the record: one 89 pound bag, and one 95 pound bag) and headed for a sheirut, which is a little shuttle that takes you from the airport to Jerusalem. Our driver waited a while to leave, so I got to my apartment a lot later than anticipated.

The view from my apartment.

"A lot later than anticipated" means that, instead of getting there at 7ish as my landlady anticipated, I arrived around 9. After getting my suitcases up the stairs and into the elevator (because it always makes sense to have stairs leading to an elevator, right?) I arrived in my home-away-from-home for the next year.

This is David Ben Gurion. The airport here is named for him. You'll notice he has amazing hair.

THIS APARTMENT IS AMAZING. The views are beautiful, the location is incredible (six minutes to school!) and I've had all the windows open all day listening to the Israeli drivers screaming "REGA! REGA!" and enjoying the sound of birds being in the trees outside my room.

Another view of the apartment. That's a sign pointing to the Old City. #isthisreallife

I also went today to HUC to check in, meet the people that I'll be working with all year at the school, and got to kind of explore campus. It's always nice to make a first impression when you have absolutely no social skills, sleep, or blood sugar (oh hey, remember eating? yeah I forgot to do that. B''h I didn't pass out while walking around!). I got to get to know our friendly and helpful summer interns, and it's really nice start putting names and faces together.

I'm so excited to be in Israel, and it still hasn't really hit me yet that I'm going to be here for a year. For now, though, I'm sore from dealing with my ridiculous luggage (thanks to everyone who helped schlep, you know who you are) and so I'm going to go maybe have a siesta. Even though if I fall asleep now I probably won't wake up until some awkward time that's neither normal in Ohio nor in Israel. Typical.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more photos as I explore my neighborhood over the next few days.

Blackberry included for size comparison. That's 1.5 liters of the good stuff, friends.

Don't worry Mom--I'm staying hydrated.

Packing Insanity

Hello readers!

As it turns out, it is rather challenging to pack a year's worth of things in only two suitcases. My mom and I have been working as a team (because teamwork makes the dream work) to use every inch of space in these two suitcases to the max. For instance: my rainboots are currently home to my travel adapters, some toiletries, and I think maybe even some socks! We're not wasting any space at all.

Luckily, since my family is totally (but covertly) freaking out about my upcoming move, I have been totally zen about the whole thing. Seeing all my clothes in spacebags, though, is getting pretty exciting. I just need to remember to get some wrinkle releaser for when I get there.

Any advice for a traveler? Things that worked well for you? Space-saving strategies?

Thanks for reading!

(also, I promise to include loads of pictures in the blog once I'm in Israel. For now, it would just be a bunch of photos of piles of clothes! not exciting)

Getting Ready!

Shalom, everyone!

I can't believe that in just a few short days I will be embarking on a journey to Israel. I'll be studying at Hebrew Union College for the year, beginning a 5 year rabbinical school program after which I will be ordained as a rabbi!

In this blog, you'll be able to see what I'm up to while I'm in the Holy Land. I hope to update my readers with things I'm learning, places I'm exploring, and all the other interesting things I'm up to while I'm away!

So, thanks for checking out the blog, feel free to click "follow," and don't be shy with your comments! I can already tell you I'm definitely going to appreciate knowing that people are reading my blog =)

I'll update as soon as I get to Jerusalem in a couple of weeks!