Today, we went to Paula's Bat Mitzvah. I babysat her a while back. She changed quite a bit. We're friends with her mother Claudia. By the way, Bat Mitzvah is like a coming of age ceremony for when a girl becomes an adult Jew. The male version is the Bar Mitzvah. For men it happens after they turn 13, and for women it happens after the age of 12 or 13. You study your portion of the Torah (our Bible) for several months to get ready. The Torah itself is obviously in Hebrew, but it doesn't have the vowels and it's written quite different than normal. So, you have to memorize everything beforehand. (Think if English was written without vowels, it would be pretty crazy!) Also, a lot of people want to use 'trope' which is a certain way of chanting or saying it. So, you have to memorize that too. Can be hard for anyone, even harder saying it all in front of a usually crowded room. After all that you have to come up with sort of a lecture, talk, or sermon I guess you can call it. So, you have to learn something from that portion and interpret the way you want, so you can teach it to everyone else. A lot for someone at 13 or so! :D
Anyways, she did a very good job and went smoothly. She only forgot a trope for one word but figured it out in the end. Her talk was about Idolatry, what to do about it, and what it means in this day and age. It was interesting. We should value justice over our family ties, friends, money, etc. is what the Rabbi said about it. Paula's family's ancestry comes from Morocco, South America, and the Mediterranean. So, her Grandmother and Uncle spoke in Spanish to her during the ceremony. It was awesome! XD Later, we sang Adon Olam in Ladino. Ladino is a Judaeo- Spanish type language. (Judaeo is Jewish.) It sounds really cool!
For an appetizer to lunch they had lots of samples of cheese, Gazpacho (cold tomato soup with spices), and cream cheese cucumber pinwheels. Also, I was called on to help with passing out the wine. I was so busy giving people them, that I didn't have the grape juice. The samples were interesting. The soup was good, but for some reason it was a little too spicy for me. I hated the pinwheels. :P For the actual lunch there was a Greek noodle salad, Moroccan carrot salad, strawberry salad, and a corn salad. I only liked the Greek noodle salad and the strawberry salad. Those were so good! Dessert was a huge cake. Some layers were like a berry jam and honey filling, some were either a mocha or a some sort of coffee type filling, and the rest of the layers were of the actual cake being of vanilla. The frosting was very thick and rich. What a cake! Very good, but also different than what I'm used to.
I had forgotten that Claudia works in the mental health field, and she invited some therapists (?) that were friends to it. They were awesome! We talked to them about the withdrawal and they knew what I was going through. They told me they were going to come up with a list of therapists in the area that might be able to help me and will be better than the previous ones. Someone who is dating Paula's grandmother sang. He was great! He sang a Frank Sinatra song, and one other that I can't remember. :D
My dad's friend was having a BBQ for his Birthday. We couldn't go because of the 2 hour wait at the ferry terminal. :( So, instead we went to Albertson's to get some meat. (They have some of the best deals on their meat.) For dinner, we went to Applebee's. I got the 3 cheese chicken noodle bowl. The funny thing is there was no chicken in it. :D It was still good, with just being noodles and cheese.
We watched Bolt. It was pretty good! I love Rhino the hamster. He was so funny! Mittens' story was very sad though. I like how in the end, they brought in Mittens and Rhino into their family too. The bonus feature called 'Super Rhino' was hilarious.
I'll post more Youtube videos tomorrow, I'm kind of too tired to post that today. ;)
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