A Look Into My Thoughts

OK, so one of my goals on this blog was that I wanted it to be more than just "This is what I did today in Israel! Gosh, isn't this culture weird and interesting?" That's why I've been throwing in the "random thoughts" at the end of each post, so I can talk about other things that are interesting to me. So, while I still need to throw up a post detailing the rest of my Rosh Hashanah weekend and catch up with activities around Ashkelon (Not many. But sidebar: wouldn't that be a great name for a future post?), this post is going to be dedicated to other thoughts I've been having recently. Hopefully this will be interesting to everyone - if not, I guess we'll consider this a failed experiment.

- Fascinating and scary read from the New York Times yesterday. If you haven't read it yet, the columnist, Thomas Friedman, compares the political climate to what it was like in Israel in 1995 - before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extremist who felt he was somehow justified in killing the Prime Minister. Friedman writes,

"They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all."

Now, if you didn't read the article, would you have any idea if Friedman was talking about Obama or Rabin? I haven't seen any fallout over here from the article yet, mainly due to the fact that we pretty much live in our own little world here in Kalanit. But keep in mind - the generation of Israelis in their late 20s-early 30s are apparently known as the "Candle Generation", due to the impact that Rabin's assassination had on their lives and world outlooks. So how would they respond to this? Moving back towards home, it's hard not to read stories and see videos from Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, the Tea Partys, the town hall meetings, etc. etc. etc. and not agree with this. Let's look at some of the topics that Pres. Obama has been attacked for recently:

-Giving a nationally broadcasted speech to students where he talked about... going to class and doing your homework. Truly a controversial subject.
-Being both a "Nazi fascist" and a "Marxist socialist". Now, as my 9th grade social studies teacher taught me, communism (far far far far far left) and fascism (far far far far far right) are pretty much the EXACT opposite. Wanna talk about flip-flopping?
-Not being an American citizen. Seriously, is this still going on? Stop it. Just stop it. It's moved past funny to just embarrassing.
-Going to Copenhagen to promote the Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics. The case here is that Obama has way too much to do than to deal with this minor event which in no way would bring even more positive attention to America and certainly would not provide any jobs during a massive recession. Besides, doesn't everyone know that Obama is personally dealing with every single minute detail of health care reform, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear issue, the economy, and environmental reform? If only he had some sort of group, maybe a type of Cabinet of qualified individuals to help with those issues, along with a massive White House staff that handles the day-to-day operations of the executive branch of government. Oh, and wouldn't it be great if in the year 2009 there were some sort of electronic devices that would allow him to speak to those mythical people? And if we're really dreaming, why not throw in a camera that could attach to said device so that he could even see them as they speak, almost as if he were in the room. Ah well, it's only a fantasy. Now back to my blog before I go and Skype with my friends after updating my Twitter account.

In case Friedman's column needed any verification, just take a look at RNC Chairman Michael Steele's response, where he calls Friedman a "nutjob" who is completely irrational. Yep. Friedman is the irrational one here. Not like a federal employee was just found dead with the word "Fed" written on his chest or anything. And the saddest part about this is that there really are legitimate concerns from the right-wing about many of Obama's initiatives, starting with the cost of it all. But as long as this is going on, those voices are going to be completely drowned out by complaints that the President would dare support the Olympics coming to his hometown.

-Back to the Olympics (and on a much lighter note): With the vote coming up at the end of this week, it seems my bordering-on-obsessive-interests have locked in on Chicago's bid. I understand the point of those who don't want the Games causing endless construction and tax increases for their city, but come on - IT'S THE OLYMPICS. We're talking Olympic basketball on MJ's court. We're talking world-class soccer in Soldier Field. We're talking the pentathlon at Northwestern University and boxing at the University of Illinois-Chicago. We're talking beach volleyball on the shores of Lake Michigan on a site called Olympic Island. Why nothing is scheduled for Wrigley Field is beyond me, but nonetheless, this sounds absolutely amazing to me. The premiere sporting event in the world, right in the heartland of America. I believe the vote will be around mid-afternoon here - expect me to be watching.

-I know I said last time I didn't care about the Rams, but seriously, this team is bad. I think Spagnuolo and Devaney will be able to turn it around, but it's gonna take a while. This Post-Dispatch column by Bernie Miklasz says it best - are we seriously arguing about whether Marc Bulger or Kyle Boller are better? This week alone, we've lost our starting QB, WR, and safety for an extended amount of time to injuries. We've been starting Mr. Irrelevant at LB (has a Mr. Irrelevent ever started a single game before?) - oh wait, he just got suspended for illegal substance use. Big surprise there. I mean, we're 3 weeks in and I'm already looking at mock drafts to see what quarterback we might take. Ugh. I might be in the market for a new team soon.

-On a more positive note, go Cardinals! Good thing I have internet, because I'm going to do my best to watch every pitch of playoff baseball for the Cards. It's going to be a tough month - every team out there has something to fear. I think the Phillies are my biggest worry, just because of how much Ryan Howard loves hitting in St. Louis. Ideal first round matchup is probably the Dodgers - not sure why, but I haven't really been that overwhelmed with them all year. In our group alone, we've got Phillies, Red Sox, Twins, and Yankees fans, so it'll be an interesting crowd to watch with. By the way, Wainwright for Cy Young. Also, if La Russa isn't Manager of the Year I don't know why the award exists.

-It's gonna SUCK not being at Mizzou next week. All I can say is that I hope everyone there goes to the pep rally next Tuesday and the game next Thursday, because these things come and go faster than you'd believe. Also, I finally saw the new Mizzou commercial for this year, and I have to say, for all the crap I gave them about the commercials in the 05-06 days, they've gotten it together. Plus, Jon Hamm gives one of the greatest "Z-O-U"s I've ever seen.

Guess I should throw in a little Israel talk... I might try and throw up another post on Sunday, but starting tomorrow I'm on Sukkot break. Tomorrow afternoon I'm headed back up to Yokneam to see my adoptive family again for the weekend, and next week I'm spending four days in (drum roll please...) Egypt! I'll be the one with the MASA backpack and my "I support the IDF" shirt. I'm sure a lot of stories and pictures will come of this, so I better catch up on the blogs soon. So keep watching this space for more...

Two Blogs? Mah?

In case you don't know, I am also posting periodically on a blog for the St. Louis Federation along with Andi, the other STL participant on OTZMA. The site can be found at http://stlotzma.blogspot.com, and while I'll usually post here more in depth, you can find other info on that site as well. For example, I just posted a short (for me) post on our Yom Kippur in Jerusalem that we just returned from. Posting on the blog is the least I can do for the Fed, seeing as they have been remarkably supportive of both me and Andi throughout this experience. Talking to other people on the trip has made me realize how lucky we are to have a Federation behind us that is making a strong effort to keep in touch, let us know they are there for us, and are there to help us with whatever we need. OK, enough sucking up for now...

Anyway, it's been a long few days and I have no Internet (I'm stealing from others on the group - shh!), so Part II of Meet the Hirsch's will have to wait. Trust me - it's a good one! It involves being surrounded by a family that doesn't speak English, being fed to the point that I wondered if my life was at stake, and if you're lucky, a tank. But until then, l'hitraot!

Meet the Hirschs Part I

OK, so when we left off, I had just boarded a bus en route to Yokneam. Now, you might ask, what exactly is a Yokneam? Well, Yokneam is a small city of about 20,000 people (in Israel this qualifies you for city status) in Northern Israel, about 20 minutes away from Haifa. The city is very high-tech, very industrialized, and growing very quickly due to the numerous factories that have opened in the area over the past 10-15 years or so. More importantly to this story, Yokneam is St. Louis’s partnership city, the place I'll be living in from January-March, and the home of my adoptive family, the Hirschs. Immediately after our nighttime escapades in Jerusalem, we all boarded buses leaving Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and left to spend the Rosh Hashanah weekend with our new adoptive families. Here’s mine:

(Ofra, Efi, Michal and Yuval)

Upon arriving to the Yokneam bus station, I was picked up by Efi, my new “dad”. With him were the 3 ½ year old twins, Yuval (the boy) and Michal (the girl), who might be some of the cutest kids I’ve ever met. A short drive later, I arrived at the Hirsch’s home and met Ofra, my new “mom”. Now, to add in the final reason why the timing on the nighttime seminar was so bad (Sidebar: I bet the higher-ups at OTZMA are thrilled with my comments on this thing. I should emphasize here that the CONCEPT of the program was fantastic. Something got lost in translation. Consider it constructive feedback for next year.), I was meeting these people for the first time on almost no sleep. Good first impression, right? Luckily, Ofra and Efi understood my situation and were fine with me taking a short nap. After resting for a little, I spent the afternoon with the family learning a little more about them. Efi is a mechanical engineer who does the kind of work you can't talk about. I'm not kidding. He showed me the factory he works at, which is surrounded by a 10-feet concrete wall with barbed wire on the top and an armed guard at the gate. Not totally sure I even WANT to know what project he's working on! Ofra is a teacher at a local elementary school and is currently finishing up her Master's degree in administration. In fact, I may be wrong, but I might actually be volunteering there during Phase II. Ofra's 8 year old nephew also was spending the day with them, and he and the twins were fascinated by my iPod touch. I was also able to communicate with the family very easily, since Ofra and Efi both spoke excellent English. Pretty sure the twins were just confused about why I couldn't speak Hebrew though...

So that night, we drove to a nearby town called Carmiel to have Rosh Hashanah dinner with Efi's family. And I mean his entire family. Between his parents, brothers, sister, and various nephews and nieces, there were probably a good 10-15 people there. Luckily, once again, they all spoke various degrees of English. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't try to speak some Hebrew (I'm starting to make some good progress in ulpan), but I was able to talk to them and explain more what I was doing here, both in Israel and actually at their house. It was around this time I came to a realization that this wasn't Rosh Hashanah - this was Thanksgiving! Whole family gathered from all over, large meal, lots of schmoozing... yeah, this was strangely reminiscent of a certain Thursday in November. Oh, and everything you hear about Israelis having huge family meals? It's all true. There was fish (and fish heads...), soup (with soup almonds - yum!), chicken, veggies, etc. etc. etc.

(Before the food came out. This was pretty much the last time you could see table.)

Before the meal started, Efi's dad went around the table with blessings for everyone (not the baruch ata type, more like the Thanksgiving type), and thought out a blessing for me in English, basically thanking me and the rest of the OTZMAnikim for coming here to Israel and helping their country. Honestly, one of the nicer moments of the year so far, and Ofra was talking about it to everyone for the rest of the weekend. After dinner, everyone came out to the patio and sat around talking. It was mostly in Hebrew, but it was nice to just take everything in and see if I could pick up any words. (I got like 3.) Yuval and Michal stole the show, getting up in front of everyone, singing songs, and giving blessings to everyone.

(Tell me these aren't some of the cutest kids ever.)


(The Hirschs' made cupcakes with little flags for each person at dinner, and they made sure mine was in English!)

Finally, after a very long day (or two), we bid our goodbyes, boarded the car, and drove back to Yokneam for the night. And while there was still a very long weekend ahead of us, this post itself is getting quite long, so I'll have to give this a To Be Continued...

Some random thoughts (but not many, this is really getting long):

-Really, I just have one thought. To the kU football and basketball teams: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love it.

24 Hours in Israel

So this is a story about why too much of a good thing is NOT always good. It’s also a story about why last Thursday-Friday was one of the longest days of my life. To tell it, I’ll have to back up a bit to Wednesday night. After a short meeting, our madricha Sarah asked about 10 of us to stay behind. She told us that we had been selected for a special volunteer opportunity the next day, where we would be working with officers in the IDF and delivering Rosh Hashanah care packages to local Holocaust survivors, many of whom were below the poverty line. Well, all of us were in agreement on two things: First, that it was a great opportunity, and second, that the timing could not have been worse. You see, this would give us a schedule of being in ulpan from 8-1, then volunteering from 3-10. What you don’t know yet is that we were all going to Jerusalem at 1:00 in the morning for a educational session on slichot, morning services. While everyone else would be sleeping and resting up for the all-nighter ahead of us, we would be volunteering with this program. Now, none of us were going to turn this chance down just so we could sleep a few more hours, so we all signed on to go. And just like you’d expect – it was one of the more interesting afternoons we’ve had yet.

Now, we had done a project like this before – a few weeks ago we delivered care packages to the needy with local volunteers. However, the people we were working with spoke very little English, we really just dropped the boxes off and left, and the entire thing felt very rushed. This time, we were working with officers who spoke fairly good English. Here are the two I was working with:



Rather than drop and run, we stayed and spoke with the couple of houses we delivered to. They didn’t speak much English, but the stories they told were incredible. One man told us about how he served in the IDF in the 1950s, but had to leave the service to care for his sick wife. Another woman told us about how she wanted to change her first name, and when she spoke to her father about it, he told her that she was named for her grandmother who had perished in the Holocaust and that her name was the only thing he had left from his family. Just the kindness these people showed to us, taking us into their homes, and telling us some of their amazing stories. The woman actually wrote a letter to the organizers of the project, praising the kindness of the “strong, beautiful” Israeli soldiers and the American volunteer with the “white teeth”. (I’m not kidding. They read that to the entire group. You can’t make this stuff up.) We spent some time afterwards having dinner with the soldiers and organizers, followed by a video about the IDF. Go figure, it was in Hebrew, so I just watched the admittedly cool images and tried to catch some of the words. Finally, they gave each of us a certificate from the mayor (Ashkelon is very big into volunteering these days) and a little plaque they put together for us, and we headed back to Kalanit to pack.

Now, I wish I could tell you all about our adventures in Jerusalem at night, and how we wandered the city and were enlightened about the world around us. Truth is, I barely remember it. That’s how tired I was. Now, I’m sure it would have been a great experience if the timing on this hadn’t been so bad. Basically, after we got back at 10, we packed our things for the weekend, waited until 1, and boarded a bus for Jerusalem. When we arrived, already pretty tired, we found out that we were going to be sitting in a room talking for 2 hours. It wasn’t till after that that we finally went to walk around the city and tried to sit in on some morning services to see what it was like. Oh wait – turns out people don’t like their prayers to be a spectator sport. We got kicked out of the first congregation we went into, and happened to run into a rabbi who explained to us why they didn’t want us watching, and how Judaism is supposed to be participatory, not something to be observed. Which was really cool and interesting and all, just not quite what we were looking for. Anyhow, next thing I really remember we stumbled onto a bakery that had just opened, ate some rugula, and proceeded to a park for breakfast. After that, we hopped on a bus, drove to Tel Aviv, and jumped on another bus headed for Yokneam at 8:00 AM… 24 hours after ulpan had started my day.

So the volunteering and all-nighter would have been really fantastic in their own rights, but at the end of the day (or morning, as it was), the fact that we were doing this back to back really stunted what I would have gotten out of it. So remember, sometimes having so many great things can hurt the overall impact it should be having.

Now, you ask, why was I headed for Yokneam? Ah, my friends… that is a story for another day.

Some random thoughts:

-Rams suck.

-I should probably elaborate on that more… no, Rams just suck.

-A little concerned about the Cardinals showing against the NL East last week, but I think we’ll be fine. Big debate these days is on the NL Cy Young: I’ll be a homer here, so it’s one of our two aces for me. I’ve been switching back and forth between Wainwright and Carpenter, but I think the deciding factor (which no one outside of St. Louis knows about) is that Carp is actually responsible for Waino’s success this year, seeing as he was the one who corrected his arm movement back in May. On top of that, his pure leadership and absolute dominance makes him, to me, this year’s Cy winner.

-If you haven’t seen the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother, STOP READING AND SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH. SPOILERS AHEAD. SERIOUSLY. LAST WARNING. I really enjoyed this episode, and you could tell how much time the writers put into this. The Barney-Robin scenes were pitch-perfect (Interesting dynamic this season: How will Ted deal with being the only single person in the group?), but the scenes with Ted teaching were priceless. That was some of the most painfully awkward humor this show’s had in a while, and the scene with him switching back and forth with what to have the class call him was legen – wait for it – dary. I also liked the bait-and-switch they pulled with the mother – so she was in the class that he was teaching by mistake, not actually his student? Well done, writers. Good start to the season.

-And finally, just because, I leave you with the philosophy of the Governator.

When I Write Something, I Sign My Name

OK, so it's not a perfect analogy, seeing as Sam was firing two jerks and I'm thrilled that people are reading my blog. (Sidebar: Sam Seaborn was Deputy Communications Director and Senior Advisor to the President. Who did those two think they were that he couldn't fire them? But I digress.) It's been brought to my attention that apparently people outside of my circle of friends and family are reading this blog. Despite what my last post may have implied, I love that this is being followed and people are interested in what I have to say. That being said... I want to know who you are! I'm not asking you to post your full name if you don't want to, but if your going to comment here (which I encourage, I love feedback), it would be nice to at least have some idea who you are.

Now, I guess it goes both ways here - if you're going to invest the time and effort to read my blog, it would be nice to know whose thoughts you're reading. You already know the basics of why I'm writing this: I'm a participant in Project OTZMA, I'm volunteering in Israel for 10 months, I'm living in Ashkelon at the moment, I'm apparently obsessed with The West Wing, yadda yadda yadda. But that really only describes what I'm doing, not who I am. So here goes: I recently graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in Secondary and Middle School Education - Social Studies, which is a long way of saying I'm certified to be a high school or middle school social studies teacher. That being said, I'm not entirely sure teaching is really for me, and I'm planning on using this year to explore some of my options and see where I want to go with my career. I have a huge interest in politics and current events, and have been growing more and more interested over the past year in pursuing a career in politics. I'm a passionate fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and Missouri Tigers, and you'll find me commenting frequently on their seasons throughout the year. (Sidebar #2: Really, AP Poll? Washington over Mizzou in the rankings? Gee, glad they pulled out a fluke upset win over USC. That's why Stanford was ranked in 2007, right? In case anyone's math is off, 3-0 > 2-1.) I'm also a fan of referencing pop culture, particularly movies, the West Wing (in case you haven't noticed), and my favorite TV show, How I Met Your Mother. (Sidebar #3: If you don't watch that show, do yourself a favor and start. I believe the season premiere is tomorrow night. Watch it and thank me later.)

Them's the basics. Hopefully readership of Show Me the Shawarma will continue to grow, and more and more people will find interest in what I have to say. My goal is for these posts to be equal parts insightful, entertaining, informative, and most of all interesting. I will say that a lot happened to me over this past Rosh Hashanah weekend, so much that I've got about 4-5 posts waiting to find their way online. So watch this space, because there's a lot more to come! Shana tova!

Pictures!

Pictures are now up for anyone not friends with me on Facebook! Because I don't want random people I don't know looking through my pictures, I set up a private album on Photobucket. If you want to see them, just email me and I'll send you the info to sign in. Just saying - if you're some random creep looking through my blog, please don't email me. I ain't giving you the password. But for everyone else, email me and enjoy the pictures!

"Be Successful"

Sorry the blog posts have been slow so far, but we still don’t have Internet of our own – we’ve all been resorting to “borrowing” wi-fi from our new friends across the street until we get our own set up. Nonetheless, I figured it was time for an update on how everything is going here.

First off... pictures are up on Facebook! I'm working on getting some sort of photo album up where people can see them off FB, so that'll hopefully happen soon. Here are some pics from the hikes in the meantime...










We finally started getting into a little bit of a groove, with ulpan starting today and our volunteer work getting going. Last week we went to work at a community center (think your local JCC) and toured a small “village” built and run completely by college students. The idea was that this is the new form of Zionism, in that our grandparents’ generation created the state of Israel, our parents’ generation fought for and defended it, and now our generation is going to rebuild from within, or something like that. It’s actually very similar to the wave of activism that swept through American college campuses last year, in that our generation is tired of sitting on the sidelines and are actively getting involved in community service. I was actually a little fuzzy on how the two places were connected, but I’m pretty sure the people we were working with were part of the student community. Anyway, we spent the day resodding the lawn and basically getting the place ready for students to start coming after school got out. Seems like it would be annoying and unnecessarily strenuous work, but tasks like that are always more fun and enjoyable when you’re doing it under the umbrella of “volunteering”.

The next day we helped deliver boxed Rosh Hashanah meals to the more downtrodden areas of Ashkelon – the very LARGE downtrodden areas. One of the more interesting aspects of this city is the very large disparity in wealth. In some areas you see beautiful new apartments with grills out on the deck, little gardens being tended to, and big air conditioning units set up outside. Right across the street, you see broken-down fences, clothes hanging out to dry, and maybe a fan or two. It’s going to be a major part of our experience here dealing with that fairly severe break in income levels, as much of our volunteering is going to be in that type of population. I’m still not sure exactly what I’ll be doing day-to-day, but I’ll update as soon as I do (hopefully).

I’m also very glad to be started on ulpan, or Hebrew classes. While 5 hours a day (you read that right) might seem like a bit much, I’m really excited to be able to really communicate with people here. When I was in line at the grocery store the other day, the woman in front of me tried to spark up a conversation, only to be frustrated and annoyed when I clearly had no clue what she was saying. I did redeem myself when I told her I had only been there for a week and was getting ready to start ulpan, as she got very excited and told me to “Be successful”. That right there is really what the Israeli people boil down to – they might be pushy, loud, and seemingly self-absorbed, but at the end of the day, they turn out to be some of the most generous people you will ever meet. I mean, when you get right down to it, this woman pulled a total 180, going from being pissed off at me for not bothering to learn her country’s language to wishing me all the best in the world. To be successful. How often has someone said that to you back in the States? It really just fuels the fire to put it all into learning about this language and this land, because at the end of the day, I’m giving a year of my life to this country and the Israeli people. So don’t I owe it to them as much as myself to be successful?

OTZMA's in the house, oh my gosh, oh my gosh

It's been almost a week here in Israel, and simply put, it's been GREAT. We had a group of about 17 people from OTZMA on our flight, so we were able to "enjoy" the company of about 100-120 (that's NOT an exaggeration) of Orthodox high school girls heading off to Yeshiva. Ever since then, it's been a whirlwind of meetings, icebreakers, hikes, and Israeli food (I'm trying to expand my culinary horizons this year. It's a slow process).

Some random thoughts from the past week:

-OTZMA is an absolutely amazing group of people. As against the odds as it might be with 38 people, we have all been getting along really well and forging some quick friendships. As one person put it, it seems to be BECAUSE of all of our differences that we are doing so well. So far everyone has been incredibly supportive of each other (especially on the hikes - more on that later) and there seems to be a pretty strong effort from all of us to bond as an entire group.

-Jerusalem is just as cool of a city as you might imagine. During Birthright we were pretty much kept under lock and key, so being able to explore the entire city with the group was really interesting. For the most part, the people are very friendly and willing to stop and chat with you on the street, and the city itself is absolutely beautiful.

-Best part of the week: Shabbat on the Kotel. I've been to the Western Wall once before, but not on a Friday night! We spent some time praying at the actual Wall inside the partitions (for those who don't know, the Kotel is divided for men and women), and I spent some time just watching and absorbing those around me. Those who think Orthodox Judaism is a very serious and dull religion need to see this. People singing, dancing, cheering... basically a HUGE celebration that involves everyone around. After that, me, Ari, and Brett stepped outside to the common area and ended up joining a giant circle of about 50-75 Israeli soldiers who were singing and dancing, largely to music that I already knew from camp. All I could think of was, "Shabbat Players Israeli style?" After that, we walked back to the hostel we were staying at (only took about 1 hr. 15 min.) for Shabbat dinner and some impromptu singing. then, it really WAS Shabbat Players when we started doing Boom Chicka Boom! Any Sabra person reading this knows how excited I was about that one. The night went on for a while, mostly with the summer camp people singing and dancing on our balcony while the rest of the group looked on amused. Actually, one person came up to me and Ari and told us how much he and everyone else appreciated the ruach (ahem, ruhah) we were bringing to the group. So... cool! Good night!

-Something that can tell you a lot about a group of people is a good long hike. Or in our case, two. According to our tour guide Amos, Israelis attempt to "grow roots" in the land by going on hikes, so that was what we did this weekend. And anyone who knows me knows that going straight up a mountain (literally) ain't exactly my cup of tea, but we all made it through, and I think we're a better group for it. There really aren't many words to describe the hikes, so as soon as my pictures get posted, those will have to tell the tale.

-On the Dead Sea: Go there. It's really cool to just be able to lie back and float. But please, PLEASE, keep your mouth shut. Having the water splash into your mouth is pretty terrible. Just do this one for me.

-Pictures will be up soon - I forgot the cord to plug in at home, so as soon as that gets here I'll get them online.

-As I finish this up, Carpenter is also finishing up his 1-hitter against the Brewers, with just 2 walks and 10 strikeouts, giving him a 16-3 record with a 2.16 ERA. As great as Pujols has been and as huge as the Holliday trade was for the morale boost it obviously gave the clubhouse, he and Wainwright are the reasons the Cardinals could very easily have a deep run this year. ESPN is now predicting a Cards-Yankees WS, which may or may not be a good thing (the prediction, not the series). For the month of August, they had a .769 winning percentage and 3.06 starters ERA, both good enough for the best in baseball. MLB TV, you will soon be my best friend.

-And finally... M-I-Z Z-O-U!!! It's going to be rough having to watch this season from afar, especially after games like that one! Sounds like Gabbert had as good of a debut as you could have asked for, and it was good to see him hook up with Kemp for a TD - hopefully we'll see a lot of that connection over the next few years. Recognizing that picking us over Texas would be a total homer pick (although it IS on Homecoming...), this season is going to come down to the games against Nebraska and kU. If we can win two, there's no reason we don't head to another Big 12 Championship Game. No matter if this is blind optimism or a realistic look at Mizzou's upcoming season, I think we can all agree that no stat looks better after week one than 1-0. Isn't that right, Bob Stoops?

OK, so I'll have to blog more often to avoid mega-posts like this one. In any case, hope all is well back home in the States. I need a good sign-off for these blogs, anyone got a suggestion?

Turning the Page

So last December, my brother gave my parents a DVD set of the complete series of The West Wing. With my interest in politics having recently exploded into a full-time obsession, I promptly swiped it and started working my way through all 7 seasons. It quickly became my new favorite show (despite the whole, you know, ending 3 years ago thing), and I even tried to use an episode of it in my student teaching. For the record, the show doesn't help teach 8th graders about government. Not even a little bit. When I realized a few weeks ago that I was getting ready to leave the country for the year and still had 2 seasons to go, I kicked it up a notch and started blowing through the last episodes to try and get to the end. So now, it's 2AM the night before I leave for Israel, and I'm finally about to watch the final episode. It's been a little anticlimactic - I knew the Democratic candidate was going to win, I knew Josh and Donna were going to end up together, and I knew it wasn't going to be as good as the first few seasons just because Aaron Sorkin wasn't writing it anymore. But here I am, after 155 episodes, getting ready to watch the last one.

So now you're probably reading this and wondering... "What the heck is he talking about?"

The point is that I'm getting ready to close a chapter on my life. And in a big way. Even when I've moved on to other points in my life, it hasn't been that drastic of a change. Going to college in my home state, realistically, ain't the biggest risk. Now, jumping on a plane and moving halfway across the world for a year? That qualifies as a bit of a leap. The two most common responses I've gotten from people when I tell them what I'm doing are "Wow, isn't it dangerous over there?" and "Wow, I could never do that." And I could? When I picked up my first DVD of The West Wing, I never even dreamed about doing this. Then again, at that point I was SURE that I was going to go straight to grad school, I was SURE that I was going to get my M.A. in curriculum, I was SURE that I would teach high school history for 5-10 years, and I was SURE that I would move into school administration after that. Now, I'm not sure about any of that, and to me, that's a good thing. Who knows, maybe I'll even go into politics! (Oh lord, a life decision based off of a TV show...) The point is, the next chapter of my life is here. In 10 hours, I'm boarding the plane to New York, and from there we're off and running. The bags are packed, and while I've still got a little more cleaning to do, there's nothing left. In fact, pretty much the only thing left to do is to watch that last episode. And then it's time to turn the page.