Thursday April 29--- Fogel Day!!

So Rachel Fogel is here for 2 weeks. Her flight was delayed so she arrived late monday night. When she arrived we just went to burgers bar and scmoozed and planned all night. Since I have class pretty much tuesday and wednesday she went down south to Be'ra Sheve to visit this girl from our meor trip who fogel goes to school with, Samara. Shes studying at Ben Gurion University down south so Fogel went to her and stayed with her until Wednesday morning. Then fogel took the bus to tel aviv Wednesday and stayed with her friend wednesday night in tel aviv since I had class. She came back thursday morning right before I had to leave to intern at 11. So it was really good. We took the bus together to Ben Yehuda, I interned today and she met a friend for lunch.

After I interned at 1, I got falafel (minus the falafel bc i hateee it) and we jumped on the bus to go to our religy friend Trudys house (shes the one I spent a whole shabbat with bac in march- she was a staff member on the meor trip so fogel was really close with her also). I've been telling trudy for weeeks that I want to come over and bake challah with her on a thursday afternoon. Trudy is known for her homemade challlah so weve been trying to find a date for me to come back challah with her. Fogel really wanted to see her also-- so we decided thursday would be a perfecttt time for us to go to her house and bake challah with her alll together. So we searched Jerusalem for the right bus. The thing thats great about fogel is shes very adventurous. We never know where we are going when we are together, we always just wonder around until we eventually find it. SO we eventually found the right bus, but then the bus randomly stopped bc the driver said he didnt feel like driving anymore so we all had to get off. So then we just jumped in a cab to trudys. We had such a good afternooon with trudyy!! we love her, shes the best. She had a batch of dough made for us already, because the dough takes a few hours to rise, so she made dough for us already. So we rolled it out and she taught us how to braid it. Then we made a fresh dough batter for her batch. She doesnt use a bread machine, so she does it all by hand, and she makes about 7 each week so it was hard work!! Apprently the flour is a big problem in Israel. Its not sifted already and its known to have worms in it, so you have to carefully sift it to look for worms and we needed 17 cups! it took foreverrrr.... Also, since shes religious theres also a certain way to do certain things, theres a special way to crack the eggs and search for blood and stuff. So we had a lot of fun rolling it out, braiding it. While thye were cooking, trudy brought out suprises. She bought us both these giant chocolate muffins from this really good bakery and we all sat around and ate them and drank coffeee. We had a lot of fun with her, it was good to catch up with her. Shes not one of those crazy bizzare religy ladies, shes really young, 25 and really hip so we like her.

After trudys, we went searching for the Bus to the Biblical Zoo. Theres a biblical zoo in jerusalem with tons of animals and these special Noahs ark exhibts. It closed at 6 oclock and we first left trudys at 330 and searched for the bus for a while. The zoo is SOOOOO far away-- it was a reallly reallly reallly long bus ride, about an hour. Its on the other side of Jerusalem. So we didnt get there till 430 and kinda had to do a fast zoo trip. But it was reallly funn, we went during a really nice time of day, the sun was shining and it was reallly reallly nice it. It was a beauitufl zoo with lakes and bridges. It was really out in the woods and the wild. There werent a ton of showcases and things around glass, you really got to see a lot of the animamls in their natural habitat and you were able to get really close to them actually. We saw the elephants being fed which was cool. The childrens zoo is this giant area of like 20 different animals running around you, so you could pet them. Very different kkind of zoo then in america. It was really fun, we had a good afternoon. We left when it closed at around 615, and waited for the bus which neverrrr ever came! We waited over 40 minutes and it neevr came so we basically just hopped on a bus, had no idea where it went, and sort of winged it.. Thats what happens when fogel comes, we go on adventures. So finally we asked someone and they told us where to ge to get off and switch busses. So we got off who knows where and got onto the bus that brings us to my school. Got bac like 830 and passed outtt for like an hour.

Rosies friend from Cornell is also visitng her- so we have a full house this week. Hes gay. He was studying abroad in london for the semester so he came her for like 5 days. So my whole apartment decided to go out together last night. WHen we were getting into cabs, the twins, fogel and I jumped into the first one. Then rosie called 3 minutes later saying they decided not to go out which was realll weird. So we went anyway. We had funnn. We went to this bar called blue hole. I got this reallly good drink- hot apple cider with rum- loveeeeeeed it. Then we got new deli----my favoriteee. Then we went to tel aviv where allllllllll the hebrew u kids were so fogel got to meet them. Lauren came back from italy last night with her boyfriend- whose here now for 10 days- so i finally got to seee her!! So we had a lot of fun. Fogel met everyone, she made friends. We ended up staying out really late hanging out with my friend michael from michigan. We took the weirdest cab home-- it looked like a hurse- and they were playing flintstones music inside, it was sooo weird. We got back around 330 and passeddd outttt

funnn day with fogelll