Feasting and Beasting...

So I can't believe I haven't written in so long - and I'm so full of thoughts, or so I say. I'm trying not to feel the pressure of the bloggage - but I thought I'd be a lot more diligent (hence, the meaning of my own name "Emily"). So, I've been time consumed lately with various things that shall remain nameless...but one thing at work that keeps me going is the Feast, which is worth mentioning becuase it will be my excuse for not writing for the next month!


Yippee. Or scary. For those of you that don't know, the ICEJ where I work celebrates a Jewish holiday, the Feast of Tabernacles, or Succot, and hosts a very, very large international conference where thousands from around the world gather here in Jerusalem. We, a mere core staff of 50, plus the help of loads of volunteers that come in to work selflessly for weeks or months on end , run this monster. Can you believe? And every year I wonder, "how the heck does this happen?" And yet, every year, it does... and has been for the past 25 years!

I run the sales booth. It's large. So here I am in my office, coordinating volunteers, figuring out random things from time, bus and lunch schedules to how to work a cash register in Hebrew (and how to train my little old volunteers on this) and then putting together some 'special deals' this year... Just a lot of usual business. From here on, the Embassy has one sole focus and one main goal..it's kind of what we live for from year to year and it comes so quickly - then it's HERE - and then just like that, it's gone, disappeared into the wind, and we are left reeling in the aftermath. Mine particularly is boxes. Boxes and boxes and boxes of everything you can imagine, dumped into one room and waiting for me to come stare at them and wish they'd all go away - oh, I mean, organize and sort through and unpack, etc.

Hmm. Anyway. This will be my life from here to the end of October. So far away it seems, but it will go so fast. In fact, this will be my 3rd Feast already! This, to me, is major, because after doing my first one I said to myself (and probably also to everyone around me :) that I will never do this again. So that's why I'm here today. Makes sense. God really has a sense of humor.

But I have to admit there are a LOT of great times and funny stories that we get out of it. I mean, it can't go down without something going awry somewhere. And believe me, it happens and is hysterical. Plus you get to meet people from everywhere, make new friends, stretch in the ways of patience and control... :) things like this.

Thrilling. I'll definitely talk more as time goes on.

emails, newsletters and other things...

Today I finally sent out a massive email update to everyone and their mother to tell them all about my life. This was long overdue, and it bascially went from a short, concise email to a 3 page newsletter that took me 2 days to write, where I even interspersed pictures AND captions in between the text. This was a big deal for me. And as one friend commented, I even 'bolded' some random words throughout it that I wanted to highlight. This makes it official, apparently.

So my parents have been have been stuck at home answering people's questions one after another, What's Emily doing? When's she coming home? So I figured I'd just let everyone know once and for all and that is the best way to do it.

But I love those massive emails that go out, once every 2 years for me, that tell people what happened in the last 3 months, but really they missed a year and a half of your life. It's hysterical. But whatev. I'd like to post it here, but it's too big so just email me if you want to read it.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for today.

Birthday Greetings...

Hey today is my cousin's birthday...she is 24 years old.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Cristine!!! WooHoo...

We always used to call her "Crissy the baby" because she is the youngest of the 4 grandchildren.

Since it's her birthday, and I have nothing else to say, let's talk a little bit about her. Cristine is really cool, lives where all our family is from, in the grandiose City of New York. Queens, to be exact. She is half Irish/half Italian (the Italian being the better half, although the Irish have awesome accents and a gorgeous country with hills and sheep and castles). She currently works in the tape library of A&E in Connecticut and drives a 40 minute commute (without traffic) to work everyday. This is incredible...

I can remember the days of commuting, but I won't get into that.

She loves sports, like let's see: volleyball on tues nights, beach volleyball on wed nights and of course, the company softball league.

And like the rest of us, she loves Italy - and we will always reminisce of our 2 trips to the Motherland with the extended family, all 10 of us shuffling around from city to city, visiting family and having the greatest time ever. We still to this day talk about it everytime we get together, we laugh again at all the jokes my brother would make about us (because all he did was make fun of us somehow) and we still watch the hours and hours of video we have. It's sooo great to watch. Plus the food is out of this world and that's pretty much where the conversation always heads towards, especially with this crowd...

I love my family :)

Hope you don't mind the pic Cris, but I thought the empty pasta bowl was fitting...

times, they are a'changin'...

So we were eating dinner at Ree and Franklin's house on Friday night (we made pesto, YUM!) and started talking about journaling, blogging and just your random thoughts that come out on paper (or a computer) in some sort of way. Most of the peeps were saying (minus Franklin, why is it that guys never journal?) that even in keeping a journal, there is this inate fear that someone somwehere will read it someday - either when they're alive or when they die, their journal will be read ...so one girl has never kept a journal at all because of this. Someone else said they used to change the names or talk in vague hidden code so that the supposed 'reader' someday won't have a clue what she was talking about. So sneaky-sneaky...

Hmmm, so I was all about the opposite. I have always thought, "How cool will it be when someone reads my journals someday and gets to go through life with Emily." I wonder what they'll think! Isn't this so exciting? I always tend to write everything that I'm ever thinking, plus things that happened to me, and anything else I can think of. And I called myself a psycho-journaler...like it's always on my list of things to do. And I get stressed when I haven't written in a few days because there is just so much to catch up on that I MUST set aside a time to write.

AND I also love going back and reading through everything that I have written. You'd be suprised at how you actually learn a lot about yourself from the last few months and years, and how God has been with you the entire time, and you remember things that happened that seriously impacted your life or you read about really lame messes that you got yourself into that seemed like a HUGE deal back then and all you can think now is, how ridiculous was I that I spent 8 pages on this?

Anyway, that's when Ree said we should blog, because the rest of the world can read now what we write, instead of waiting til we die or something like that. Well, I guess people can read if they want to be enlightened with the existence of random people around the world. Funny, but I was always so anti-blogging, for the sole reason that it was computergeek.internet world that I am so not into. BUT this morning, Ree forwarded me this exciting free blog thingy and it was easy to set up.

So, I decided to try it. As opposed to it as I am, plus I'm a procrastinator and I'm not so good at keeping up on things and now I have to write in my journal AND write in this blog thing...(maybe I can copy and paste). So who knows, we'll see if this works.

I mean, I have tons of thoughts. You should read my journal.