Another week another dollar (or something of the sort)

Just to update my status from the last post I’m feeling much better today. After two days of terrible stomach pains I woke up this morning feeling fine. From talking with the locals I came to the conclusion that it was the water. Basically water is treated differently everywhere and just about everyone who comes to Israel deals with their body adjusting to it around the two week mark, thank god for feeling better. Some friends and I went to a park last night and had a bonfire, it was a great crowd of people with everyone singing, talking, etc. I spent most of the time tending the fire and looking up at the night sky, the clouds were low; it was beautiful. I can’t believe that it’s Thursday already and another Shabbos is almost upon us. The first week of classes I had here were all discombobulated, meant to be a general overview with no continuity from class to class or day to day. Now that I’ve moved into a new program every class builds on the other so we cover a lot more. I’m very grateful for a new challenge. This whole trip is starting to feel very real. It’s gotten past the point of being a vacation. I was talking with my sister a little while ago, about this blog about some of the things I’ve written and one thing that came up was how living in the Old City can be like living in a bubble. I have a class that teaches Jewish Morals and Ethics and we talked about modesty this week. How when you live around things you very quickly become accustomed to those things. And after a while you don’t even realize what you’re seeing and fail to see what could be wrong with it. I know it will be weird going back to America when I eventually do and watching television again, seeing magazines and newspapers, I wonder how I’ll feel about it all. It’s just not like that here, your not exposed to the openness of American culture, everything in the Old City revolves around the beliefs of the people living here and those beliefs are very different then those of New York. It’s all strange and exciting learning about so many new topics, thinking and rethinking how I live my life. So all in all another wonderful week, this place continues to amaze me. Eretz Israel.