you can dance if you want to.

the prima ballerina herself

my friend kelsey teaches dance lessons. she invited me and ginny (roommate/awesomest person ever) to come to her last class tonight (she's leaving for russia to be a missionary in three weeks!) i was skeptical at first, and nervous that i would just be humiliated at my lack of dance ability... but i had so much fun. 

ginny and i

i may have laughed more than i danced, but kelsey was very patient, and is really such a good teacher. i wish i would have taken her class all summer! it made me very grateful that i signed up to take a ballet class in september. 

me, ginny, and kelsey in the foreground.

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is this healthy?

i was at a wedding a few weeks ago (of all places for this to happen...) and i heard someone say, "hey, is that a raccoon?" i couldn't tell, as my eyesight is gradually getting worse, i don't like to wear my glasses, so i moved closer. to my astonishment, it was in fact a raccoon. on a woman's shoulder. 

turns out she owns the place where the reception was held. she and her husband nurture baby coons until they're old enough to survive on their own and then they release them into the wild. perhaps i'm mistaken in this, but aren't raccoons considered pests? don't people try to get rid of them? 

hm... either way, i held the little guys hand. it was kind of weird. and soft.

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as for the wedding itself... what a great night. it was my friend seth's weding. i met him in jerusalem, and so, naturally, there were many of us 'JC Fall 2008' people there. we never really can go unnoticed. someone suggested hoisting seth and his bride in the air on their chairs and singing "hava nagila" in true jewish fashion. since all of our ridiculous ideas seem to be carried out, well, it happened. 

it was quite the spectacle... and oh so wonderful. and, appropriately enough, they went to Jerusalem on their honeymoon. 

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midnight snack

yesterday was sunday. i love taking naps on sunday afternoon. they're usually way too long, and way too wonderful. i had been at church from about noon till 4 and then i slept until 7. i hadn't had much time for breakfast that morning, so i had strawberries and almonds on the go. i slept through lunch and dinner. when i woke up i ate 2 pieces of leftover pizza that i had in my fridge. by the time i went to bed i realized i hadn't really put enough food in my body throughout the day, but as groceries were running low, i had to ration out what i had left until i have time to go to the grocery store on tuesday. 

so i decided just to go to bed, sleep off the hunger and indulge in the usual oatmeal with soymilk at 7 am. 

i went to sleep.

the next thing i knew, i was jolted awake from my slumbers, not knowing why. it was still dark. surely i couldn't be done with my night's sleep. i looked around, saw that it was 2:30 in the morning. i put my head back down and started remembering my dream... 

i had been cooking. something to do with cream of chicken soup and rice (two of my only remaining food items in the house). then it hit me. i was so hungry! 

i had this intense feeling come over me, like i had to get food in me stat. but the kitchen... it was just too far... luckily, i still had some of "dad's oatmeal cookies" from canada in a drawer by my desk. i got out of bed and ate as many as i could in a very short time. i put them away, took a drink or water, and then realized that i was not yet satiated. i pulled them out again, ate about 6 more (totalling about 17 of these delicious little things) and got back in bed, satisfied. 

it seemed so normal at the time, but when i awoke at 7 am, i just couldn't believe all the crumbs in my bed and all over my nightstand. i was so humiliated. i had behaved like an animal. i laughed. a lot. it was such a strange experience. i've never felt so determined, shoving cookie after cookie down my throat, trying to ease my hungry tummy. 

may i never do that to myself again. it was horrible.

just call me cinderella

so, the other night i was home alone, just studying, minding my own business. 

i went into the kitchen to do some dishes, and saw something moving by my foot. i looked down, and suddenly his little brown bird flew up from the ground where he had been mischievously hiding. he flew around in my face for a minute and then settled himself on top of our cupboards like he owned the place.

i was so shocked by it, i just kept saying, "oh, oh my! oh dear!" over and over again. i wondered what to do, and since no one was home, i spoke to myself, and said, "well, there's a bird in the house. what are you going to do about it?" then i realized i had no idea and i asked myself in a voice somewhat louder, "how the heck do you get a bird out of a house?!" 

i was beginning to panic. my first thought was that birds might be like moths... so i turned off all the lights except in the kitchen and on our balcony, and opened the balcony door. maybe if i scared him out of the kitchen he would just fly towards the light? well, i went back in to check on him and realized he would probably only come to me if i had food. there he was in a strange environment, away from his family and friends and being pursued by a giant... surely it was food that was occupying his thoughts, and hunger that pained him. i filled my fist with oatmeal, and called to him. then it hit me. it was so obvious. i'd seen Snow White, Cinderella and Enchanted. 

i began to sing. 

i sang a little song, that went a little something like this:

oh little guy... come over here... eat some oatmeal, and i'll put you outside! come on little guy... get in my hand...

oh, it was lovely. i went to get rubber gloves, realizing that once he got in my hand i might get a disease, and when i came back, he was gone! i snuck around on tip toes being very quiet, listening for any hint of movement, and then i heard him! he was hiding behind the microwave.

i moved it out of the way, threw some oatmeal back there and tried to reach for him. he flew over to the fridge, and i reached out and caught the little nomad. 

(yes, i caught him. i was very proud of myself.)

his little body was just shaking like mad. his heart was beating so fast and i was worried he'd die of fright. i hurried and brought him outside, opened my hand and waited for him to fly into the night air.

he just sat there, kind of on his side, with his twiggy little legs sticking out to one side from under him. all i could think was, 'great, i killed it.' but his eyes were open. i poked him a little, and picked him up and set him on his feet. he just stood there. i figured i'd damaged him somehow. 

the good news was that our toaster's been broken lately, so we have oh... about eight pieces of burnt toast and bagels out there. if this little guy was going to have to live the remainder of his crippled life on our balcony, at least he'd have food. 

i set him on a piece of toast. 

he hopped around for a bit and then opened his little wings, and took flight. it was beautiful. 

i went inside, cleaned up all the oatmeal that was strewn throughout the kitchen, and replaced the microwave.

*thank you to brittany for being on speakerphone as i went through this experience, and for singing for him while i was catching him. i think it helped. 

a green board

i'm in love with my new green boards!

they're like white boards, but green. they're stickers, and can go on almost any surface, and then they peel off when you're done with them. 

i put one on my nightstand. this is a lifesaver. i can't do anything until i have it planned out and written down. i'm about to save a lot of money on notebooks. 

i also put one on my arabic notebook. i was so proud of myself on this one. it's so useful it almost makes me sick. i write about four pages worth of arabic everyday. i dislike wasting paper, so i've been using the backs of old handouts and assignments from last semester. Now i can save all those for my arabic homework, and practice writing on my little green board! it's great. it's genius actually. 

not only is it resourceful, but writing in such a curly language is much easier on a smooth surface. i'm in heaven. it's making studying even more fun, which i didn't think was possible. i'm in love with arabic. this is also why my blog gets no attention anymore. i'm sorry blog; arabic is a jealous, needy friend... but she's so beautiful.   

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such a weird experience...

one day brooklyn and i were driving to costco from my mom's house. chrissy was following us in her car. my mom's house is in a pretty hilly neighborhood. as we made our way down the hill from her house we saw something very strange. 

the car next to us, which should have been going up the hill, was going in reverse down the hill. the weird part of it was that they were obviously not watching where they were going, and were drifting into our lane, going pretty fast, backwards. "what are they doing? don't they see us?" i asked brooklyn, a little bothered. brooklyn didn't answer right away, but soon, with a quizzical look on her face said, hesitatingly, "there's no one in that car..." well, let me tell you, it was such a strange feeling. my first thought was to jump out, open the door and slam on the breaks of this vagabond vehicle. i realized that doing so was perhaps a titch risky, so there i sat just watching in a mixture of horror, awe and excitement as the car backed over a mailbox, flattening it, plowing through a rose bush, and and finally rolling to a stop (to our relief) in someone's front yard. the gardener who was there, minding her own business had the funniest look on her face, and came walking out of the garden slowly, a little dazed. brooklyn and chrissy pulled over and the gardener and i laughed in confusion as brooklyn and chrissy tried to find the owner of the car.

they found her. she was humiliated. she should have used her parking break. 

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