Pre-Bar Mitvah Photos

Here are some pictures I took on the day before the Bar Mitzvah. On the night before, we had dinner at home with my family from Israel and Denmark. The baby in the pictures is my 9 month old baby cousin from Israel named Adar. While Edden was not preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, he was practicing marching for the Butter and Egg Days Parade, which was on the same day.

I am in Oxford!

Hello Everyone!

I am just writing to let you know that I have arrived safely to my new home at 65 High Street, Oxford, UK. The place is wonderful in all sorts of ways. The past several hours have been a frenzy of meeting people, getting situated in this new place, and seeing a bit of Oxford outside of the Stanford House.

I am, however, very exhausted from traveling and am planning on going to sleep soon. I have some pictures to post and stories to tell. The Bar Mitzvah was also wonder, and I promise to give you all an update on that fairly soon.

Much Love,
From Oxford,
Benamy

T minus 3 days

As I was laying in be in the morning, before actually waking up and starting my day, I realized that I had not packed my cleats and that one of my water bottles was missing. Eventually, I got up, went downstairs, ate breakfast, and went to go get my cleats. I knew exactly where they should have been, but they weren't there. So I had two things missing. There were only so many places where these things could be, so I just started looking. I looked through the stuff in my room. I looked through the stuff I had packed. I looked through the stuff I just put in storage. I opened up all the suitcases and boxes with things from winter quarter. I looked upstairs; I looked downstairs. I looked in boxes; I looked in bags. I looked in cupboards, cabinets, and closets. I turned the house inside out, and I called everyone I know whom I could have left them with, but to no avail.  

I literally spent hours searching for these two things. You might be thinking - don't you have better ways to spend your time three days before leaving for Oxford and two days before your brother's bar mitzvah? Yes, there were a bunch of things I had to do - more packing, practice my torah portion, check my travel documents, help my parents with things, etc. and I did them all. I would look for these things for a bit, and then I would take care of something important, each time figuring that if i just cleared my head a bit, I would be sure to find them the next time I looked. Well, each time I didn't. 

You might be thinking - don't you have another water bottle and another pair of cleats? are these things really worth the ridiculous amount of time you spent looking for them? The answers are yes, yes, and no. However, I really have a lot of free time these days. Also, and this is the main thing, I almost never lose things, so it really bothers me when I do. I usually know exactly where all my things are, and I can usually remember pretty well what I last did with them. But I have absolutely no idea where these things are right now. I have all the other shoes that my cleats should be with. I have my other Nalgene, which I always use at the same time as its black partner. The last time I used them was on my Death Valley trip, and I have no idea how they got separated. 

After spending the whole day, on and off, looking for these two stupid things, I drove over to Goodwill, thinking maybe my dad somehow took my cleats there along with some of his old suits. After that proved, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful, I basically just gave up. So I have no idea where they are. Maybe they'll show up one day, and maybe their stories will remain a small mystery for all time. 

In other news, my aunt, uncle, and cousins came from Israel last night. They were supposed to show up around noon. After six or seven hours, we started to worry and called my other aunt. When she heard that they weren't here, she started worrying too. We looked online. Their flight out of Orlando early that morning had been canceled. Eventually my aunt got ahold of them, and they were a few minutes away from our house. They showed up safe but tired, and there was much rejoicing. 

Tomorrow, if I have time for a post, I'll put up some pictures of my absolutely adorable, 9-month-old baby cousin Adar. None of us over here, except my dad, have met him before, so it's a fun time. He is the happiest, smiliest baby I have ever seen. Pretty much the only times he is not smiling or laughing are when he is hungry, thirsty, tired, or sleeping. He doesn't really talk yet, but he can crawl around and teeth on things (or fingers). I'm not sure why, but he's adorable and fun. 

Yesterday in 15 minutes

I'm going to try to do this post in 15 minutes.

Yesterday, I realized that my sleeping bag - my mom's actually - is probably really dirty from all the use I've been getting out of it. I may or may not take it to England with me, but I took a trip up to REI to buy some down wash just in case I do. As it turns out, I probably won't.

On the way back home, I stopped by the outlet mall to look for some shoes to replace my blue suede Nikes (which I've been wearing for almost 4 years. I really like those shoes.). After trying on a lot of shoes that didn't come close to living up to the standards of my blue suede Nikes, I found a sweet pair of blue suede Pumas. Style's a bit different. They're a narrower shoe and have the signature, shiny puma swoosh thing along the sides. I haven't decided if I like the look as much as the Nikes, but these shoes are really comfortable, which will be important if I wear them all over the UK and Ireland.

When I got back home, the packing began. Bar mitvah preparations are getting much more intense, so I had to get the packing out of the way. I spread all of my clothes and odds and ends all over the living room. I put my suitcase and my backpacking backpack in the middle of the room, and I just started either packing things or setting them aside for storage. I definitely have too much stuff to bring all of it, but I also don't have that much stuff, so it wasn't too hard to figure out what to pack. Right now, I think I am way under the 100 lbs. mark (50/checked bag), which is great. I probably won't add too much in the coming days either. I won't have the most extensive wardrobe, but I don't usually anyway.

Before I finished packing, Christian and Liz, some of our relatives from Denmark, arrived. Christian is my mother's mother's foster brother, and Liz is his wife. That may sound pretty far removed, but we happen to have stayed in close touch with them. They are some of my closest family, and it's awesome that they came all this way for the bar mitzvah. They had been traveling for several days before getting here, starting in Phoenix and then coming north from Palm Springs. We spent the rest of the night chatting with them for a while about all the family in Denmark and their trip so far.


And that's 15 minutes. It wasn't the most interesting summary of the day, and it didn't allow for much reflection or commentary. That said, I was able to cover the main events of the day in a bit of detail. Soon I will be more crunched for time than I am now, so I want to get in the habit of these shorter posts. To keep the quality up, though, I should figure out how to best use limited time. Now it's late, I'm tired, and I'm just rambling. Feel free to comment, you early adopters out there. Suggestions? What do you want to read? What have been your favorite posts so far?

Another Full Day of Staying Home

Yesterday was another mostly uninteresting, but relaxing, day at home.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened was waking up and seeing an email with the subject "Renewing the Call for Divestment THURSDAY." To no one's surprise, SCAI (Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel) is restarting its campaign for divestment. This is at least the third year they have called for it, though I think they precede my time at Stanford by some years. This time they are kicking it off with talks from four Middle East experts. Of course, the four speakers at the event share similar views in the Israel-Palestine political scene; some might call them "pro-Palestinian" or "anti-Israel" if they want to use terms. The flier for the event was sent to the Larkin chat list. I decided to put together a message in response that basically said, "I'm not going to tell you not to go, but here are some things to think about, some things to look out for, and some reasons to be cautious when entering this debate. I know some stuff about this. Feel free to contact me any time." I haven't really heard back from anyone yet, but maybe I will after Thursday.

The rest of the day I spent cleaning up some stuff in the yard, checking up on flight details, reading British history, and surfing the interblags.

Another Day at Home

The main event of my day yesterday was taking my suit and a jacket to the dry cleaners. Other than that, I didn't do or think about much. I may or may not be wasting my time.

A Stroll through Helen Putnam Regional Park

My interesting thing for the day was taking a walk through Helen Putnam, one of my absolute favorite places in the world. It's a park close to my house that's just a bunch of rolling hills with open, grassy areas and big clusters of oak trees, among other local flora. I've been going there for as long as I can remember, but I grew particularly close to the park when I ran countless miles along its trails as part of cross country training in high school. As you will see, spring at Helen Putnam is arguably the best time to see it, because it is so so so green. The oaks have new leaves, the new grass springs from the wet ground, and poison oak comes up, green this time of year, through the shrubbery. It was a pretty ideal place to test out my new camera, though I have some work to do on figuring out how to take quality shots. More of that to come, I'm sure. Anyway, below are a few of the best I got. I had to compress the files to post them, so anything wrong with the photos is not a result of my inability to use the camera properly. I promise.

If you are wondering, those white things are water towers, and the city over the ridge is Petaluma.

Some of the best views of Petaluma are from these hills. This photo doesn't do the view justice.