Out of the Woods Temporarily
Nov. 13th, 2006 02:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theyellowhobbitJitW was amazing. I always feel so much happier when I've gotten back from a JitW. It doesn't usually last more than a few days, but so far, it's still here this time around. More on that later, since I want to go in chronological order.
On Thursday after class (which was spent consuming more of the chocolate chip cookies I had baked this week) I took 2 trains (SEPTA and NJ transit) to NY. I got in at around 9. I stayed over A.G.'s house. She had made us this amazing pasta with actual parmesean cheese (like the kind that you grate that FG would never ever ever ever sell in a million years, because they're FG) and pine nuts and broccolli. And we had warm apple cider, with cinnamon and nutmeg! And eventually we went to sleep.
I woke up around 8:30ish on Friday morning. A.G. and I had breakfast, and then I took the subway up to Washington Heights to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boroparkpyro, my trusty ride to nJitW.
He came like 2 seconds after I had walked outside. It was awesome.
We loaded up my stuff, and started driving around. The other girl who was coming with us, V. was running late, so we stopped at the cleaners soboroparkpyro could pick stuff up. There were a lot of cops directing traffic. Then we picked up V., and were on our merry way.
boroparkpyro is an insane driver. I guess he has mad Boro Park driving skillz. But he tried many things I would never dare, weaving between cars to get ahead. I guess we have differing definitions as to what "space" is. But we didn't die, so it was all good. And there were cookies, and cookies are the solution to everything.
However, we did get lost quite a bit. (5 times) I had thought this was my fault, a) because I was supposed to be navigating and b) because I'm an albatross of logistical nightmares, and I had even toldboroparkpyro that nothing was going to go wrong since I had all the other JitW-related logistical nightmares this week. But actually, it was alanscottevil's fault, since his car was cursing our car. Or something.
Pictures of the journey up:
But we made it there. And it was right before Shabbat. I had enough time to change, though I realized I hadn't brought my jewelry bag. I did have one necklace, but no earrings, which was sad. But a lot of people complimented me on my all-white hippie Shabbas outfit.
We started Kabbalat Shabbat up in the "womb" (it was dark, and warm and cozy, so that's what we called it) but the floor was shaking from all of our hippie dancing, so we moved downstairs. It was one of the most amazing kaballat shabbats I've ever experienced. There was just so much energy!
Then there was maariv which was also amazing (and they did my long lost lecha dodi as the tune for mi chamocha!) and then there was dinner.
And by then, of course, I was dead, because I made the classic Rachel JitW mistake. I hadn't eaten much on our journey up, since I wasn't really hungry at the time. So I ate a lot of dinner. And then we sang.
Then we had learning/sharing and A.N. andalanscottevil led an amazing session. In which a bunch of us realized we all knew each other on LJ! So I got to meet the amazing spin0za1. (And orawnzva, but I already had known he existed in both LJ and real life). After the session all of us LJers started talking, and it was all shiny.
Then I attempted to learn my leining. On the car ride up I was trying to pick upboroparkpyro's trop, partially because I had my high holiday trop in my head and couldn't get my normal one back in, and partially becuase his trop is way cooler than mine. But it was just slowing me down at this point, so I learned it in normal. I got about halfway through and realized it just wasn't sticking, so I went to bed.
I woke up in pain, because I probably didn't have enough to eat at dinner, even though I was full at the time. But since no one had come in to wake us I assumed it was before 8:00 and I could go back to bed (which took a while because of all the pain.) Then I awoke again, and it was 8:40, and they had never come around to wake us. So I quickly got ready, and I had breakfast, and then went down to davening, while also attempting to learn the rest of my leining.
Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job. I had only had 3 days notice, and it was 22 pasookim. The other thing that tripped me up a lot was that the columns in my tikkun and the columns in the Torah were not the same, and had the words been in the same place, I could have recalled it a lot better in terms of trop. Though I did get the shalshelet right, which was good. (I messed up a lot of pronunciation...) And trop has colors, too. The darga is green and the t'vir is purple. Shalshelet is red. And so on, and so forth.
And people said yasher koach, but I felt really bad about making that many mistakes, and probably slowing down davening by a lot. Maybe it's just one of those perfectionist things, but I know I could have done a much better job leining had I more time to learn it.
Davening ended at 2. We started at 9 and ended at 2. That's 5 hours of davening!!!! So by then we were all starving. And we had to do major schedule modifications to have both the learning and the eating.
I forget what I did after lunch, but it was cool and involved hanging out with people.
boroparkpyro led mincha. And he did a really good job. Maybe that happened before all the hanging out-ness.
And eventually we had havdallah outside, which involved walking through the dark woods (I was afraid of falling) and then circling around, with a spiral inwards, so we were all close together. And afterwards there was dancing. And dinner eventually.
There was a session on contact improv that I was first watching and then decided to join in on. It was really cool. I got to stand onspin0za1 and she also stood on me. I realized that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was. Eventually I was getting tired and dizzy and sweaty, and left.
A bunch of us stayed up and listened toorawnzva play us a bunch of his songs. And then I found out that someone had brought a lefty guitar to JitW! Which meant that I could play it! (Well, I can play righty upside-down, but it's really annoying.) And so orawnzva and I played for a bit.
Andboroparkpyro had brought his laptop, and we learned that there was wireless internet!!! So I got to check my 30 billion e-mails. One of was from Ben, and he gave me a bunch of sources.
Speaking of Ben, a disproportionate amount of the males at JitW were named Ben(jamin). Like 10 of them, of maybe 50 guys total. I lost track of how many. There might have been more. And there were only 2 Rachels.
Then this morning I led davening. I woke up at 8:15, and I was able to take a shower (a shower! at JitW!) before the service. And I had a breakfast, which consisted of some M&Ms, because I wanted to start davening. Meanwhile, there was all this time between psukei and shacharit where we were trying to get a minyan, where I could have grabbed real food.
Psukei itself was uneventful. I got to sing some fun things, like alecha, and doing the ki va mo'ed/psalm 96 tune for the Chronicles stuff, which is very similar to psalm 96. You have to know what you're doing, so you don't get tripped up by the word differences, but I've led so many psukei that it was pretty easy. And I did 146 to Hallelujah. There was a point where I stopped. People might think it was because I had lost my place. But no, it was because there was a giant spider on my siddur, and I was trying to get him off and let him down onto a chair, which made it hard to read the words. (We were davening outside.)
And shacharit was...interesting. I didn't really know weekday nusach since I haven't made it to weekday minyan much lately. Though I did finally get to do the first 2 blessings of the amidah with the cool NFTY weekday nusach. But the blessings after the kedusha aren't done by NFTY, so I was on my own again. And the nusach is similar to the tune for after the haftarah, and I didn't want it to actally be the same thing, so I had to play around with it. Had I know it was going to be this hard, I would have practiced.
And then we cleaned up, and had a closing circle, and had a lot of hugs, and headed out of the woods. I got a ride back with the 2 Y.U. boys.
And I kept that JitW feeling. I've been smiling at strangers, and I even talked to people on the train. And people don't usually talk to people on the train (or the bus for that matter) in America. Usually you pretend that the other person isn't there. But these women were interesting- they had all gone to some big chocolate thing.
And then I got home, went to SNL, watched Serenity, and now I'm here in my room. (On our way out of Meyerlevana_b and I saw that there was all this flooding water coming out of sprinklers in front of the trailers. Like actual flood as opposed to the normal rediculous sprinkling. And yes, it was raining out. Those pictures are at the end of the above album.) I should probably go to sleep now, since tomorrow is uberthesis day. And I owe some of you e-mails, which will actually be sent tomorrow, since I'm about to crash.
On Thursday after class (which was spent consuming more of the chocolate chip cookies I had baked this week) I took 2 trains (SEPTA and NJ transit) to NY. I got in at around 9. I stayed over A.G.'s house. She had made us this amazing pasta with actual parmesean cheese (like the kind that you grate that FG would never ever ever ever sell in a million years, because they're FG) and pine nuts and broccolli. And we had warm apple cider, with cinnamon and nutmeg! And eventually we went to sleep.
I woke up around 8:30ish on Friday morning. A.G. and I had breakfast, and then I took the subway up to Washington Heights to meet
boroparkpyro, my trusty ride to nJitW.He came like 2 seconds after I had walked outside. It was awesome.
We loaded up my stuff, and started driving around. The other girl who was coming with us, V. was running late, so we stopped at the cleaners so
boroparkpyro could pick stuff up. There were a lot of cops directing traffic. Then we picked up V., and were on our merry way.boroparkpyro is an insane driver. I guess he has mad Boro Park driving skillz. But he tried many things I would never dare, weaving between cars to get ahead. I guess we have differing definitions as to what "space" is. But we didn't die, so it was all good. And there were cookies, and cookies are the solution to everything.However, we did get lost quite a bit. (5 times) I had thought this was my fault, a) because I was supposed to be navigating and b) because I'm an albatross of logistical nightmares, and I had even told
boroparkpyro that nothing was going to go wrong since I had all the other JitW-related logistical nightmares this week. But actually, it was alanscottevil's fault, since his car was cursing our car. Or something. Pictures of the journey up:
But we made it there. And it was right before Shabbat. I had enough time to change, though I realized I hadn't brought my jewelry bag. I did have one necklace, but no earrings, which was sad. But a lot of people complimented me on my all-white hippie Shabbas outfit.
We started Kabbalat Shabbat up in the "womb" (it was dark, and warm and cozy, so that's what we called it) but the floor was shaking from all of our hippie dancing, so we moved downstairs. It was one of the most amazing kaballat shabbats I've ever experienced. There was just so much energy!
Then there was maariv which was also amazing (and they did my long lost lecha dodi as the tune for mi chamocha!) and then there was dinner.
And by then, of course, I was dead, because I made the classic Rachel JitW mistake. I hadn't eaten much on our journey up, since I wasn't really hungry at the time. So I ate a lot of dinner. And then we sang.
Then we had learning/sharing and A.N. and
alanscottevil led an amazing session. In which a bunch of us realized we all knew each other on LJ! So I got to meet the amazing spin0za1. (And orawnzva, but I already had known he existed in both LJ and real life). After the session all of us LJers started talking, and it was all shiny.Then I attempted to learn my leining. On the car ride up I was trying to pick up
boroparkpyro's trop, partially because I had my high holiday trop in my head and couldn't get my normal one back in, and partially becuase his trop is way cooler than mine. But it was just slowing me down at this point, so I learned it in normal. I got about halfway through and realized it just wasn't sticking, so I went to bed.I woke up in pain, because I probably didn't have enough to eat at dinner, even though I was full at the time. But since no one had come in to wake us I assumed it was before 8:00 and I could go back to bed (which took a while because of all the pain.) Then I awoke again, and it was 8:40, and they had never come around to wake us. So I quickly got ready, and I had breakfast, and then went down to davening, while also attempting to learn the rest of my leining.
Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job. I had only had 3 days notice, and it was 22 pasookim. The other thing that tripped me up a lot was that the columns in my tikkun and the columns in the Torah were not the same, and had the words been in the same place, I could have recalled it a lot better in terms of trop. Though I did get the shalshelet right, which was good. (I messed up a lot of pronunciation...) And trop has colors, too. The darga is green and the t'vir is purple. Shalshelet is red. And so on, and so forth.
And people said yasher koach, but I felt really bad about making that many mistakes, and probably slowing down davening by a lot. Maybe it's just one of those perfectionist things, but I know I could have done a much better job leining had I more time to learn it.
Davening ended at 2. We started at 9 and ended at 2. That's 5 hours of davening!!!! So by then we were all starving. And we had to do major schedule modifications to have both the learning and the eating.
I forget what I did after lunch, but it was cool and involved hanging out with people.
boroparkpyro led mincha. And he did a really good job. Maybe that happened before all the hanging out-ness.And eventually we had havdallah outside, which involved walking through the dark woods (I was afraid of falling) and then circling around, with a spiral inwards, so we were all close together. And afterwards there was dancing. And dinner eventually.
There was a session on contact improv that I was first watching and then decided to join in on. It was really cool. I got to stand on
spin0za1 and she also stood on me. I realized that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was. Eventually I was getting tired and dizzy and sweaty, and left.A bunch of us stayed up and listened to
orawnzva play us a bunch of his songs. And then I found out that someone had brought a lefty guitar to JitW! Which meant that I could play it! (Well, I can play righty upside-down, but it's really annoying.) And so orawnzva and I played for a bit.And
boroparkpyro had brought his laptop, and we learned that there was wireless internet!!! So I got to check my 30 billion e-mails. One of was from Ben, and he gave me a bunch of sources.Speaking of Ben, a disproportionate amount of the males at JitW were named Ben(jamin). Like 10 of them, of maybe 50 guys total. I lost track of how many. There might have been more. And there were only 2 Rachels.
Then this morning I led davening. I woke up at 8:15, and I was able to take a shower (a shower! at JitW!) before the service. And I had a breakfast, which consisted of some M&Ms, because I wanted to start davening. Meanwhile, there was all this time between psukei and shacharit where we were trying to get a minyan, where I could have grabbed real food.
Psukei itself was uneventful. I got to sing some fun things, like alecha, and doing the ki va mo'ed/psalm 96 tune for the Chronicles stuff, which is very similar to psalm 96. You have to know what you're doing, so you don't get tripped up by the word differences, but I've led so many psukei that it was pretty easy. And I did 146 to Hallelujah. There was a point where I stopped. People might think it was because I had lost my place. But no, it was because there was a giant spider on my siddur, and I was trying to get him off and let him down onto a chair, which made it hard to read the words. (We were davening outside.)
And shacharit was...interesting. I didn't really know weekday nusach since I haven't made it to weekday minyan much lately. Though I did finally get to do the first 2 blessings of the amidah with the cool NFTY weekday nusach. But the blessings after the kedusha aren't done by NFTY, so I was on my own again. And the nusach is similar to the tune for after the haftarah, and I didn't want it to actally be the same thing, so I had to play around with it. Had I know it was going to be this hard, I would have practiced.
And then we cleaned up, and had a closing circle, and had a lot of hugs, and headed out of the woods. I got a ride back with the 2 Y.U. boys.
And I kept that JitW feeling. I've been smiling at strangers, and I even talked to people on the train. And people don't usually talk to people on the train (or the bus for that matter) in America. Usually you pretend that the other person isn't there. But these women were interesting- they had all gone to some big chocolate thing.
And then I got home, went to SNL, watched Serenity, and now I'm here in my room. (On our way out of Meyer
levana_b and I saw that there was all this flooding water coming out of sprinklers in front of the trailers. Like actual flood as opposed to the normal rediculous sprinkling. And yes, it was raining out. Those pictures are at the end of the above album.) I should probably go to sleep now, since tomorrow is uberthesis day. And I owe some of you e-mails, which will actually be sent tomorrow, since I'm about to crash.
