Eat, Pray, Club: Aliza in Israel: Guess who's back, Back again? (Hint: it's not Shady)

Man oh man oh man oh mano Manishewitz. Hello old friend! Ol' bloggie, ol' pal. Sorry it's been a while. I hope you don't feel neglected.

I do feel neglected...where the hell have you been?

I've been doing things, I swear.

But I'm not just an outlet for you to type on...i am also your connection to friends and family elsewhere.

I know...I've been talking to them too. I haven't been incommunicado.

But you've been lazy.

Ok. Lazy. Whatever. call it what you want. I've been doing stuff. Really, I have.

But you will forget about it all if you don't write it down, Aliza.

Don't address me by my name. You're not my mother.

But I'm your blog. Your own creation. Like your child. I should be MORE important.

I have been jotting and journaling. Don't make me feel guilty. Enjoying israel without blogging every detail is not a crime.

Not a crime...but a sin.

I need something to atone for on yom kippur...To prove i've been doing stuff, I'll give you a short rundown.

Good enough.

For who? Me?

Yes. I am you. And you are your own witness.

wow. mind fuck.

I guess this is the first post of the new year. 2011. Do I say Twenty Eleven? or Two Thousand Eleven? I like Twenty Eleven because it reminds me of 7/11 which reminds me of slurpees.

Since I last posted, I did go on that trip to the north. Some highlights:

- Visiting Ein Hod: an Artists village that was destroyed by the Haifa forest fires. I am convinced that if I make aliyah, i want to move there. It is so creative and everyone's so talented. Theres such a great vibe there...from the man who owns the music box museum, to the two, twin israeli sisters who operate a wonderful ceramic studio.

-I painted the walls of an artist's new home because his old home was charred by the fire.

- Had a tarbukah workshop in a Druze home. got a drum solo on a professional middleastern hand drum.

- Our hotel had a hot tub, and we cracked it open on saturday night and made a party.

New Years:

- our new years consisted of me and some friends hanging around in our hotel room, steaming in the hotel sauna, eating overrated hot dogs, going to a friend's house for a few, and then to a reallllllllly crowded but lame street party in florentine for the countdown.

- New Years day we had really nice mexican food, watched a lot of discovery channel, and then we walked the beach/tel aviv with white matching yarlmulkes and towel capes to appear as a cult...and ended up getting asked to daven maariv with the hotel minyan. I lost my favorite camera. I don't have pictures.

Other little fun nuggets:

- I met up with nikki and hannah in Tel AVIV!!!!! Hannah and I got the wrong day at first and ended up seeing nikki for a moment in her hostel. Looked like she was having fun. Hannah and I met up again on the right day at the Tel Aviv port. We ended up splitting some mugs of hot chocolate at Max Brenner.

- I got all of my hair cut off. It was quite a chop. My hair dresser had tourettes and kept on BEEPing as he was clipping away.

- Last week we visited the Angel bakery, the largest bakery in Israel. They shoved loaves upon loaves of steaming hot bread into our hands. I ate so many carbs. I saw vats of steaming yeast and got to shove my hands into a vat of sesame seeds.

- I took the 26 bus all the way to the biblical zoo. I was five feet from a giraffe. saw a lot of cheetahs and lions. Gazelles, ibixes....fed tropical birds this fruit-flavored semen-looking shake. It reminded me of how much i don't miss my old parakeets biting me.

- I hurt my hip/leg and it hurts to walk a little bit, so I went swimming in the pool at the gym. "Hydrotherapy". It was really relaxing. I need to work on doing backstroke without bumping my head on the wall.

...so the semester's coming to a close. I'm finishing up my classes. doing a couple of final projects. I have a final evaluation in ulpan in an hour or so, and i'm sacrificing cramming time to write this. I am thrilled to visit home, and the snow...and eat lox, play drums for the old people, and have shabbos with my whole family. Life's great right now, and i can see it getting even better.

How's that for a cheezy ending? its so hard ending these blog posts without an inspirational foresight. How bout this: My intestines are making funny sounds and i think i'm really backed up from this week's trip.