Notes from the Motherland

Winter has descended on Jerusalem which means, it's just as cold in the apartment as it is outside. My apartment, at night is frigid, I feel like a jewish eskimo. The problem is that the walls, windows and floors let almost all of the heat escape and it's very very expensive to heat the apartment to any proper temperature. All this means we rely on space heaters and hoodies most of the time I'm at home.

What adds to the problem is in the morning you need to light the lamp (hockey and eskimo reference in the same post -- it must be very cold) in order to heat up the water in the boiler for the shower. It takes about 45 minutes to heat up so at around 6:45 am (i didn't even know there was a 6:45 am) my alarm goes off and I climb out of my cozy cacoon and waddle/freeze my way to the shower hit the switch and run back into my bed and try and get warm as possible, and fall back asleep until it's time to run over to the shower. Some mornings I decide I need not shower and sleep until 7:30, however then nobody sits next to me in school the next day. Often I shower at night, but it does mean that I have to wait 45 minutes to shower after I get home from a football game.

Does all this sound like sour grapes? Not my intention. I know, I know ... some poor child in Malawi hasn't had a hot shower in his entire life. (but Madonna never tried to adopt me either).
*****

My football teams are doing well. My men's league team (the one with the Chaims) is 4 and 1 and we will make the playoffs. I rotate between tight end and defensive line. It's really quite a scene to attend one of these games. They happen after shabbat on Saturday night and the American Yeshiva boys and sometimes girls pour out to the field. It's place to be seen on a Saturday night and people run into this or that person who they knew from Torah Academy or Hebrew Academy or Baltimore Yeshiva etc.... I had a friend Aaron that came to one of the games and he filled me in on the best line he heard which ended a conversation between two, probably 19 year old, orthodox boys with the line "let's go back to the yeshiva and get the beer bong."

If you get a chance to come on Saturday night, it's really worth checking out the game on a sociological level. It's insane. My team has three yeshiva boys (from a yeshiva in the Gush) on it and a few other that are now out of the yeshiva but know each other from the glory days. We also have a handful of secular israelies and since Colby and I are part of the reform movement we probably have the most diverse team in the league.

I'd like to write more ... but I got to get the yeshiva, the beer bong's awaiting.