Shavuot!

I've been to many different study sessions in the last 48 hours or so. I started out last night at a friends house who I hadn't seen in more than a year where we talked about sustainable living. She had a bunch of people over, and we all talked about drawing connections between our current lifestyles, available resources, communal living, personal accountability and a passage from Isaiah. We then veered off onto education inequalities (most of the people there were teachers or students), and how education gaps are created. It was fascinating, and much fun.

Then I biked off to my shul. It was raining, which is only relevant because my sister had taken my raincoat and sneakers on this camping trip that she was on, so I got exceedingly wet. My shul was doing an all-night tikkun with different sessions every hour or so. I went to: a discussion on sleep and Jewish tradition, dvar of next week's parsha, discussion on kosher laws, half of a talk on the mikveh (when it became apparent that I would spend the entire time talking with a friend who I hadn't seen in long time, I thought it would be better to leave), how to do hagbah workshop, and a discussion on halakha and copyright laws. I loved catching up with my friend, but the rest of the stuff was not so relevant. It was interesting, yes, but felt rather obscure (arguing about how long you need to wait between eating meat and dairy, with the answer being that there is no answer, was the epitome of this.) I loved learning how to do hagbah, but I didn't end up practicing because my arms were really hurting due to all the shots I just got for college and Israel. I also got to meet and chat with a lot of people who I had seen before, but never really met, which I'm really grateful for.

Around 4:30am the classes ended and we all did shacharit (albeit in egalitarian and traditional minyans.) I somehow thought that we'd be done around 5:15am, maybe 5:30am. I was so wrong. Even with everyone racing through the service (and we were really going fast), we didn't end until 6:50am. At 6:50am I assessed my mental state, and realized it would be a really bad idea to bike home, because I wasn't functioning at even half my normal capacity. So I called my dad and he came and picked me up at 7:15am, but it meant that I was the last one left at the shul (all 40 people who had made it to the end of the night cleared out impressively fast.)

One very strange thing that happened last night was that at least 5 people asked me about the Gallaudet University shirt I was wearing. I thought it was pretty obvious that I hadn't gone to Gallaudet, but apparently it wasn't. I was also surpirsed because I generally assume no one has heard of Gallaudet, and I didn't know that ASL was such a popular language among Jews. Except, reflecting on that several hours later, I realized that almost everyone who had asked me about the shirt was also queer, and ASL is a very popular language amongst the queer people I know.

I slept from 8am-3pm, and then quasi-slept until 6pm. Then I baked really yummy chocolate chocolate chip cookies. And then my mom, on of my neighbors, and I showed a film on white people's experiences with race, and led a conversation on race, racism, and white privilege in the community where we live. It is the first one in a series that we'd like to do, and it was the culmination of months of planning on our parts. I think it was a total success, because in the words of my mom "anything that got these people to talk about race is a mini-miracle." I thought it fell very nicely into the theme of learning and sharing knowledge on Shavuot.

And, I ate A LOT of cheesecake. I think I'm all set until next year.

My 18th Birthday

I turn 18 in a couple of weeks. Much like high school graduation, I think this birthday will be very anti-climatic, despite its momentous implications. For the last couple of months, my mom and I have been trying to figure out how not being a minor affects things like bank accounts and health insurance. The answer is: it doesn't. The only thing that will change is that if I am not in school when I turn 19, I will lose my health insurance (if I'm in college, I keep it until I'm 24- hello institutionalized privilege.)

In preparation for my birthday, I got my driver's license, registered to vote, and became a registered organ donor. All three of these are awesome. I also gave blood for the first time. In MA, you only have to be 17 to give blood, but because of living in India, I was unable to donate until now. I feel like I've done all the 18th-birthday-things, and now I'm done with it. Despite still being 17.

The only things I'm still waiting for is for the passenger restriction when I'm driving to lift, and to get an industrial piercing (it's two piercings on my upper ear cartilage.) And even these are anti-climatic.

History

I just stumbled across this wonderful quote:

I study history because I am interested in the future. - Peter Rachleff

My mom has been excessively excited about the fact that Hampshire is first in the percent of graduates who go on to earn Ph.D.s in History (source). I am less excited, because while I love history, I really hope I don't spend years in academia getting a Ph.D. But, I really don't know what the future will hold, so I won't make any big blanket statements right now that I might find limiting later on.

New York City, Anti-Racism Class, and Making Bread

After my train trip, I kept meaning to change the title of this blog to something more relevant. But I'm still doing lots of traveling, so I think I'll keep it. I was in New York City this weekend with my extended family celebrating my Grandma's birthday. It was just a short trip- we spent less than 24 hours all together in NYC. The highlight was definitely hanging out with my sister late Saturday night in Times Square. We walked around, went on the ferris wheel in the Toys R Us store, and got my dad a purple "I <3 NY" shirt. I also put really fabulous blue eyeliner and eyeshadow on my sister. The lowlight was my lack of sleep, although this is almost a positive, as it meant that I slept through the entire drive back to Boston. I'm also doing more traveling later this week to Providence, RI and visit a friend there.

In other news, the class I was taking on being actively anti-racist at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education ended. I'm sad to see it end (it was far too short) but I think I'm going to join the alumni group that meets weekly. It had good content, and definitely provided me with the kick-start I needed, although I wasn't as invested in it as I planned to be, and not knowing the other people in the class and their personal histories made it harder to connect.

I've also been getting really into making bread lately (which is good, because it's replacing my interest in making cupcakes.) I've mostly been making challah and whole wheat oat bread with various dried fruits. I've been using my bread machine, which I bought off Craigslist for $20, and I'm pretty much in love with it.