In Which Shani Closes the Year as a Girl, and Starts the New Year as a Lobster

Let me begin by wishing everyone a very happy new year, or shana tova. :) It is now the year 5771, and the moon is broken, the stars are radioactive, and humankind has evaporated, leaving only technology and the pure shadows of...

...no, it's not like that. But yes, according to the lunar calendar, we have begun our 5771st year. And may I say that it began with as much sun and hot weather as we experienced at the end of the year 5770. After four days of baking on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with my cousins, my skin is more vividly red than the Midwest on a typical electoral map of the United States. But let me backtrack.

The beginning of last week was spent in trying to reorganize myself a bit. My bed has still not arrived, I was promised that it would between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (this past weekend, and next weekend, respectively), but I was able to get a bit farther along. My room, in fact, now houses a halfway-built writing desk, surrounded by erroneous wooden boards, screws, tools and a small container of glue. Yeah, ok, so I didn't finish it -- I ran out of time. My fairly distant cousin Yarden, who up until Tuesday afternoon was just a figment of conversation, finally materialized on my doorstep, complete with screwdrivers, and helped me construct some of the furniture that I had bought with my dad's cousin Ganit two days before. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to finish, because I had to run and catch a train to Modi'in, to be picked up by my cousin Yuval and taken to Re'ut, where they live, for their great aunt Fini's birthday party.

I had never met Great Aunt Fini before. She is Austrian, married into my uncle's family (who in turn, married into my family, so I'm not related by blood to any of these people), and now considers her Israeli branch of the family her closest relatives. She was visiting from Vienna, and it was her birthday, so all of my uncle Gideon's brothers and sisters and their children made it to Re'ut for the event. I saw people I hadn't seen in years (including Gali, the little girl who last year became famous for befriending a Sumatran tiger cub, if any of you remember her), and also got to meet Fini and her daughter, who told me that as soon as I decided to make a trip to Vienna, I would be treated like family and acquainted with everyone they know at the opera houses and the philharmonic. (I'm saving already, for those of you who are wondering.) We saw a slideshow of pictures of Gideon's trip to Mongolia, Susie (Fini's daughter)'s trips to French Polynesia, Thailand and Kenya, ate good food, and generally had a very good time.

The following morning, my aunt Orli, uncle Gideon, my great aunt Naomi, myself, and my two cousins Yuval and Yaarah left for the Kineret - or, the Sea of Galilee.

Since we were so many people plus luggage, we needed to take two cars. I was placed in the car that my cousin Yuval was driving, a fairly new thing for him (he's almost 18 years old) and definitely the longest drive that he has thus far attempted (only about 2 and a half hours, for those of you thinking by American standards). My other cousin was in the backseat. The "grown-ups" were in the other car. After arriving at our little kibbutz, our little beachfront resort village, we spent four glorious days swimming in the freshwater, baking in the sand, eating in the restaurants, and filling our spare time with games (backgammon and guillotine being the most popular choices) and movies in our cabins. It was a wonderfully relaxing vacation, marred only by the fact that gingers were not intended to bake on beaches, and, once again, we return to the subject of my hideous sunburns -- although they are already beginning to turn into an uncharacteristically impressive tan, which, as those of you know who are pale and pasty like me, has almost the comforting equivalent of aloe vera.

Last night, on our way home, we stopped at Cinema City (Tel Aviv's answer to an American movie theatre -- a 25 screen shopping mall) and saw "The Maiden Heist," which was very different from all of our expectations. If you are in the mood for a tongue-in-cheek heist film with really good actors (Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, William H. Macy, Marcia Gay Harden) playing in ridiculous roles, a simple plot, and a lot of campy humor, then I highly recommend this film. All in all, it was the perfect relaxing end to the perfect relaxing holiday.