Morning all!
5 days/week (sun-thu), I am at the Yeshiva all day (literally... I'm there for at least 12 hrs), and I'm loving all my classes. Jerusalem has been pretty busy gearing up for Rosh Hashanna, and I have to admit that I am being caught up a bit in the excitement. It is really fun hearing all the celebrations and exuberant prayers. There is a group of Sephardi Jews who goes to the Kotel every night for a service around midnight, and on their way down they are all singing and dancing. It is a wonderful spectacle to see and hear.

As for my apartment, I am still looking around. I have a few options that I am pursuing, and I am hopeful about finding a place by the end of the month. I look forward to hearing more news from everybody. If anybody wants it, my skype name is simply davidahoffman, and my AIM is DevilRabbi.

There are lots of cool people that I am meeting. A number from South Africa, a few from Australia, a few from England, a bunch from Brazil, and a ton from all over the US and Canada. It has been fun meeting all these cool people, and I look forward to meeting more. Even with my busy schedule of classes from 9am-7pm, breakfast at 8, dinner at 7.

Juliette is doing well, but her schedule seems weirder than mine. She appears to have classes only 4 days a week, but I'm not sure about that, and she has a class usually from 7-9pm followed wed. and thur. by some kind of aerobics class until about 10:30. Seeing her is looking like it is going to be difficult. I am however seeing her this friday (first time since we got here monday night), so we'll talk about it then.

Juliette and I arrived safely in Israel yesterday, September 1! I have already started classes, and have kinda moved into the dorms (temporarily hopefully). The emails that I have received have been a great help to ease my move and this huge change, and I hope I keep hearing from everybody. Much love to everybody back at home in California. Oh, and I'm 10hrs ahead of y'all, so if I'm a bit slow to respond to emails that might be the reason (or I'm in classes all day). Unfortunately it is also the reason that I am so jet-lagged that I'm almost falling over. I'm sure it will be over in a few days. Later all.

It has been a while since my last post, mostly due to the fact that every day that I make it to my computer, I was so tired, I just wanted to crawl into a corner and cry myself to sleep. So instead I played about an hr of Dark Cloud 2, had dinner with my dad and step-mom, then went to sleep. That has basically been my days up to this point. Work was interesting in the last week though, because I became the "Equipment Manager." It is not so much managing equipment, but rather managing the staff (who in the end were almost as bad as the kids half the time). Anyway, I had a blast, but it is not luckily over. Joy!! I have time off... for a week... then I'm off to Israel.

That's right, the countdown has begun. Israel is 7 days away (8 including the flight, but that is really part of it in my mind). I got 2 new contacts there over the weekend, and I am more excited than ever to go on this adventure. At this point I have nowhere to live, but that will hopefully work itself out (*closes eyes tightly* I hope, I hope, I hope). I already miss everybody terribly, but I know that when I come back, there will be friends waiting for me. See you all on the flip side.