שנה תובה & Parciales

Thursday-Friday Festing & Saturday-Wednesday Studying

I'll let you guess what the better part of my week has been.
Yes, thats right. The festing.

Celebrating the Jewish New Year actually began on Wednesday night. I went to Chabad again, and had a deeeeelicious meal! It of course included traditional apples and honey, as well as salads, soup, red meat, (for the first time in almost three months), and desert, and lots of wine. There were about 20 people there, so it was fantastic just to meet new people and be in such a warm environment for the start of the holiday season.

On Thursday morning, I went back to Chabad and met up with some friends at services. After services and hearing the shofar (yay!) we were invited to lunch at the house of the parents of the woman who runs the "Chabad for Students Abroad in BA" program. Sorry that thats so confusing! Well, anyhow, we ate lunch and it lasted until 6:30 pm. Needless to say, I did not make it to my afternoon classes as I had planned. After lunch, we went to go participate in Tashlich. Here, however, they don't use bread for Tashlich! They just stand there and look at the water. It was a little unusual, but I wen't along with it. I mean, any way to symbolically throw your sins away is a good one, right? After all of that activity, I headed on home and pretty much straight too bed. Eating and relaxing and celebrating all day can get exhausting.

On Friday morning, I knew I probably wasn't ready to spend a whole new day stuffing myself with food, but I plunged ahead anyhow. I made it to services, on the later side and met up with my friends Talia and Natalie. Talia had received an invitation to lunch from a girl that she met at a Jewish Center for Women's Study (again, complicated, sorry haha). And so we all walked over to her family's apartment for lunch. Talia was invited at 1, we showed up at 2, and the girl didn't show up until 3! The message here is that the combination of Argentine time and Jewish time is fatal. That gave us an hour to talk with the girl's parents- who didn't know who we were, but were so excited that we had come/that we were from the USA/that we were sitting and talking/that we were going to eat her food. Eventually, the daughter showed up with some friends, including two girls from Caracas, Venezuela. The family was Sefardi and originally from Syria, so there was a slight variation on food but still maintaining the theme that it was delicious and there was a lot of it!

Before we knew it, it was 7:00 pm and time to return to Chabad for Shabbos services/dinner. Yes, thats right, another meal. So Talia and I started trudging over to Chabad when suddenly, torrential downpour appears from above. Great. So, we attempted to wait it out, but eventually, we just had to run for it, arriving at shul with dripping hair, soggy clothes and saturated shoes. Services then food. DInner was lovely, at first it was small, only about 7 of us, but people kept joining and some Argentine Jews even showed up toward the end. Again, I ate too much and by the end of the two days of festing, I was ready never to look at a plate of food again. Only now do I think I have partially recovered from the amount of food I ate. Good thing Yom Kipper is anti-food!

So, after all of this fun holiday celebrating, I had to head into midterms. School here is not as challenging as OSU- it doesn't even come close. But, I had four midterms (parciales, here) in two days and needed to look over some material. Sunday-Wednesday was spent hanging out at home, studying, hanging out with my roommates. Really nothing very exciting. On the upside, I did learn from studying! I now know all about Argentina's history in the 70s/80s ie the Dirty War. Scary stuff!

I survived my midterms, they weren't tooo bad. Although having three hours of essay testing in Spanish can make your head spin a little bit. To celebrate finishing, I went to a cafe (surprise surprise) called Quimbombo with some friends. I had a delicious sandwich with brie cheese and zucchini!!! Yum! Then, my roommates and I watched El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secrets in Their Eyes) which won the Foreign Language Oscar this past year. It was AMAZING. Having lived here in Buenos Aires for the past couple of months, I could recognize some of the places scenes were taking place. I understood a lot of the Argentina-specific spanish words they were using and many of the historical references. Even if I hadn't had those recognitions, the movie would have been fantastic. Go see it! Its great!

Anyhow, upcoming in the next couple of weeks: Yom Kippur, traveling to Rosario with ISA, going on a Salta/Jujuy adventure! and daily adventures in this lovely city :)