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This will probably be an anomaly, but this post has been written by Rina.

Today was my second day learning at Pardes and I'm still trying to figure out the institution. Yesterday was mainly orientation, which involved every single person in the room (probably over 100) standing up to say their name, where they are from, what they were doing prior to Pardes, and something interesting about themselves that is not on their resume. As I'm sure all of you know, I really dislike this sort of stuff especially when it comes to my turn. I did however survive the 1.5 hours until we moved on to the next activity, reading the information packet...woohoo. Finally we moved on to trying out some classes which were okay, but not really what I expected. The Hebrew one was in Henglish. Today we managed to try out some more classes while finishing up with orientation. Overall, I'm still trying to decide if I will enjoy the classes. The place itself is interesting because there are people from all backgrounds with the common goal of wanting to learn. The learning has the potential to be very good. Besides the learning, the atmosphere is very camp-like or USY with lots of vague announcements which result in much confusion. I'm just waiting for someone to break out into a hard-core ruach session with people jumping up and down singing Mi-Pi-El. No joke, that will probably happen this weekend. Jon and I are going on a Pardes Shabbaton/Retreat to Ein Gedi. Should be fun, especially the Dead Sea. I'll let you know how the ruach is!

Tonight we met my cousin Ari and his wife Bracha for dinner in Nachlaot. We had a great time and afterwards got a tour of their apartment. I would have no idea how to get to their apartment again without them to guide me, because of all of the tiny alleyways, twists and turns. It's a really cute and funky area that very much reminds me of the Old City. Their apartment is newly renovated and they even have screens on their windows. Having screens is quite a privilege in Israel. The best thing about their apartment is the bathroom which has a shower head but no actual defined space for the shower. That arrangement makes the squeegee the most important household tool in the apartment.