Saturday, June 19, 2004
Yay time for another update!
Friday night, I went to Tiffany's birthday party. She lives kinda out in the country...and I'm stealing her back yard. It rules. She has a cat, a bird, two dogs, two chickens, and a rooster. It's a one story ranch house type thing but there's a basement set up with lots of fun stuff, and there's a pool outside. I didn't know many people at the party, or at least not very well...I'd had classes with two of them, and Ashton was there, so I just stayed by her most of the time. We went swimming for a while and played monkey in the middle...with 6 people hehe...which was odd but fun...After a while, it started thundering, so we got out and hung out in the basement for a while and played ping pong and such...Ashton and I proved how awful we are at that game hahaha...It never did rain, aside from a few drops, and the sun started shining again, so some people went back in the pool...but since we were going to eat dinner in like 5 minutes, a few of us stayed out and just sat around so we wouldn't have to get wet and dry again so soon lol. We had pizza and cake and really yummy smoothies...and then Tiffany opened her presents...and seemed happy that I made her a purse (Anna, I swear, she is your purse-obsessor rival). We planned to watch a movie, but we kept talking, sitting out by the pool, and that was fun...hearing stories about people, since a lot of us know the same people...and because Tiffany's little sister is convinced she likes Nolan because they worked together on a project, so we had to tell stories hahaha. Eventually we went inside, but since we only had like 30 minutes left, we just turned on the TV, talked some more, and played with her bird. Poly's funny lol...and he can talk...and had fun nipping at my hairband...and walking all over Ashton's back until one of us would notice her screeching and take him off lol...twas much fun.
Today, I went to Ronnie's Bat Mitzva. I'd never to one before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect...A lot of the service was in Hebrew, and I knew it would be, but it still amazed me that she could speak it so fluently...especially since she learned it while she was in school (Cary Academy at that-she's no slacker), learning french, and playing field hocky though the school. It surprised me that so much of it was done by singing though...they called it chanting but I don't think of chanting as the same thing as what they did...And we got to throw candy at her lol, except then they let all the little kids run up and take it...I was scared I'd hit someone because I was at the back and I knew I couldn't throw that far, so I gave mine to a little kid on his way back from gathering candy lol. The service lasted a little over an hour and a half. Oh and I have to say, it amused me at the end when Ronnie was given a glass of wine, for her and her parents to sip...she made an awful face after tasting it haha. Anyways, then we went to the reception. She had such a cool idea...she spread sheets of scrapbook paper across a table, each labeled with a sticky note with people's names on it. She glued a ribbbon about 3/4 of the way down the page, and had instructions for us to write a short message below the ribbon, so that the top part could be used for pictures. They had a dance floor set up, which was also used for games. I actually participated in a few of them, even though I don't know most of her friends since they're mostly in 8th grade...but we did the Electric Slide lol, which is currently stuck in my head...and played Pepsi/Coke or Coke/Pepsi or whatever it's called...and they had a dance that I'm used to calling Greek but I guess it's a Jewish tradition too? We formed a circle and basically grapevined around a chair, where Ronnie sat, and then her dad, uncle, and the Rabbi picked it up and moved her up and down, and then put Ronnie's mom in the chair for the same thing. The candle lighting ceremony was special to me though...Her cake was surrounded by 12 long candles, with another one on top. She called up people and groups of people to thank them for different things, and each person or group got to light a candle. She called her parents, her uncle, her Grandma, and a few family friends...at one point I thought she was talking about me (she'd usually wait until after her speech to announce the name) because she said something about how she'd known the person since she moved here, and how they were friends even though her friend was older, and said something about celebrating birthdays (Ronnie's birthday=Dec 13th, mine's the 12th, so we did stuff together for them a lot) but it turned out she meant another family friend...with more of an age difference than the three years between us lol; she was an adult. That seemed normal though; everyone up until that point had been an older family friend or one of her relatives...but then she said "This one is for Jennifer" and I was like...woah...And she made the sweetest speech...about how I was like an older sister to her...and she talked about the Haunted House we ran for several years...and it almost made me cry...and I'm NOT used to crying at happy things lol; I'm one of those kids who has never understood why people cry when they're happy, and now I'm learning how to hold back happy tears lol...her speech was really similar to what I'd written in her scrapbook though lol; her mom decided we share brain waves...So anyway, I went up and lit a candle...yes yes, gasps all around, I used something fire related...but it was ok because they were really long candles so I didn't care lol...And then I felt even more special because she brought all of the rest of her friends up in one big group. She lit the last candle on top of the cake herself...I'm not sure if that's supposed to symbolize something or not, because you'd think it would, but she just kinda laughed when the other 12 were lit and said "um...that's all I have" and then lit the other one lol.
That's about all I've got to update on now...VBS starts tomorrow, and Anna and I get to go in at 12 to decorate and such, much fun. Oh and I realized that unless somethings planned for the day during this week ('cause I'll be assistant teaching VBS at night), I'm not going to see any of you guys (aside those on ASP) until we're back from that on July 3rd.
Friday night, I went to Tiffany's birthday party. She lives kinda out in the country...and I'm stealing her back yard. It rules. She has a cat, a bird, two dogs, two chickens, and a rooster. It's a one story ranch house type thing but there's a basement set up with lots of fun stuff, and there's a pool outside. I didn't know many people at the party, or at least not very well...I'd had classes with two of them, and Ashton was there, so I just stayed by her most of the time. We went swimming for a while and played monkey in the middle...with 6 people hehe...which was odd but fun...After a while, it started thundering, so we got out and hung out in the basement for a while and played ping pong and such...Ashton and I proved how awful we are at that game hahaha...It never did rain, aside from a few drops, and the sun started shining again, so some people went back in the pool...but since we were going to eat dinner in like 5 minutes, a few of us stayed out and just sat around so we wouldn't have to get wet and dry again so soon lol. We had pizza and cake and really yummy smoothies...and then Tiffany opened her presents...and seemed happy that I made her a purse (Anna, I swear, she is your purse-obsessor rival). We planned to watch a movie, but we kept talking, sitting out by the pool, and that was fun...hearing stories about people, since a lot of us know the same people...and because Tiffany's little sister is convinced she likes Nolan because they worked together on a project, so we had to tell stories hahaha. Eventually we went inside, but since we only had like 30 minutes left, we just turned on the TV, talked some more, and played with her bird. Poly's funny lol...and he can talk...and had fun nipping at my hairband...and walking all over Ashton's back until one of us would notice her screeching and take him off lol...twas much fun.
Today, I went to Ronnie's Bat Mitzva. I'd never to one before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect...A lot of the service was in Hebrew, and I knew it would be, but it still amazed me that she could speak it so fluently...especially since she learned it while she was in school (Cary Academy at that-she's no slacker), learning french, and playing field hocky though the school. It surprised me that so much of it was done by singing though...they called it chanting but I don't think of chanting as the same thing as what they did...And we got to throw candy at her lol, except then they let all the little kids run up and take it...I was scared I'd hit someone because I was at the back and I knew I couldn't throw that far, so I gave mine to a little kid on his way back from gathering candy lol. The service lasted a little over an hour and a half. Oh and I have to say, it amused me at the end when Ronnie was given a glass of wine, for her and her parents to sip...she made an awful face after tasting it haha. Anyways, then we went to the reception. She had such a cool idea...she spread sheets of scrapbook paper across a table, each labeled with a sticky note with people's names on it. She glued a ribbbon about 3/4 of the way down the page, and had instructions for us to write a short message below the ribbon, so that the top part could be used for pictures. They had a dance floor set up, which was also used for games. I actually participated in a few of them, even though I don't know most of her friends since they're mostly in 8th grade...but we did the Electric Slide lol, which is currently stuck in my head...and played Pepsi/Coke or Coke/Pepsi or whatever it's called...and they had a dance that I'm used to calling Greek but I guess it's a Jewish tradition too? We formed a circle and basically grapevined around a chair, where Ronnie sat, and then her dad, uncle, and the Rabbi picked it up and moved her up and down, and then put Ronnie's mom in the chair for the same thing. The candle lighting ceremony was special to me though...Her cake was surrounded by 12 long candles, with another one on top. She called up people and groups of people to thank them for different things, and each person or group got to light a candle. She called her parents, her uncle, her Grandma, and a few family friends...at one point I thought she was talking about me (she'd usually wait until after her speech to announce the name) because she said something about how she'd known the person since she moved here, and how they were friends even though her friend was older, and said something about celebrating birthdays (Ronnie's birthday=Dec 13th, mine's the 12th, so we did stuff together for them a lot) but it turned out she meant another family friend...with more of an age difference than the three years between us lol; she was an adult. That seemed normal though; everyone up until that point had been an older family friend or one of her relatives...but then she said "This one is for Jennifer" and I was like...woah...And she made the sweetest speech...about how I was like an older sister to her...and she talked about the Haunted House we ran for several years...and it almost made me cry...and I'm NOT used to crying at happy things lol; I'm one of those kids who has never understood why people cry when they're happy, and now I'm learning how to hold back happy tears lol...her speech was really similar to what I'd written in her scrapbook though lol; her mom decided we share brain waves...So anyway, I went up and lit a candle...yes yes, gasps all around, I used something fire related...but it was ok because they were really long candles so I didn't care lol...And then I felt even more special because she brought all of the rest of her friends up in one big group. She lit the last candle on top of the cake herself...I'm not sure if that's supposed to symbolize something or not, because you'd think it would, but she just kinda laughed when the other 12 were lit and said "um...that's all I have" and then lit the other one lol.
That's about all I've got to update on now...VBS starts tomorrow, and Anna and I get to go in at 12 to decorate and such, much fun. Oh and I realized that unless somethings planned for the day during this week ('cause I'll be assistant teaching VBS at night), I'm not going to see any of you guys (aside those on ASP) until we're back from that on July 3rd.
