Six months down.....

Alright, alright, alright.....I'm back. I'm going to go with the excuse that my brother-in-law so kindly left for me and say that the germs took over and infected my computer thus keeping me from blogging. Oh, and also that I locked myself in a sterilized bubble to keep the germs at bay and therefore, my dear friends and family, I have nothing exciting to blog about. Thanks for the excuses! Not too much you can do when you are locked up from the outside world.

And in a way I have been locked up from the outside world. Although not in a plastic bubble, just inside our apartment. I have been spending an awful lot of time inside these days. Some might call it being anti-social. Which I don't think is true since currently there is no one to be social with as ALL my friends are home in the States right now being great American consumers (oh, how I dream of being one of those again!!) shopping to their little hearts content while everyone "fakely" wishes them a good day. At least the Israelis think it is fake. I, on the other hand, find it quite pleasant and a nice change from being treated as an obstacle in someones way. And thus I continue to wish people here a "Yom Tov" despite the repeatedly blank and confused stares I receive in return.

And yet others might refer to my hermitness (yes, I am very aware that that is not a word) as laziness. But I vehemently deny being lazy in any way, shape or form since the apartment is always clean, the clothes are always washed, there is always food in the fridge, and a good meal on the table. Like the awesome calzone I made over the weekend, completely from scratch, that was if I do say so myself, of restaurant quality, and now I am soooo mad at myself for not taking a picture of it. Oh well, there shall be a next time! And I have also actually taken the time (all by myself I might add, as my tutor is on a marathon vacation) to study some Hebrew (and by some I of course mean only a little), work out every day (although I have yet to see the fruits of that labor) and have enjoyed reading several good books lately. No, it's more that I don't really have anyone to hang out with these days and so I am choosing to spend my time inside instead of melting outside on the dirty sidewalk. Unfortunately my indoor daily life is less than exciting shall we say, and does not make for exciting earth shattering news. Although I quite enjoy it and I am already fearing the day I have to return to a "normal" life with a full time job and keep up with all the cleaning and cooking and working out and still find time for fun stuff life reading and knitting. Seriously, I have nightmares about it. Perhaps I am getting a wee to bit comfortable in my role as Israeli housewife?

And thus you will be forced to read another boring entry full of uninteresting drivel, but hey, you asked for more, so this is what you get. Be careful what you ask for from now on out! Let's see, let's see...... What can a ramble on about for ten minutes in order to appease my readers? My quest for light blue paper plates and cups (for the baby shower of my pregger friend)that ended in me asking a friend to bring back some from the States because I was dead set on a particular color theme? Or my grand master plans for a very Martha Stewart-ish Diaper cake that I also intend to make for the occasion? Or how about the lovely infection I got underneath my thumb nail (that was caused no doubt by all those pesky germs!) and my quest for Hydrogen Peroxide which is apparently so dangerous you have to get it directly from the pharmacist. Or the chocolate oatmeal No-Bake cookies I made and managed to screw up so that you practically had to eat them with a spoon? Or how Pumpkin gnawed through the yarn feeding into my current knitting project which made me decide to start a brand new one and chuck the one in progress because I had already made several mistakes and I took Pumpkin's destruction as a sign that this particular blanket was not meant to be finished? See, now does any of that interest you? I didn't think so.....

And so lately we've been somewhat glued to the ol' boob tube and the Olympics. Which is quite a nice change from movies like Die Hard 4 and Spring Break Shark Attack, as well as whatever lame American show they are currently showing reruns of, like Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader. Just so you know.....I'm definitely not. And neither is Phil. So the Israeli channel that shows Olympic coverage leaves much to be desired. After 5 days of straight Judo and weightlifting competitions I have just quit looking to see what they have on. But we do get Euro Sport which shows most of the popular events, however, their coverage and editing of these events, well, to put it bluntly (just like the lovely Brits do in their commentary, which I actually find refreshingly funny), is pretty damn bad. Or as they might say, "scrappy". Like the other night when in the middle of the swimming finals coverage they just decided for whatever lame reason to switch over to synchronized diving, right before one of Michael Phelps's races. (I still swear that Phelps must be half man, half dolphin.) Well Phil and I really did not appreciate the fact that Euro Sport cut the coverage short right in the middle of an exciting event. But luckily for me (not so luckily for Phil as he is at work during the day and he's going to be mad at me for reminding him of it), I can use this nifty little thing called a SlingBox that Phil's brother has hooked up back in the States and I can actually watch the US coverage on our computer during the day. So far it's been all about the swimming and the gymnastics for me. BTW....those Chinese gymnasts are SO not 16 years old! Something you may not know about me is that I LOVE to watch gymnastics and when I was a kid for about a brief two minutes in some childhood daydream I thought I might be the next Mary Lou Retton. That was until I snapped back into reality and realized that I sucked at gymnastics and couldn't even do much more than a pathetic cart wheel. Okay, maybe a round-off too. Thus I switched to dancing which I hated in the beginning, especially ballet, and although I was no Pavlova, I was much better at dancing than tumbling. Oh, but that childhood dream shall never be forgotten and I will continue to watch gymnastics and think in my warped little mind that I "used" to be a gymnast.

We've also seen a couple of movies lately, which is actually quite unusual for us as we rarely bother to go and blow forty bucks on popcorn and a movie unless something really good is playing. But the theater is only about 30 seconds away so it's a little more tempting now. So first we saw the Adam Sandler movie, "Don't Mess with the Zohan". Sandler's character is actually Israeli and he moves to New York to fulfill his dream of becoming a hair dresser. And we actually found it quite hilarious indeed, however, I don't think I would have thought it was so funny had I not been living in Israel for the past 6 months. In fact I might have found it stupid so I don't necessarily suggest that everyone go out and see it. There were many cultural references of which the humor might be lost on people who don't know anything about Israeli culture. Particularly hummus. And for those of you who did see it and thought his accent sounded fake.....it was actually SPOT on. We also saw "Wall-E" which I thought was good but I have to disagree with all the people who seem to think it was the best movie ever made. Although Wall-E is quite a cute and endearing little Robot (and I dug his little house) and the animation is top notch, I much preferred Ratatouille. Of course that was about a rat that can cook and what could be more fun than that!?!?!

So anyway, maybe after the Olympics are over and the heat starts to subside, we might, just might get out of our little hole and go do something a little more news worthy. That's the hope at least. Because as we approach our sixth month mark here (actually me thinks it's exactly sixth months today!), I'm beginning to realize that we have hardly seen much of Israel at all. Which is not necessarily a surprise as we knew we probably wouldn't be able to do a whole lot for the first few months we were here and then, well, it got hot and that just made us lazy. I guess it's a good thing that we still have 18 more months left here. Not that I am counting or anything! I promise that one day (hopefully not too far in the future) I will have more exciting news to report. And if not, then I guess I'll have to make something up.

So in conclusion, a little Americana, if you will. You may remember a previous entry about the 4th of July and a little cake I was so proud of making as a kid. Well, my dear Mom has sent me a copy of the picture and I do so intend to share it with you. (Dear brother, do not hate me.) And although the 4th has come and gone, since it is the Olympics and we are all rooting for our country to win, win, win (even though normally we have little to no interest in most of these sports and probably have never even heard of most of these athletes until two weeks ago), I think the picture is appropriate. Despite the fact that it's not exactly a true representation of our nation's flag. What can I say? I hadn't discovered my inner Betty Crocker yet. In any case, go team USA!


I totally just noticed how tanned my arms are and how pale my face is. What's up with that?