always had more dogs than bones

leeeeeeeeeeeeets see. today al and i woke up to orna's phone call. jade met us at the house and we all drove to lapid for lunch, dropping jade off at rachaeli's (her host mom). we arrived at orna's and had a lovely, hilarious chat about everything while she made a new favorite recipe (hard boiled egg parmeasean, and light fried cauliflower). oh. my. god. i could eat that for dayssssss. but their poor old dog, chumi, just had surgery to remove a tumor and was all sad and bandaged while their other dog, DG (the fat one) just ate everything and was funny. we talked about the tumor. and how cool it would be to play with it. before we ate. in the car... nevermind. haha.

we had lunch all together and talked about ourselves and our lives, past and future. i really feel that we're getting to know each other more now. its really nice and i'm very thankful that this is the family we joined. basically talking about what i want to do with my life, i ended up just saying that as long as i'm doing what i feel is right, i'll fall into something i want to do, through which i'll gain experience to do something else cool down the line a ways. i'm just going to do what i do. as long as i am not afraid. that's my biggest fear: fear. that's fucking stupid. and being lazy. my two biggest problems in life. eff. anyway, orna told me that my plan is not so shabby. faboooo. elan (host dad) gave me the idea to look into doing stuff for the UN. volunteering or otherwise. i'm going to look into it. he worked for the israeli government and their family got to live in both china and italy. i'm not going to lie, that sounds pretty rad. after lunch, we drove to tel aviv to drop eran off at the skate park and then to the beach in herzlyia for a girl scout induction ceremony for our host sister yarden. very cute. on the way, we learned very important hebrew phrases:

"funny": matzkhik
"we had a bitchin' time": ayer lanu haval alazman
"slow": leyat
"how do you say": ekh omrim
"moustache": safam
"beard": zakam

and other things as well. i'm really excited about his bar mitzvah, which will be a dream. its the first weekend in november. halom. "dream". at the beach, al and i talked a lot about "love" and being scared of what that means based on our previous experiences with relationships and conceptions of love. not to intellectualize, i would like to experience whatever feeling "love" describes, but am terrified of the consequences. rejection, faded affection, death of personal freedom and independence, stifling comfortablility. i don't know. i'm a huge pussy i guess. we'll see. i won't worry about it. just play my cards as they lay. or something like this ("o mashu kazeh").

jade met us on the beach and we hung out, watching the sunset before yarden's ceremony. it was a nice ceremony, although i couldn't understand what they were doing of course. all i know is that they got a pin and were then punched in the arm by their counselors or whomever. who knows. i don't. and now i HAVE to put the photos up, because orna asked me about them. fuuuuuuck, i just have to edit them. and there's a lot. ok fine. i'll do it. monday after kadima. i also have to come up with a photography curriculum between now and then. and also decide if i want to do these leadership seminar things, because one weekend clashes with elan's bar mitzvah and i really don't want to miss it. sheeeeeeeeet. i work tomorrow after ulpan. it's FALL BACK daylight savings time, so we have an extra hour. not too shabby folks. ok goodnight.

love,

sally

p.s. here's a video that i like. for you parks. and caitlin.