AM Inspiration

So, I have a test this week, so I thought that i wouldnt have time to write, so much so that i even forgot to bring in my trusty Bridging the Gap! well, here i am finding myself with an extra half hour so here i am. again. Allow me to share a problem that I have. I get bored, very easily, especially when its something i've already learned. I cannot stand to go over it again and again. Like when I learned algebra for the first time, i could never handle hearing it again. If a teacher doesnt have something completely new to say then i shut them out, ignore the rest of teh lecture and delve into the world of my phone or ipod (im talking abt in college, never in sem rabbi kass would take it away from me!) I really dont enjoy learning old material, even if the teacher has a new twist on something i already know,forget it im out for the count. so whats the shaychus? (im getting real yeshivish no?) Im currently taking Principles of Chem, last semester i took Survey of chem . las

Fine, my body is programmed to be typing right now, though im dead tired a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! So what to write about this week? i was actually thinking the same thing last night as i was trying to fall asleep! No crazy stories this week though I flew twice. Maybe thats the crazy story! I dont know how many pple know, but i flew into ny on sunday morning on a standby flight,(i know with my history what was i thinking?!) and was there till mon night at which point i drove down to lkwd for a wedding  wedding, though we were late i got there for the kabalat panim and the entire chuppa, B'H. the wedding was a blast, everyone who didnt show up seriously missed out, we danced thenight away, bc girls with and without shaitels alike! at the end of the wedding we stayed for the mitzva tantz and at that point i was starving plus i had a 6:15 flight to catch the next morning(again standby) so a few of us went out to eat i dont know if you can appreciate this bu tthere is

Kay, so this is gonna have to be quick! I have 20mins ready set go! Alot happened this week, in my life. First of all I had an interesting array of parking stories this week, on mon i was going to school like always when i get to marta and i drive into the parking deck, its 1pm so its full cuz everyone is still at their jobs and stuff so i drive around going higher and higher till i get to the top floor and behold.. there are no sspots! so i drive down hoping that while i was driving up someone left leaving me their spot, but alas no! so then i drove to the other parking deck, but where i thought was teh entrance but the bar was up so i couldnt go in so then i went back to the original parking garage and went all the way up and down, still no spots so then i asked teh policewoman where i cud park, she directed me and there i went but i didnt know where i was allowed to park, so i kept driving till i got to a random spot by a staircase, i figured taht i would find the spot easily that w

So i started school this week, and let me tell you, i did not miss it. School is in the heart of downtown, so you can imagine everything that comes with it! I'm taking this class called life planning and career development, and by the looks of it i think i will be getting a lot of my material this semester from this class. We sit in a circle (flashbacks to group therapy) and we all go around introducing ourselves, let me tell you i never knew some of these majors existed! so as we go around we have to choose an adjective that starts with the first letter of our first name, for example- juicy Jennifer, master meron - you get the point. but here's the clincher we have to call each other this for the rest of the semester! As interesting this, I'm sure you want to know what this has to do with anything. well, allow me to explain. we all choose how we present ourselves. we may not walk around with an adjective on our foreheads but we certainly exude a certain impression tha

I've landed back to the normal life, i landed yesterday, went to a party,went to bed at 1:45 and woke up at 5:30, sounds like the girl we all know and love right? anywhose... i flew last week so you know what that means, yup! story time, now gather around children, there was once a young girl who was notorious for bad flight stories and as she left to NJ early one wednesday morning (6am to be exact) it was no different. Baruch Hashem the flight was on time, but that was as far as her good luck went! we were in the air getting ready to land in the illustrious newark airport, but alas we had to turn around for there was no where for our esteemed aircraft to land, so we headed back south to enjoy some southern hospitality in richmond,va to reload on gas and then turned once again to the north as we finally landed at 12:45 (we took off at 8:15 and its a two hour flight for those new yorkers who dont know geography -joking-sorta) fine we get off the plane i was in the last row after sw

took my last final yesterday! That means im free from talking abt the brain and the rest of teh body for that matter till JAn 5! so what am i doing with my new found freedom you may ask... well, sleeping for one thing, though not last night, cuz guess where i had to be this morning at 6..anywhose..When i was in elementary and middle school, my principal always said that torah doesnt take vacation, so we always had a learning program set up during winter break and depending on teh number of hrs you learned, you would get a prize. Mrs. silver would say something similar, that in hebrew you could take a "nofesh" or "chofesh" the choice is what you due with your new found freedom. Taking a break is extremely important, it helps you refocus, reenergize, recharge so that you you will have the head to do that what you do all that better. i have read countless stories abt rabanim who go to the mountains for vacation.... there is always a story, but thats not the

First of all, i wanted to apologize abt last week, sorry ya'll, had guests, plus no work so no time to really kill on a friday...anyway, its the end of the semester, for teachers it means report cards, for students its crunch time, literally, i just pulled one of my famous all nighters wednesday night, and that wasnt even teh final! so what do finals mean to us, whats the point..well teachers will tell you that finals are there for you the student, for otherwise you would never ever sit down and review everything u learned. and as students we protested" thats not true, we'll do it lishma!" even the non-jewish teachers in my high school knew what lishma ment. but seriosuly, would you ever pull an allnihgter if it was lishma? if you are really dediacted and freakishly studious then, maybe you would get so pulled into the world of academia that you wouldnt notice the sky get darker and darker and tehn lighter and lighter..but maybe you're just normal and aft

It happened again! I woke up at 5:30 am and the first words that came out of my mouth were " the neurilma is the outer layer of the schwann cell" anybody who knows what im talkin abt has obviously taken A&P. i couldnt believe that the words came out of my mouth i was horrified, but i didnt have that much time to dwell on it...anyway, thought you should knwo what is running thru my head while im trying to get out of teh house to this glorious job while the rest of you are sleeping soundly in bed. before i start into my usual tirade i just want everyone to know that starbucks just came out with thanksgving drinks that sound really yum, check out which ones are kosher at kosherstarbucks.com.i cant seem to get a continuous thought in my head so on to the next thing. so you know what they say about goyish college? its true. i remember distinctly when i was a senior i had a meeting with my principal abt sem and college and she was telling me to be careful cuz when

Hey ya'll. its crazy shabbat is so early these days, there is no time for anything! I dont know if ya'll remember the speech Rabbi Kelemen gave about being a choma(wall). My morning seder today remindede me of that speech, why you may ask.. well cuz the sefer brought down the quote from shir hashirim" if she is unmoving like a wall, we will build upon her a turet of silver, but if she wavers like a door we will enlose her with a cedar panel." The basic gist of this concept is that we have to make ourselves like a choma, Avraham is described as "a neeman"and it says taht Hashem can build a whole world on Avraham. can you build a whole world on a door? i dont think so( come on guys that was an easy one keep up, i promise they'll get harder) avraham was a choma, am unbreakable wall, a foundation that is strong without the tiniest crack. if there was hairsbreadth of a creack in avraham's wall, then do you think we would be standing here today?

So...no stories this week, my life was normal, boring as usual, studying. this morning as i was turning on all teh lights and turning on all teh machines i was thinking " what am i gonna write abt this week?" and i keep pondering this thought untill abt 2secs ago as i was writing teh first line when u had a stroke of inspiration.anyone who has been talking to me this past week will tell you that i have been complaining non-stop. now yall know that im not really that type of person, i usually the one with the sickeningly sunny disposition. so what is my valid excuse for my complaints? i am in actual physical pain every time i move my arm, everytime i take step or sit down. no- i wasnt in a street fight, i havent been beated up,. its actually self-inflicted. i am actually paying someone to do this to me. its called bootcamp. three times a week for an hr i come to the gym and inflict on myself unbearable pain adn suffering. Why? bcz i am sorely outa shape and need

This week was chock full of  stories! One is a recurring story, the other hopefully a once in a lifetime! idont think i told you this when it happened for teh first time lstyr. i started wearing boots because it has become cold and whats agirl to do right? so i put on my boots and teh pully thingy on myzipper broke off,big deal right? so whatever its friday, i go on withmy business, then i come flying into teh dorm abt .5 hr beforeshabbat planning on my regular routine and as im grabbing off myboots, one come off but the other is stuck! so i sit there trying topull it off, but it gets stuck at my ankle, so one by one all myfellow moresheters take turns trying to pull the darn thing off ofme. finally one of my BS girls come to my rescue- (you know who youare ) and with a safety pin pulls off my boot. so now, everytime iwanna take on and off my boots, i need a safetypin handy. so now tahtwinter has come, the same is true, i always need to have this safetypin.next story: i was leaving my

I wasnt really in school that much this week, but i was there. last week i told this girl in my lab that i was gonna be missing a lot of school in the next couple of weeks cuz of religious holidays and she asked me if they make exceptions for school. i kinda laughed thinking of the image after 120 being in shamayim, and me sitting there explaining to Hashem that i couldnt make it to the day of His coronation, to my court case as to whether i would live or die because of college. This other girl in my lab txted me a question on yom tov then txted back never mind have fun on your holiday... To us that is such a strange concept we dont really see rosh hashana as a fun day, enjoyable to an extent, yes, scary, definatley, holy, well we can only hope and pray really. so what is the differnce btwn us and them, well many but ill get there just be a little patient. going back to the first girl-story. can u imagine saying to Hashem taht you had to miss shul cuz you had school. it sounds ridicu

So at this point i think you guys are getting as bored as i am with my routine, school in the morning(that means marta, whoohooo!) back adn forth. Friday mornings i come here, this part you dont know about, turn on all the lights, vacuum, from 6-7i usually study or learn, 7-8 is nap time cuz noone is here then its back 8-9 is email time. But today was different, i woke up early (even before my alarm) and i didnt even have coffee, came here on time and vacuumed, read some stuff on aish and as soon as i pulled out my sefer to do a little learning, these two ladies walked in who i have never seen before, they were interested in joinin so i took them around showed them the machines (they were coming from curves so they didnt really get how a real gym worked) so i showed them how teh machines worked and then how to do free weights,bikizur i was with them till 7:55 at which ppoint they left, i checked the time and freaked out! btwn 7:55-8 i had a 5 min window to learn something and

So this week was seriously one of the longest weeks ever, it feels like eons ago that i was sitting at this computer doing the same thing, but moving on.. So i take a microbiology class and lab, and we had a test this week in the class and i was up till 3am per usual studying away memorizing about 15 diseases what caused them who got it symptoms etc. i knew it was going to be a pretty hard test cuz the teacher said so, so when i came in and took the test i wasnt shocked that it wasnt the easiest thing i ever took. Fine,class done moving on to microlab. so in lab we are amidst learning about gram staining which involves alot of dyes and your are supposed to wear gloves but that just isnt for me so as you can probably guess i got stained and i am typing right now with purple nails.i got it on my fingers adn those stains went away pretty quickly, but the dye that got stuck under my nails is still there. Yesterday, my teacher posted our grades and he had told us that he was

Hey guys, so i dont know how many of yall know that i go to college every day, some times twice a day! and cuz its in downtown and i dont wanna waste the gas plus pay for parking i take the Marta( equivelent of the subway) everyday! so let me describe the experience for ya so you can empathize with my plight! so getting there is not that big of deal, unless i miss the train but that doesnt happen that often plus you know i have tonz of training waiting for buses... so i get to right stop, now there is a surge of pple waiting to get off at downtown then we all charge for the escelator which is typically broken so in harnof style i run up the steps two at a time now im at katzenalobogen now its time to get to hakablan, again i pummel up the stairs im exhausted, its now 7:40 AM ive been up since 6:30 then as i walk out of the station, the heavens open up and its pouring cats and dogs( we get flash storms here in the Atl!) so as im running to get to class without getting too wet, my shoe

so... i flew...ya, so ya'll know what that means....first of all i wanted so say thank you again to all my kind hosts and it was great to see so many pple at tzirele's wedding. My flight in was blissfully uneventful( at least relatively), i had a great time in NY i took many buses both mehadrin and not. so on thurs i rushed to the airport to be there two hours early like you are supposed to (when will she learn...) and especially since i was flying in to jfk (ibid) i didnt want to miss my flight cuz i got lost. so i get there and first i land in the departure section for international flights so i have to cross the street, fine no problem i check in my flight is still on time ( i cheked on the way to the airport) by the time i get to my gate my flight was delayed from 7:10 to 8:45 fine not such a big deal i was prepared i had food and i had to daven, i was suspiciou sthat this would not be the last change i was wary based on my history, the aiports had turned me into a

Hey guys its friday mornin and im here to share with yall my words of wisdom.. so here they go.we all know that tonight is tisha bav, no dont worry we arent really fasting tonight it was pushed off till sunday but there is still koach in the day. i was listening to one of the tapes that are put out by the CHofetz Chaim heritage foundation and there speaker said something really powerful. he was talking abt the power of tears. if u go back you'll remember that the reason that tisha bav was originally set aside as a day of morning by Hashem was bcz we cried for no reason... so Hashem decided to give us a reason to cry and boy have we had reasons you dont need a history lesson from me to remind you of all the torture and suffering we've endured, both as a klal and as yichidim. so what is the antidote, how do we fix what our ancestors messed up so many yrs ago, and just as a by the way we know that no child is punished for something his father did unless he himself is guil

dont know how many of yall know that on fridays i wake up at 5:30 in the morning to my first job of the day~ i open the gym, im the one that comes in in the morning turns on all the lights adn i vacuum and then i just sit there for three hrs bcz there is nothing else to do. i check my email, check out the kotel i learn a little and i type to you guys.so today as usual i came in and did what i usually do but then i came by the computer and there was nothing to do, and i was unusually exhausted! so i put my head down and i said ill just rest but i really fell asleep, i kinda noticed and i couldnt summon the energy to pick up my head and say "have a nice day!" i really couldnt pick up my head, i couldnt even open my eyes i was too burnt out i dont know what. but with one final push i picked myself up! so now as im sitting here i decided to right to yall. so what am i driving at? good question im not really sure...just joking. i realized that though we spend m

So im starting with my usual apology, i know its been a long time, but i havent flown in a while! i dont know how recent you are with the local  news but we experienced something this past week that was a massive blast from the past! if you guys heard abt tropical storm dolly, welll anyway it passed through here as well, and Baruch Hashem for that bcz the heat wave that it dispelled made me long for israeli weather! anyway, getting back to the point, as the storm blew her way through trees fell down and power lines were cut, hence we had no power. it was fine we are used to this kinda thing happenin and we have plenty of candles and a gas stove so we could cook. that wasnt the anomaly. what was different this time was that for some reason bcz the power was cut the power was also cut in the water purifying system. meaning all the city water was dirty! as in the water department told everyone that the water was unusable that we shouldnt shower in it, wash our dishes in it, G-d 4bid dri

hey guys ive officially landed in teh atl, and im really getting into teh swing of things. first of all id like to say thanx to all the money girls taht hosted me and drove me around while i was in new york. second of all i must tell you my hashgacha pratis story and it coincides with my flying story so you get two in one! so i flew home last sunday night. i rush to the airport and i get there and im told that my 6:10 flight was delayed til 8:30 so me and my friend went to get drinks from starbucks as we are sittng i check the little boards with the flight info. its says that ... can you guess...rememebr we are talking abt me and flights... yup ... CANCELLED! so i chill around with my friend then she has to go. i walk around the airport buy a book to keep my company adn a thing of pringles bcz i havent learned my lesson yet and didnt have any on me. i slowly saunter down to teh counter by the gate and ask the guy what ii should do and that my flight is cancelled, meanwhile

kay guys this is the latest R'Kelemen, we have him with these college groups that come to neve. here it goes: anyone who has taken any psyche course ever knows abt millgram's experiment. the basic conclusion is that though a person may vehemtly say that he will neve deliver an electric shock to an innocent person, 100 percent of people delivered the first shock,. those people dont think the are evil, they just changed their mind- right? what makes a person a nazi, what brings a person to such rishus what takes him from a human being and changes him to an animal? this is a question that he( R' kelemen) grappled with for a while. and this is teh answer taht he came up with and if i do say so myself it is brillliant! when someone makes a commitment to something they are bound by that commitment, however, if that comintment is not binding to them, then they are on the path to being a nazi. sound harsh? yeah, well look at it this way. what made an entire country of civilized p

We sit in a class with Michlelet Ester and we were discussing the differences between conservative, reform and orthodox. And the basic conclusion that we got to at the end of the class was that the only ones who have the true Torah and the true life are the orthodox Jews who have mesorah. Now you have to read that last sentence correctly. You can be “orthodox” but if you don’t have mesorah then you aren’t living the life of a true Torah Jew. Yeah, you can be a textbook Jew, one who just reads the sefarim and follows instructions to the letter. However, if you do not have connection with a Rav/Gadol/ teacher from the previous generation who can pass on to you what he/she learned from his rebbe then you are missing the vital component that makes us different from the conservative and reform. This is when the all important asay lecha rav comes into the picture. Without connection to someone who had a connection all the way back to Har Sinai then you are not part of the link, you have fa

well, i gotta start with a couple of funny stories that are so typical me that you just have to laugh: first off i went to toivel a crystal bowl and as i let go for a second to let the whole thing be toiveled, the inevitable happened, i bet your groaning to yourself bcz you know what is coming next, yup, i dropped the bowl. so i did what any good girl would, i immediately started trying to get that darn bowl out. so i tried getting it out with the handy dandy net that sits so innocently next to the mikveh for all of us dunces who manage to drop their dishes. so, I'm trying and trying sticking my arm in getting my entire arm sopping wet in the process. of course. so as I'm valiantly trying to get this bowl out. the rosh yeshiva( yes, we have a rosh yeshiva) pulls out and starts doing all his stuff, he notices that I'm slightly struggling, looks over and tries to offer some verbal help, when he notices that this is obviously not enough, he and his proceed to take off their ja

Hey guys now I'm really really late, and I'm sorry but I'm brimming with cool stuff to tell ya. We had Rabbi Kelemen today in thefirst time in ages; we sit in with Michlelet Ester. During his class he is proving how torah must have been given from Sinai and now we justgot to the Oral Law. He was telling us before he was frum and he was a student in UCLA, he heard about this thing called the Torah and he decided that he was going to read it in the original Hebrew, now he has never read a word of Hebrew in his life. So he goes into the ucla library, buys a pentuach, a dictiononary that explains all the laws of Hebrew grammar including all the execptions-which is what the> language is – and he taught himself Hebrew. And armed with this new knowledge, he set out to decode the torah that he had bought. But to his dismay, he discovered that this copy of the torah must have been some old manuscript that was messed with bcz it had so manymistakes> that there was no

hey guys, as usual its been a long time and i really do feel bad, but there is a limit to the time that i have, but now im home and the internet at my fingertips i dont really have an excuse. i think that in keeping with tradition i must tell yall abt my flight, which was comparably tame. i had two stop overs one in zurich and one in washington,dulles. so we leave neve around 3:30 am( my usual bedtime) of i forgot to mention that i had gotten strep two days before and had only gotten drugs the day before( dont worry mrs. stefansky it was just refapin) so i was still quite sick- to the extent that i was at teh kotel and this lady asked me if i had any food i answered that i had none but i offered my waterbottle at which she point-blank refused bcz she realized that i was sick- sorry talk abt getting off topic. we get to the airport( i was with ruti) and man let me tell you, you would never now that it was 4AM, seriously it felt like geula during chol hamoed sukkot, jampacked

Reporting live(via email) from Neve Yerushalayim: last night I was working out, kickboxing my heart out, getting all the stress of the week out with every punch and kick. The music is booming and we are all sweating, suddenly one of the girls I work out with in MT got a phone call from her madricha to stay in the dorm and not to leave, kay whatever there is a high security alert, what else is new, right? Then a girl from maalot gets a call from her Aim Bayit telling her the same thing. Whatever, we keep working out. Then the phones all start ringing; there was a pegua in kiryat moshe in a yeshiva, 35 boys were hurt and 8 were killed. Needless to say, we decided that continuing our cardio activity would be highly inappropriate in light of the situation. So we all got dressed and went back to our respective dorms. (We were in the gym by the laundry room in building 8) Everywhere you went, on every floor girls had gathered to say tehilim. In every seminary from pninim who are so close to

hey guys how was shabbat? how are everyone's respective finals and vacations going? sorry i havent had a chance to right till now, this week its gonna be really short. i went to this class on tefilla and i learned something that im just dying to share with ya'll.. i dont know about you guys but sometimes my davening just isnt what i want it to be. ive tried all the tricks, i used praying with fire but still it wasnt working for me, so i got these two suggestions that have proven results, try one then once you got it then add the next. we all know the feeling of getting to the kotel after an hour of sittin on an extremely naseuse bus ride( at least those who took buses) and "whew, im finally here!" you are so exc ited to pour your heart out and just talk to Hashem, there is no comparing that tefilla with the one on a sun morn when you are too tired to put in your contacts and you are still wearing your pjs as you quickly mumble the words two minutes before class starts