What's Thanksgiving without a Thanksgiving dinner? Therefore it was only natural to have a big feast. And boy was it a feast. My stomach agreed.
Because I only had one class, until noon, I helped my friend get everything ready. She doesn't live on campus so I had to go to Mercaz HaCarmel...by myself. That was a big feat. It was the first time traveling anywhere in Haifa alone. I didn't get lost and I got off at the right stops and even used some of my hebrew.
Once at my friend's apartment, I helped her figure out stuff about the turkey. How do you cut off the neck? Do you cut off the tail? Did I get all the organs out? Which way does the turkey cook? Not having ever cooked a turkey, I had to look all of it up online. Once we figured out all the answers, we put it in the oven to cook for the next four hours. We had no thermometer that says when the turkey is ready nor did we have a turkey baster but it managed to come out fantastic, if I do say so myself. And we managed to almost drop it only twice. Along with turkey we had the usual thanksgiving delicacies: stuffing, sweet potato stuff with marshmallows on top, cranberry sauce, a fruit relish and then of course everything that everyone else brought. It was so good and so filling. There was also dessert. I think by the end everyone was about to explode from the food.
Friday was a day filled with laziness and reading. I went to Friday night services and then had dinner with a friend. There was no potluck because it was moved to Saturday so that we could have more time to cook and dress up like hippies. It was a '60s themed potluck. With Jimi Hemndrix (spelling intended) and Janice Joplin and Bob Dylan playing, we chilled with our groovy delicacies of Kool-Aide Electric Acid (Sprite) and Magic Brownies, which was actually challah french toast and bananas dipped in chocolate. There were only a few people there but it was nice because everyone had a place to sit, enough food, and we could have one big conversation.
Today, I went to Jerusalem. The only reason I went again was for class. But our professor didn't come and four people out of the twelve in our class showed up. It was a international school wide trip so there were other people. Once in Jerusalem, we walked through the Armenian quarter and then through the room where the Last Supper was held. It has been turned into a mosque since then so there's not much to see there except some Romaneesque arches. We then made our way to the Jewish Quarter and to the Kotel. After putting a note in the Wall, me and the three other people from my class walked to the Begin Center. This is why I was surprised that our professor didn't show up. Menachem Begin's (pronounced BAY-gin) relationship to his mentor Jabotinsky is analogous to our professor's obsession with Begin. So I thought that our teacher would want to come and guide us through his life. Instead we joined a tour group and "learned" about his life. I say "learned" because besides the fact that we learned everything already in class, they just threw information at us and it was hard to absorb all of it. It was a good museum and if you're in Jerusalem you should go, but not if you've spent the past two and a half months talking about him. The good thing about going to the museum was that we had an hour afterwards to kill before catching up with the rest of the group so the Madrich that we were with gave us a small tour of the Cable Car used in the war with Jordan. Jordan forbade the entrance of food and water to Israel so the Israelis built a cable with a car so that it could bring food over. Food was transfered by night and the cable was brought down in the day so that the Jordanians wouldn't be able to see it. It wasn't until like twenty years later that the public was informed of this cable. As a plus, a meeting with the Khzakastan Parliament was going on in the Mount Zion Hotel (right next to the cable) so we got a sneak peek of them. We then caught up with the group went to Machanai Yehuda for some shopping and food and made our way back to university.
Because I only had one class, until noon, I helped my friend get everything ready. She doesn't live on campus so I had to go to Mercaz HaCarmel...by myself. That was a big feat. It was the first time traveling anywhere in Haifa alone. I didn't get lost and I got off at the right stops and even used some of my hebrew.
Once at my friend's apartment, I helped her figure out stuff about the turkey. How do you cut off the neck? Do you cut off the tail? Did I get all the organs out? Which way does the turkey cook? Not having ever cooked a turkey, I had to look all of it up online. Once we figured out all the answers, we put it in the oven to cook for the next four hours. We had no thermometer that says when the turkey is ready nor did we have a turkey baster but it managed to come out fantastic, if I do say so myself. And we managed to almost drop it only twice. Along with turkey we had the usual thanksgiving delicacies: stuffing, sweet potato stuff with marshmallows on top, cranberry sauce, a fruit relish and then of course everything that everyone else brought. It was so good and so filling. There was also dessert. I think by the end everyone was about to explode from the food.
Friday was a day filled with laziness and reading. I went to Friday night services and then had dinner with a friend. There was no potluck because it was moved to Saturday so that we could have more time to cook and dress up like hippies. It was a '60s themed potluck. With Jimi Hemndrix (spelling intended) and Janice Joplin and Bob Dylan playing, we chilled with our groovy delicacies of Kool-Aide Electric Acid (Sprite) and Magic Brownies, which was actually challah french toast and bananas dipped in chocolate. There were only a few people there but it was nice because everyone had a place to sit, enough food, and we could have one big conversation.
Today, I went to Jerusalem. The only reason I went again was for class. But our professor didn't come and four people out of the twelve in our class showed up. It was a international school wide trip so there were other people. Once in Jerusalem, we walked through the Armenian quarter and then through the room where the Last Supper was held. It has been turned into a mosque since then so there's not much to see there except some Romaneesque arches. We then made our way to the Jewish Quarter and to the Kotel. After putting a note in the Wall, me and the three other people from my class walked to the Begin Center. This is why I was surprised that our professor didn't show up. Menachem Begin's (pronounced BAY-gin) relationship to his mentor Jabotinsky is analogous to our professor's obsession with Begin. So I thought that our teacher would want to come and guide us through his life. Instead we joined a tour group and "learned" about his life. I say "learned" because besides the fact that we learned everything already in class, they just threw information at us and it was hard to absorb all of it. It was a good museum and if you're in Jerusalem you should go, but not if you've spent the past two and a half months talking about him. The good thing about going to the museum was that we had an hour afterwards to kill before catching up with the rest of the group so the Madrich that we were with gave us a small tour of the Cable Car used in the war with Jordan. Jordan forbade the entrance of food and water to Israel so the Israelis built a cable with a car so that it could bring food over. Food was transfered by night and the cable was brought down in the day so that the Jordanians wouldn't be able to see it. It wasn't until like twenty years later that the public was informed of this cable. As a plus, a meeting with the Khzakastan Parliament was going on in the Mount Zion Hotel (right next to the cable) so we got a sneak peek of them. We then caught up with the group went to Machanai Yehuda for some shopping and food and made our way back to university.
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