living and learning?

So I'm walking through a mall. There are so many stores, so many different things for me to choose from that fit or don't fit my life, I have to make decisions. I choose stuff and am heading up to the next floor. I'm on the escalator going up, playing with a yo-yo. It's going up and down and up and down and up and down, but the escalator is going up...

On Thursday night, my new activity is to go to Bnei Brak (one of the most religious neighborhoods in Israel), get cholent on the house from our program, then head to our activities director, Meir Balofsky's house to sit around his table, make some L'chaims, snack some more, and give out blessings. (Quite a different 'Thirsty Thursday' college experience...)Meir gave me a blessing that entailed a part saying that I was going up the escalator-but I'm playing with the yo-yo on the way up. Basically saying that I'm going up the right path, but it's going to come with many ups and downs. It's really nice to know that people are finally starting to see who I really am, over who I tried to make myself be in the past.

Friday day was a fast day for the remembrance of the beginning of the seize on Jerusalem. It was an easy fast despite that our program decided to take us to Yad Vashem-the biggest Holocaust memorial in Israel. I just recently found out that my grandfather-who passed away when I was younger-had a late wife and a family that perished in the Holocaust. Made me much more emotional there-hard to describe the feelings.

For Shabbat, we were in Nof Ayalon- a religious community- for an all girls shabbaton. The best part about it was on friday night we had a panel of four women that lived in the neighborhood that were American that talked about there life there and answered any questions we had about them. I took it upon myself to talk to a women that was going to go to Barnard for college, but decided to go to Stern in the end. She is a psychologist, so I got a one and one session discussing how much I want to go there, what I can do to get there, and how to approach people about it. I'm really lucky I got to encounter such a strong and sweet woman.

Saturday night, I decided to go out for the first time in a while-and realized something-alcohol is a serious depressant. Obviously I knew that that was a fact, but never really encountered the experience completely. I drank with my friends but when I cam home-found myself in an unstable emotional purge of tears. I could not stop for hours. I was replaying every bad thing that has ever happened to me, beating upon my self, my decisions, my family, their decisions, and thought of impacts many people have made on my life. This led me to today, on a day trip to Casearia, a beautiful cities ruins and an amazing ocean site-to be able to reflect and try to dig up what brought up all those emotions. I stared into the ocean, watching the waves, and couldn't understand where it came from...well, here's to living and learning...I'll figure it out soon.