Hey. I am really sorry I haven't posted in so long. But things have been really crazy, and I lost track of time. First, school starting, and getting used to all of that, and then it was the holidays, and I had a couple of weeks off from school which were spent visiting relatives and places. And of course, I have been absorbed with the elections in the U.S. But I promise I'll give you a nice, long rundown.

In September, I went to the wedding of some of my relatives here. That was a lot of fun, and the place it was at was decorated very prettily. It was outdoors, and right on (literally feet away from) the Mediterranean Sea, and on a perfect evening. The area was absolutely gorgeous. And so was the bride :). I got to dance and see a bunch of people.

Then, a couple weeks later, all of the extended family got together again to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. We had a huge family dinner. It was special for me to be with all these people, celebrating the holidays actually in Israel, and with all the relatives whom I usually don't get to see very often, because they live so far away. I stayed with my aunt and uncle, who hosted the big family get together, for a while after that, and also got to celebrate my birthday. Yay - I'm sweet sixteen!

Also during the break from school I got for the holidays, I went to stay with my cousin, who lives in Jerusalem with her husband and very cute one year old son. She took me to see some things in the city. It was fun, but Jerusalem was really crowded with all the people visiting for the holidays. The traffic was horrible, so we tried to walk around and take the bus, but the sidewalks and the buses were super crowded too. For one bus, we had to wait for the third time it came by before we could squeeze our way on! And even then, it was only with some pushing and shoving. But despite the crowds, I got to see a lot of cool things. I went to the western wall of course, and put my note with a prayer on it into a crack in the wall, as is the tradition. There are so many really old buildings and historic architecture in Jerusalem! And everything there is made of what they call "Jerusalem stone", a gold colored stone. That's because it's the material everything used to be made out of there, and to preserve the historical look of the city, a law was passed so that buildings could only be constructed from that stone. So unlike any american city, Jerusalem gleams and is full of light colored buildings. I also got go shopping in the Arab market in the Muslim quarter of the Old City (the Old City is divided into four quarters, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian). Normally I don't like to shop, but it was fun walking through the narrow stone paved streets of an open air market and haggling with the merchants for the various colorful things on display.

The other interesting place I've gone is to Haifa, a Israeli city, on a field trip for school. The field trip was for music class, so we went to a concert. In those three places, I took a lot of pictures. All of them can be found on my pictures page, but there are a lot of them, so I made a little slideshow with a few. This is the first time I've made a slideshow (I just found this tool), so I hope it works...