Purim, Moshav Carlebach, 19th birthday

For Shabbat, we went to Moshav Carlebach near Modi'in. The moshav was started by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, the Rabbi was well known in the sixties for being all about peace & love and was famous for taking jewish songs and adding short, catchy melodies to them, it's said that he wrote about 1,000 songs. The moshav being started by a Rabbi of peace and love was like going into a time machine to the sixties, over Shabbat there was plenty of beautiful singing and dancing in synagogue. We had a tour around the moshav and we went on a hike to the Maccabi graves, which was really interesting. We had a shabbat rest of playing cards, we had seuda shlishit, for the start of Purim we listened to the Megillah. We left promptly after the Megillah reading, came back to our house to get into to costumes to go to a purim party in tel aviv. So let me explain this "Purim party", first of all the organization that organized it rents out clubs and hosts religious Jewish parties for some people who want to get re-in touch with their Judaism. The party went like this, dressed in our costumes we got a ticket that gave us one drink at the club, there were lots of Bnei Akiva groups and random people dancing and drinking etc. The difference between this party and normal parties at clubs, is the separation of men and women in the dance floor, of course this is completely normal for religious Jewish parties, not normal for me, little weird. With many parties where alcohol, you may find that there are some people who can't hold their liquor. I'm not much of a dancer so I went to go sit by myself on the couches above the dance floor. What I found on my shoe was quite unpleasant, lo and behold, lucky me, I have the good fortune to step in some drunk person's vomit that they strategically put right next to the couches, thanks for that! Second situation, whilst I was chilling on the couch waiting for my boyfriend to return from the dance floor. Some religious guy starts hitting on me, trying to hold my hand, rubbing my back, which is quite possible the worst thing for me, I told him to leave because I have a boyfriend, he left to my relief. I was sitting there playing on my iPad and was drinking my drink spilled it on myself, being a klutz. We were meant to leave the club at 2:30am but of course the bus was late and we didn't get home until 3:45am which sucked because we had to be up at 9:00am the next morning. The next morning we went to volunteer to give out food for Purim in Lod. After that we had purim seuda organized by some of the group, we played games after which was really fun. After that around 9:00pm we went to Jerusalem for a midrasha Purim party, this wasn't fun for everyone, we were all there for about three minutes before everyone split, even our madricha left and we went to Ben Yehuda St. which had quite a party going on with lots of crazy costumes and drunk people for Purim. After that we left to go get the boys who were at a yeshiva party at the yeshiva that they were at in November and December, they had a great time and were all drunk and singing. When we got back I went straight to bed. Monday, we went back to Jerusalem to volunteer at two retirement homes and then continued to a Bnei Akiva Purim seuda, good meal with all the Hachsharot so it was a little crowded but still enjoyable. After the seuda ended at about 3:00pm we had free time in Jerusalem, we had a vote about when we were going to come back we decided on 8:00pm to some peoples frustration, because we didn't really understand what people were going to do in Jerusalem for five hours. Me, my boyfriend and our friend went to Mamilla Mall, hung around on Ben Yehuda St., I had to get some crocheting stuff. After that we met with our other friend and went to a video game place where you can play video games and just pay by the hour, so I sat and watched them play video games for about 3-4 hours which was kinda boring but I started knitting again which is quite exciting, I'm making a scarf. Tuesday we started back into volunteering as usual, in the afternoon I worked on baking for me and my birthday buddy's dessert party Wednesday night, I made a brownie cake with cream cheese icing and butter cookies which both came out good. Wednesday we had volunteering as usual and then went to Yafo for a tour. Shockingly, on route to Yafo we heard on the radio of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem near the central bus station, it was a really shocking event for all of us because it's a place that we frequent a lot and it's so much more shocking when you are in Israel when a terrorist attack happens. When you hear about it in the news from outside Israel it's less important than when you're in Israel when these terrible things happen. With sad news on our minds, we continued to Yafo which was really lovely and the city is beautiful and was a bit of a mood booster. We got to check out the flea market which is always interesting with many characters. Everyone was really stoked on the dessert party that we organized I also made homemade hot cocoa and whipped cream for everyone. Everyone sang happy birthday to us, we had a crazy countdown to midnight and then we blew out candles (I hear that it's bad luck to blow candles out before your birthday). I got presents from people three of my friends including my birthday buddy got me a little guitar from the Yafo flea market, it was so sweet of them. Such a nice present. Also got a big basket with lots of food from my dad and stepmom which is amazing with a chocolate cream cake with "Happy Birthday Rachel" on it. Today, I'm 19 which is very exciting.