Le Sigh

The past few weeks have been absolutely overwhelming. Classes began, fiascoes were had, family visited, and ridiculous situations occurred. I would honestly rather not get into the classes and the horrible group presentation I had to be a part of. So lets skip those and just move onwards...

My mom, Aunt Linda, and close family friend Patty all came to town. Along with Shira and Mike we went out for some very nice dinners and all the ladies attended a NY expo on everything ever made and sold in shops. So, with my mom, we hunted down Judaica while trying to sidestep the incredible amounts of crap that people consume in our country. At one of our dinners my mom told me a scary story. This is highly unusual since my mom never tells stories, and even when she does they're are so many pauses and tangent-taking that they aren't very captivating. So, by her telling this story incredibly well I absolutely believed is was true and freaked out. FREAKED OUT. I had to call Yohoshua in Israel at 3 am and sleep with the lights on. The weekend also had its charming moments: I saw Shira in her bridal gown (gorgeous, and somewhat sentimental since I flashed back to her dress-up days of childhood), Patty and my mom and I went on a freezing tour of the Lower East Side, and I fell in love with home furnishings from a Middle Eastern store.

Thursday night I went out with a group of men to celebrate Honza's birthday. We went to a gay bar called Xes (pronounced excess) and I was the first to notice that it cleverly spells "sex" backwards, how subtle. The bar was not as trashy as it might sound, and we all took over a couch in the corner and drank cosmo shots while watching their special mix of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and Beyonce music videos interspersed with coming-of-age films. Though I didn't know most of the guys, I was with good friends Anmol and Michael (the only other straight person in the entire bar) which is always a party. I'm quite proud to say that all my drinks were paid for, I think gay is the way to go on dates.

I had a really low day on Saturday, so I was excited to join Michael and Anmol for dinner with a larger group of friends including Paul, visiting German Jan, and about 5 others. Michael chose the place, a little African restaurant (and by restaurant I mean the kind of place where there are 3 regulars who look as though they live there) promising the flavors of Ghana. It was... interesting. I ordered a peanut chicken soup and what I got was an archaeological dig in a peanut bog for skeletal remains of ancient chicken. It was successful, I found the spine! After spending time with Clucker, my new skeletal friend, Anmol and Michael got their vegetarian dishes of Red Red which was actually blue paste with oil (oh so tricky). We only ate the fried plantains that came as a side.

I took a weekend course on conflict resolution and felt far more feisty and aggravated than normal. In doing the ginormous amounts of reading that were totally unnecessary to the actual course, I found out that one of my objectives was to foster "the ability to communicate the desire to engage in the process of mutual need satisfaction." Now doesn't the make peace education and conflict resolution just a little bit more interesting than 5 minutes ago? I'm considering getting a diploma made specific to the course to prove that I have mastered not only having the desire to, and communicating that desire, but the ability to engage in such a process. This is the sort of practical skills a girl needs to graduate with to get a job in today's market. I would type more, but I have skills to go learn!