Shana Tova! Happy New Year!

Shana Tova to all, by the way. I hope this year brings everything you want it to bring - along with lots of successes, happiness, and a year of health and peace.

Wow. Has Dharmasala affected me that bad? :P Just kidding. This town is absolutely beautiful. It is so relaxing, so quiet yet fascinating at the same time. There is so many things to learn, people to meet - the colours of the fruits in the markets, the shawls dyed magenta, torquoise, olive, marmalade. The smells of Indian, Tibetan, Israeli and Italian cuisines ( you can get pretty much anything you want around here - perhaps except for Chinese, it's a sensitive topic around here). Nechama and I have met some lovely Israelis who are very down to earth and find Nechama hilarious - it's funny how I tend to meet people much older than I. They're all in their late twenties and are friends from work - they worked at the airport together - yes, they were those who asked you questions like "Why do you know Hebrew? WHo packed your bags? Where did you spend your time in Israel? You live in Melbourne? What school did you go to?" And it was interesting comparing notes on the Israeli system of profiling and the American/British/Australian method.

All of us were quite disappointed by the Rosh HaShanah service and meal provided by Chabad on Friday night. The Rabbis were out of touch with their audience, and, like Chabad rabbis like to do, they kept talking and talking and talking and telling more stories and more stories and talking and ooh, maybe we'll make HaMotzi now on the bread, and talking and talking and yes, let's wait to dip the apples - well, to cut the story short, Nechama didn't eat since lunch at 12 30. By the time of any sight of food it was already 8 30. (We were told to come at 5 30... ahem.) So Nech was ravenous and when she gets hungry and when she's hungry she becomes extremely hyperactive. Which, I must say I'm sorry for, was quite difficult for her, and most people were speaking Hebrew around her and she couldn't catch it. The best thing about the dinner was (aside from meeting the chilled ISraelis) was the chicken. I didn't realise how much I missed it. And here I go again talking about food. Jesus.

We wanted to wait long enough to taste some of Pazit's honey cake (one of the Israelis baked it the day before at Chabad) but we just had enough of stories about God etc (I know, I sound like a real heathen, especially during ROsh HaShanah, but when I didn't want to concentrate on intensive listening to the Hebrew, Nechama couldn't understand, and our Israeli mates were bored out of their mind by the 'bullshit' (their words) - it wasn't the most condusive environment. So we went back to Pazit and Eyal's room and had some of the honey cake she brought from Israel. Now, that's style. The rest of the night was lovely. So I completed most of the customs - i ate apple dipped in honey, lots of deliciously sweet pomegranate seeds, yuk gefilte fish (Mum yours blows this one out of the water!), Tzimmes and honey cake. While it can never compare to the extravaganza Nana puts on every year, it was another new and interesting way of spending the Chag away from all the family.