Passion Week

I've gone to the synagogue these past two weeks on Friday night.  I went with Dave, but we couldn't sit together, so before it started, my first time there, he very kindly took me into a corner with a prayer book and showed me where to read.  I followed along all right, only getting lost at the parts where everyone reads to themselves.  The service is fairly short--an hour, maybe an hour and a half--and a lot of it is strangely familiar to me, except for the fact that it's all in Hebrew.  Part of it comes from the Psalms--92 through 99, or something like that--which I find, in an odd way, truly comforting.  These are Psalms I used to memorize (in English of course) and say out loud in bed, on long walks, in airplanes, when I was happy, or sad, or anxious.  Psalm 96 especially.  It has a strange effect on me when I hear it sung in Hebrew.  It makes me feel thick and liquid inside.  There's no explaining it, but there it is.  It makes me miss and miss and miss God.

Thoughts

My strep is gone, my papers are in, I'm all caught up in all my classes...life is pretty good right now.  However, there's not much to write about.  Things have definitely returned to the happy and humdrum.  I go to school, come home, spend time with Dave or my friends, eat, and sleep. 

I wish I could stay here, just for another year or so, perfect (ha) my Hebrew, continue with Arabic, get a job and settle in.  There are lots of reasons to stay, but lots of reasons to go as well.  I'm pretty much wavering between spending the next year here or in New York.  I miss my country, but what the hell would I do there for a year?  What would I do here?  I'm too old to not know these things yet.

Sick again

I've been very busy lately, been spending a lot of time out with friends, which means I've kind of been slacking off at school.  I've noticed something: when I am depressed, as I was last semester, I am unable to work.  When I am happy, as I am this semester, I am unable to work.  Thus, for me to be productive at all, I have to exist in a state of perpetual boring emotional calm, as I was last year.  Not too happy, not too sad.  Hmmm.  This does not bode so well for me.

But at least I am happy.  There are so many people around all of a sudden, and there is constantly something to do.  I am taking, as I said, an easy load this semester, but it still somehow feels like a lot.  Maybe that's because I still have classes from last year hanging over my head--two papers due tomorrow, neither of which I have started.  No worries, though.  Give me three or four hours and they'll be done.

I also have strep throat, which basically sucks.  I am not a good sick person.  I moan and whimper and whine.  Ah, but soon this too shall pass away.