30 Day Blog Challenge Day 2

Day 02 - A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest

So Maura and I met back in high school which literally seems like ages ago. We were both kind of outcasts at our all-girls Catholic school; me being Jewish and Maura being... Maura. 

So we found each other and became really good friends and bonded over completely random things. We also ended up both going stag to our Senior prom and having a much better time making fun of every one else and counting down the hours til we could head back to our friend's house for the after party of drinking beer out of Coke cans. 

Although I maybe see Maura a handful of times a year, it never really matters. We are the type of friends that can pick up after ten years and not really have any awkward silences. She always has fun and hilarious stories and is on the track to becoming a hard-core alcoholic but still maintains a 4.0. A true rolemodel. 

30 Day Blog Challenge

Everyone wants to be loved, right? Well so does freefalafel. And I have decided to venture out of my little spot on the blogosphere and go out and try to make some new blog friends. I also have so many incredible and fascinating things to share with the world, and I believe I have a divine mission to spread my knowledge and wisdom to the entire internet community (not really, but just go with it). I also do not really fit into a specific blog genre as I literally write about whatever I am feeling- from politics to shoes. But anyways, I decided to copy my friend Leanna from OMG I moved to NYC  and enter into Fierce, Fit and Fabulous' 30 Day Blog Challenge. Due to Spring Break happening next week, this challenge might end up like me committing myself to the Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred... by making it into a 62 Day Shred. But I will work my hardest because A) I want to get all my eight readers to learn more about me and B) I like answering questions about myself and pretending that people read it and are genuinely fascinated by it. So here goes with Day 1: 

Day 01 - A picture of yourself with ten facts 

This is my favorite picture because A) I am a tan and B) it is incredibly ridiculous and features a manic-depressive cat who may or may not be bipolar. 

1. I have a plethora of fun, unrelated and generally unuseful facts that I tend to not remember whenever they are needed and instead bring up in incredibly inappropriate situations (re: funerals, elevators with strangers, lines at the DMV).

2. I obsessively drink eight glasses- at least - of water every day. I just generally love water. And I have been known to have panic attacks if water is not in close proximity. No big deal. 

3. I love to travel, if you can't tell from speaking with me after five minutes. I can talk about traveling for hours and really pride myself by how well I can usually adapt to other places. I am also more than slightly proud about my ability to make offensive jokes to any culture possible. It is a gift. 

4. I am 22 and I wholeheartedly believe in the existence of leprechauns and unicorns. 

5. I have friends that live on every continent except Antarctica, but I do donate to Greenpeace, so I think the polar bears are my friends. So let's just make it every continent. 

6. I am obsessed with my dog Couscous. Look around my room and there are about eight pictures of him strategically placed. Call it love or compulsive obsession, I will never stop calling my mother and asking her to put my dog on the phone. 

7. I am currently training for a 5 mile run in May. Considering the last time I ran in my life was when I was 8 to catch the ice cream truck, this is a big deal for me. Be proud. 

8. I refuse to watch commercials. I will literally change the channel any time a commercial comes on. They are the bane of my existence, 

9.  I watch QVC for fun. 

10. I am a closet romance novel reader. And yes, by writing this I am coming out with my greatest secret. I just can't get enough of my highlander romance novels even though it sets me up for a lifetime of disappointment and Ben & Jerry's late night binges with Lifetime movies. 

Israeli Film Review

So I am an avid fan of Israeli cinema. I was lucky to grow up seeing a lot of foreign films with my avid cinemateque-obsessed father and a good percentage of them were Israeli. I have taken two Israeli cinema themed classes now and love to discover new movies. One movie that I recently saw was Ajami. The movie was released in 2009 so I am a little late in discovering the film, but I loved it so much that I had to write about it. 

I could not help but compare the film to the American movie Crash in that Ajami consists of five separate stories that ultimately collide and are neatly woven together. The characters are all set in Yafo in the Ajami neighborhood. A couple of things make this movie incredibly remarkable, though. For one, the film is a collaboration between a Jewish and Christian Arab-Israeli director. Secondly, all of the actors in the film are actually not actors. In this sense, it is a "non-film" and it heightens the sense of realism and grittiness of the drama of the film. I really enjoyed the movie when I first watched it, but after learning about the story behind the film, I had a greater appreciation for the value and quality of the film.

Where Have I Been?

OK So I know that I have been majorly slacking on my blog. It's been almost a month since I last published. But in my defense, I have barely had a free minute to breath, let alone blog (seriously my laundry has been piling up for weeks now, I just need to actually make the time/have enough energy to do it). But I have done some interesting and mildly fascinating things these past three weeks. Here are some highlights:

Weekend Round Up

So this weekend went by especially fast. I think the fact that I was holed up in bed for most of it helped it go back so speedily. I have come to cherish my weekends and respect them for the peace that they offer from the usual Monday-Friday grind. Especially Fridays. I love my Fridays.

This is how they usually look every morning...

My Fridays start out obnoxiously early: around 6:30. I turn off my alarm and flip on MSNBC (OK, let's be real- MSNBC is already on because I stayed up til some ridiculous hour watching Lock Up). I watch the horrible things that happened in the world while I was sleeping and listen to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski argue about the appropriateness of Lindsay Lohan's outfit choices. I somehow make it to the shower, manage to properly dress myself (Friday means casual wear at the office which basically means jeans and some shirt that manages to not have some form of spilled beverage or food on it) and head out the door. Work consists of me sitting and trolling Craigslist for funny Missed Connections stories for 8 hours. Then I get to walk home and watch the sun go down. This is my favorite part of my week: the walk home. It's a good 30 minutes and it takes me past the White House where I always get that feeling of "I can't believe this is my commute home". It's really an incredible feeling. It's also usually ruined in about five minutes when a a some gaggle of Asian tourists come crashing down upon the White House in a flurry of Segways. 

Superbowl!

So in my twenty-two years of existence on this earth, I have never- not once- watched the Superbowl. Until last night. And it only took me about three minutes of my entire twenty-two years of existence on earth to know why I had never watched a Superbowl (or football match, for that matter) in my life: the game is idiotic. 

I miss the days of wardrobe malfunctions

It's basically a game of pushing people around until they fall. Yeah, that sounds awesome. And there is absolutely no athleticism required to play this game. And the fact that the game is paused every five seconds drives me absolutely insane. Get on with the damn game!

Anyways, the only reason I actually did watch the game this year was to introduce the wonderful sport of football to our Chilean friends who are studying in DC for the semester. Obviously they do not watch football in Chile. It might be for the lack of obese men in their country or for the fact that Americans are the only people who seem to derive pleasure from watching grown men run literally run into each other and then later slap each other's asses (seriously... why?) Naturally, when watching football- and especially the Superbowl- it is necessary to have a spread of beer, chips, salsa and other fried delicacies. Thanks to my lovely friend Jenn and her slight OCD, we had an amazing spread. There also was a mild chicken genocide in the kitchen, but no biggie. 

I do have to say my favorite part of the night was picking up on the sexual puns with my friend, Brad and reading the Onion tweets about the game. Favorite of the night is definitely "Roethlisberger needs to get it up now!" (Um.. isn't that what got him in trouble the last time?... Too soon?) Favorite tweet of the night is courtesy of OnionSports: "#Steelers: Roethlisberger should do what he does best: take advantage of young, vulnerable defense #SuperBowl" Basically it was a shit on Roethlisberger while sipping out of our Heineken mini keg kind of night.

Obviously the best part of the Superbowl were the commercials. My personal favorite was Groupon. Sure it's all controversial- but they were really the only ones that actually delivered. The rest were... megh. Almost as megh as this blog post. Seriously, I've lost my pizazz. I have a post coming up about the protests in Egypt (I was at a rally outside the Egyptian embassy on Saturday) but until then I'll just bore you with this incredibly dry and mundane entry. 

In other news, however, I found out that the 5k I had registered for is actually a 5 mile run. So I need to really pick up my training on that. And I need to start searching around for some half-marathon races in Boston over the summer- so if anyone has any recommendations post 'em here!

Until my next super exciting entry! Stay classy! 

Breaking the Silence

Last night I ended up at a J-Street sponsored event that highlighted the work and celebrated the book release of an organization in Israel called Breaking the Silence. The organization has collected testimonies from Israeli soldiers since 2004. Their information is open sourced and has been used by a variety of sources- including political platforms. The organization themselves, however, have just recently published their material in a book, in which I also received a copy. The aim of their organization is to offer transparency to the IDF and raise awareness about the reality facing Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories. 

I decided to attend the event rather spontaneously and was glad that I did. I find the organization compelling, especially since I have both known and currently know people serving in the Gaza and the West Bank. 

Reading through the book also reminded me of a conversation that I recently had with a friend who is dating a post-army Israeli. We were discussing the issue of PTSD and how it is so often ignored and undiagnosed in Israeli society. I remember particularly a boy I went out with who had recently finished his service in Gaza and was telling me stories of his day-to-day life. He was re-telling his stories with the distinct purpose of showing off (and let's face it- trying to get into my pants) and I could not help but be completely mortified. Every story he told me had me seriously concerned that I would be one day called as a witness in a war crimes tribunal. The things he had done were so wrong and so strikingly inhumane.