Friday February 5th---Shabbat

Woke up today to another day of rain.. It was cold and miserible out!! My apartment went to the shook today with our friend ethan and his roomate Arielle. Rain and the shuk are not a fun mix. It was so wet and cold and disgusting. Everything moves so much slower in Jerusalem when it rains. We got to the shuk at the very end at around 1 oclock, they close at 2 on fridays. We are hosting a shabbat dinner in our apartment tonight. Tons of people are going away this weekend either to Tel Aviv or theres a giant camp ramah berkshires shabbaton in Jerusalem so theres not going to be many people around and were hosting those that are here. So we had a lot to get from the shuk. We boughgt a ton--- fruits, vegetables, pita, marzepan, challah, gallore. We are making Chicken stire fry with tons of vegetables and they insisted on buying the chicken at the Shuk. i thought I was going to vomit. The meat skeves me out here especially when its sold on the street next to the giant fish tanks. I chose to turn around and not watch, soooo grosss. Finally got what we needed, then rushed back to ge tto the supermarket before it closed to buy the stir fry sauce and rice-- we made it! Rested a little bit, cleaned the apartment, scrubbed the floors, etc... then began cooking for our 13 guests. It was a lot of work! We have 3 small pans so I had to stir fry the vegetables and cook the meat using 3 pans, not fun. I was in charge of the cooking, the twins did the cutting of the veggies and the rice. It was a lot of work! But it ended up coming out soooo goood! Chicken stir fry, white rice, salad, lots of wine, challah + this boy who came made sweet potatoes and this reallly goood peanut rice. it was reallly nice. The people that came were a little strange, the twins literally invited everyone they saw so the turnout was rather odd. But it was fun and the food was reallly goood. Then some people stayed around and we hung out for a while.

Karens boyfriend and his friend, who we call Picasso because he looks like a picasso painting, got introduced to SKype tonight when I was video chatting with drew. They thought it was the coolest thing ever, they were talking to andrew for like a half hour. They didnt understand that you can stand away from the camera so they 2 of them are literally ontop of the camera telling drew how much they love their country and how much they hate every other country and all this staff- half of it wasnt even in english, I had to translate it. I think they were drunk-- we were all drinking before but I guess they had a little too much. It was really really funny watching this