getting my feet wet.

In Israel, in order to get married legally, you have to go through your local religious authority. This means that if you're Jewish, you have to go to the rabbanut.

The rabbanut is a government-run agency, which means there's a fair amount of beaurocracy.

All the girls complain the most about having to take classes. I always assumed that it was a whole bunch of classes, at least 8 hours. Turns out, the basic class is actually 4 hours, divided into two sessions. Not bad, even with my schedule.

Last night, I went to my first class. It was amusing. There were three of us, two in jeans, and me, in a black velour skirt. - the black velour skirt is my latest decision on how to deal with skirts on a daily basis. It's wide, comfy, and long enough that i can hide my feet under it when I sit Indian-Style. I have another one in purple, but I'm going to need a few more, and I don't care that it's way too fancy for my tops. These skirts cost half as much as my jeans skirt, which isn't nearly as comfy either. - Anyway, we get to the class, and the teacher lady asks us if we know what we're there for, and I'm like, yeah,pretty much.

And she asks me, are you religious? so I say yeah, and she tries to convince me to take a different class with 10 sessions. I'm like... um... I don't have the time.

So she explained to us all about the mikva thing. The mikva is a ritual bath. It was pretty strange, because she gave us a lot of details about things that no one's really talked about with me in a public forum since 5th grade health class... was odd...

the rules are more complex and weirder than I'd realized, but this has kept Jewish families happy and whole for 2000 years, so who am I to argue?

I called Yaakov and asked him if maybe he'd rather be the girl and I could be the guy... but he declined. Oh well...

So I got home late, and then I woke up early this morning to go swimming. Swimming always feels great, so I feel pretty good, but very very tired.

And that's the news from around here...
t.c.