Party Like It's 1986

As an anthropology student, I was trained that making value judgments about the relative value of a culture is ethnocentric and inherently wrong. That's why you shouldn't take it lightly when I say that 1980's pop culture is the worst culture in the recorded history of humanity. After all, the 1980's brought us Madonna, Duran Duran, leg warmers and stick up bangs. Total garbage. Of course because it was so ridiculous, the 80's are ripe for parody. The movie Wet Hot American Summer is a parody of Jewish summer camps in the 80's. It's high comedy and I recommend it to all of you. Last night, I attended a Wet Hot American Summer end of the semester/tribute party.

You wouldn't know it by this photo,
but I was wearing short shorts.

It was a good party, and it was made better by the appearance of one Mina Ben Meir, also known as my Hebrew Ulpan teacher for the past year. Yes, my ulpan teacher came and partied with us, and it was awesome. She always used to talk to us in class about how she likes doing wine parties on the weekends, and she's so chill that she was totally comfortable just sitting and doing toasts with her students. It was awesome. Check it out!

Mina is in the middle, my friend Elana is on the left.

Israel in June is exceedingly hot, and yesterday's high was 34 degrees centigrade. That's hot. It wasn't that hot by nighttime, but in a cramped apartment in Hadar with too many bodies, there was steam on the air nonetheless. I took off my shirt to cool off and was reminded of a horrible truth - I could strip down to my birthday suit and still be uncomfortably warm. This damn fur coat that I'm wearing all the time just won't let me cool off in the summer!

Me and Ze, one of the Brazilian Jews here in Haifa.

People have already begun leaving en masse so I've had to say goodbye more times then I wanted to and it's only Friday. Many more goodbyes to go before I finally step onto a plane and head back to the states. I've got some butterflies in my stomach about the whole thing, but I'm trying to keep it cool. My last Shabbat here in Israel is just ahead of me, and I'll try to take advantage of it. Shabbat Shalom.

Bonnie and Danielle at the party