Working out With Rope

After running around in the hot weather yesterday, many of us had shower on the mind. Unfortunately, there were not enough showers for everyone and not enough time. I set my alarm to wake up at 6:45 so I would have an hour to shower and get ready for breakfast. One very, extremely, tremendously important thing to remember when showering at the dorms is to bring three things: your clothes, your towel, and a robe. I forgot the latter. So I had to use some clever thinking to make up for the lack of a robe, with only one towel that I was using for my hair-turban. Let’s just say I made it out fine.

As a few of us began to sit down at our table full of girls of our proctor group, a sort of socially-awkward young man came up to me and asked if he could sit down with us. First of all, I think it is so brave of anyone to ask a random group of strangers, especially women, to sit down with them. So I smiled real big at him (hopefully I didn’t look like a crocodile or a creeper) and said “Sure! Go ahead!” One of my new friends warned him that he would be sitting with a lot of girls, and he blushed and smiled and said, “That’s cool.” It was interesting to hear about his home life and program here at VSA. Apparently he’s a math loving guy, and he talked to me about what are the characteristics of his dream job – a mathematician. We also learned that he can recite 40 digits of Pi!! So of course, we made him prove it, and laughed in awe when he was finished.

Today’s main class teaching was about the history of Judaism. We learned about the origins of the books, and the story it tells. We learned about morals and the changes and adoptions in beliefs. Customs and holidays were also taught to us. We broke up into groups and collaborated on the morals of the Talmud, which explains how to stick to Jewish traditions, even when traditional values have changed or are impossible.

During study hall, we read a packet called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which is a document that has been proven to be an anti-Semitic forgery and a hoax. It was an impersonation of the beliefs of a Zionist who wanted to take over the world. Keep in mind that these accusations are completely false.

Jump-rope class is no joke. It is pretty much one of the most intense and hardest workouts you can get here at VSA. Since yesterday we did the basics, we moved on to tricks. One of the tricks was sitting on the floor, and trying to swing the rope around your head, bring it down and use your chest muscles (?) to lift you off the seat of your pants and have the rope go under you. The other was bending over and bringing the rope through you and jumping backwards through it. The last trick was jumping rope with one foot, with one hand with the rope handle, and the other hand under your opposite leg, and you have to jump. It is super tricky, and we were exhausted by the end. I'm still trying to take pictures of the course, but trying to be part photographer part athlete at the exact same time is not exactly easy.

Julia, our new friend Mashal, and I signed up for friendship bracelet making during our recreational activities tonight. The other options were outdoor cooking, kickball, knitting, and board game knight. I thought that we were going to be taught how to make awesome designs, but they mostly just let us grab whatever and however many colors we wanted, and go crazy with bracelet experimenting. We made friends with two guys, who, for some reason, were actually excited to start bracelet making; although, they, like us, had no idea how to make them. I made a somewhat nice looking bracelet for my friend Jennefer back home, and I took some material to actually learn how to make a legit one online.

Apparently rain is on the way, and I’m thankful for some refreshingly cool weather.