p where u shower – it’s juss different.

Has anyone ever told you, “don’t shower where you pee?”

If you said “yes”, then I want to meet the person who told you that because I’m pretty sure I made it up. (I just called you a liar in a very passive way)

But on the realz: if anyone has ever told you that, they couldn’t be more wrong.

I know from personal experience. I literally shower where I pee; like almost on top of my toilet.

the toilet is in there.

No seriously. I do. And there’s good news.

The good news is I’m constantly cleaning my toilet.

The other day I was squeezing and hitting the conditioner bottle against my palm and the conditioner slipped out into the toilet bowl. Plop. Consider yourself conditioned, T.Bowl.

The bad news is…well, there is no bad news. It’s juss different!

You would think my brain would have created the muscle memory to put down the toilet seat before I showered, but everything about my toilet/shower situation is far from natural. Men would love living here because I would most likely yell at them for putting the toilet seat down – for fear of losing cleaning opportunity. “How many times do I have to tell you, keep the toilet seat up…damnit”!

Like music to your ears, yeah? Speaking of, MUSIC BREAK:

This is my song of the month. You can hear me screaming it if you’re at least in continental Europe.

Do you want me to keep up the potty talk? Cause I can. Or you can just message me privately and we can keep this topic going. Totally cool with it.

Let’s move on.

I’ve been in a relationship with CNN this week (it’s official, yayyy). And if my calendar is correct, I think it’s going to last another week.

On a non-political, completely serious note: I would just like to wish all those struggling under Sandy’s aftermath a smooth and speedy recovery. My heart goes out to all of those affected by the storm, and I promise we won’t forget about you as America enters election week. Hoping you receive more media coverage than this fluffy campaign.

Withering Weather:

It was +7 today! Yes, exclamation point included. That converts to about 37 degrees Fahrenheit. What I’ve come to realize is that as the temperature drops, the more mind I lose; an indirect relationship, is it? I get excited, genuinely excited, when I see anything above -1 degrees Celsius.

Anything above 0 and you don’t have to wear gloves or an extra set of ears when jogging around town. And if you follow the sun and avoid tall buildings, you may even be able to lose your knee-high wool socks for above-ankle wool socks. The joy.

see: awkward, sunlight and no ear muffs

Ice: you actually can jog on. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Do people think you’re absolutely ludicrous? Sure, but if you stay on main roads, you might even find slush that looks like a coca cola slushy. Just watch out for pipes that excrete water…chances are the water is not a shiny puddle, but a layer of slippery ice. Weeeeeeeeee

Dimming Daylight:

We fell back an hour last week. It gets dark around 4:30pm. Next month it will be 3:30pm. With darkness comes yawning, wiping the sleep out of your eyes, and thoughts of warm dinner, couches, and CNN. I’m not someone who’s typically affected by minor environmental changes, but you actually cannot control the fact that your body thinks it’s almost bed time in the middle of the day. This will undeniably take some time and doubling up on cappuccino.

Chospitality (Hospitality):

As old as the oldest Jew, Abraham. I had a great conversation with the teens about what it means to be Jewishly hospitable, or hospitably Jewish. Hence why I say “chospitality”; or really “hachnasat orchim”. It’s a mitzvah, you know?

When a guest comes, you give them water to wash their feet and attend to their animals. You smile and seem “happy” throughout the meal, no matter what’s pressing you. The laws go on and on, and there’s no doubt that we can translate the ancient ones to modern times.

The last one got me thinking. “Smile and seem happy”; turning off your brain and being fully present. Can you?

In 2010, while beginning my trip to Israel, the tour guide provided us with this quote, “you are where your thoughts are.” Ironically, this stopped my thinking. She was right. How could I possibly drink this trip dry if my thoughts were at home with mom, on a bike ride with dad, or sitting in next semester’s classes?

I see turning your brain off as an art, a skill. It’s a muscle that has to be trained – and I fully believe it’s vital to a healthy human life. We are filled with so much stimulation and added stress every day, and the ability to shut it down will not only bring mental health, but physical and emotional health.

I solemnly swear, when you come into my house, my attention is on you. When you come into my Facebook messenger, my attention is on you. Skype, viber, phone call, it’s on you or else I’m not answering and I’ll tell you otherwise. Chospitality in 2012.

Day trippa, yeah:

I traveled 185.4 km to Tartu, Estonia on Thursday. A few of us from Tallinn went to join the Jewish Community of Tartu to formally “open” their calendar year. Remember how I told you it gets dark by 4:30? Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the city by daylight, but the academic buildings, alcoholic drinking parks, and abundance of “kohvik baars” (coffee bars) were enough to fill my university culture void.

Tartu has a wild history. It’s Estonia’s second largest city and an intellectual hub to a “T”.Tartu University is one of the leading scientific schools in “semiotics”, the study of signs and sign processes. If you like metaphors and analogies, this is your dream field of study.

There used to be a synagogue. It was actually home to the majority of Estonia’s Jews until WW2. See synagogue below:

Tartu also gave me a dose of common Estonian eats: TONGUE. I took a photo of it, but I could not find the tongue to eat it – and I like trying crazy food! Though after having a mostly meat-free, paleo diet for the past month and a half, my mind couldn’t fathom the idea of putting tongue on my tongue…and digesting it. Gulp. 😛

More Tartu info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartu

Other cool (or freezing) things:

The Rabbi calls me Thursday morning. “Jen, boker tov (good morning), mah shlomech (how are you)? You’ve been in Estonia over a month now yes? You must come to Shabbat dinner tomorrow night. See you then, bye!”

So I went to my first Shabbat dinner at the Rabbi’s house. Talk about CHospitality! Jameson on the table, and 15 others around it. 10 of which were beautiful kids who looked almost identical (brothers and sisters of course). The 2 beside me were… AMERICAN. They moved to Finland 2 weeks ago and were in town visiting Tallinn for the weekend. It was a great night of shared culture; we talked about languages in 3 different languages, traveling, living internationally, and much more.

The best part: each time I heard Russian I found comfort. I actually asked the kids to speak in Russian instead of Hebrew, a language I’m much more familiar with. “Bevakashsa, medaber b’Russki” (Hebrew: Please, speak in Russian).

And today I went on a great jog through Old Town to the very top of the Old Town mountain. I made a pit stop to the oldest apteek (apothecary) in Estonia, est. 1400’s. See below:

I ended my jog catching the sunrise just next to the salmon pink Estonian Parliament building. Then, of course, indulging in the infamous CHEESE (JUUSTU) WRAP:

Now back to watching the same election highlights loop on CNN. ROCK CHALK!

Cheese please,

Jenstonia – shower where you pee. 

22 going on 22

I used to be a lot of things.

I used to be angry, I used to be quiet. I was tough, over-determined, and yearned to be perfect. At 4, I was a competitive soccer coach’s dream player, but I was my own worst enemy. That lasted another 14 years.

I was “13 going on 30”, so they used to say. An old soul, a wise owl, whatever metaphor floats your ferry. Truth be told, I was confused as hell.

I was mad at the world and didn’t understand destructive human behaviors and unfiltered speech. Of course I wasn’t a toddler saying “I don’t understand destructive human behavior”, but my soul quivered at the sight or sound of anything “evil”. The concept of “karma” was innate and I constantly thought about the world outside of Jen.

What I didn’t understand was that my thoughts and behaviors were, in fact, self-destructive. I became what I disliked the most.

Self-aware to a fault. Determined to a fault. Thought-provoking to a fault. Deep to a fault.

At 12 I had 30 year-olds coming to me with their relationship problems; At 13 I had peers asking me to wake them up at 6am so they could join me on a morning run and become overly health-conscious like I was. I got along better with adults than with kids my age. Teachers were my best friends and in effect, my pre-mature maturity provided me with more opportunities and responsibilities than “normal”.

I was. I was. I was.

I used to be a lot of things.

At 18, I made a conscious decision to stop trying to figure out life.

Quit analyzing so much, quit finding faults, quit fixing, quit searching, quit finding meaning.  

Start enjoying.

So I started enjoying.

Yep, that easy. No thinking, just doing.

My king-of-the-party brother definitely helped pave the way along with a boyfriend who was warm, open, spontaneous and the least “deliberate” person I know.

Now I choose to recognize constructive human behaviors and filter unfiltered speech. I know the world and people within it can’t be perfect and say the right things at the right time, but I can choose how it affects me.

I choose not to be mad at the world. I choose to embrace the good and say “nice try” to the bad. I’ve had enough practice to turn the bad into good to where finding good has become a natural reflex. I trained my brain at 18 and made a conscious change. So when people praise my positive attitude and my view on day-to-day life, not only is it a major compliment on the person I’ve BECOME, but it’s a testament to what we all can do.

This isn’t a post to pat who I’ve become on the back; it’s a post to show that my previous posts aren’t a crock of shit. I’m not embellishing my experiences to make you feel good about my adventures; I’m showing you the world inside my head that I took time to build.

 

I used to be a lot of things, but I’ve always been a word-person.

I believe in the power of words. I love the power of words. I adore the power of words. I respect the power of words. 99% of the time, I am careful, deliberate and sensitive with the words that come out of my mouth. I know saying something can make someone’s day or break someone’s day. Not saying something has the same power. What is said can never be unsaid.

I learned that when I think something negative and utter something negative, it essentially effects how I feel… negatively. The more I do it, the more it becomes habit. The more it becomes a part of everyday life, the less likely I am to skip around in a field of flowers and sing about how beautiful the world is. In fact, the image of happiness becomes aversive.

So I chose to think something positive, utter something positive, feel good, and make that a habit. In effect, that image of bumming around and being a cynic about the world becomes aversive.

And now, I am 22 going on 22. Comfortable with my age, comfortable with the world. I feel I’m right where I need to be, doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

“Life is too important to be taken seriously” a bundle of words very near and dear to my heart and what I’ll use to highlight the past few days:

Life is too important to be taken seriously, so I went to Helsinki for the day yesterday. Booked the tickets online at 10pm the night before and made the ferry 2-minutes before the gates closed.

Life is too important to be taken seriously, so I stayed up until 7am on Friday and Saturday to sing Russian karaoke and dance to Russian power ballads from the 60’s.

Life is too important to be taken seriously, so I sat in seminars at  Jahad, a weekend convention bringing together 500 Estonian Jews, and listened to intellectual discussions in Russian and had no idea what was going on.

Life is too important to be taken seriously, so I watch 90s v 80s music on vh1 instead of the debate on CNN.

I’ll close with this awesome conversation I had with my supervisor on the way to Parnu, where the convention was:

• A: “Jen, did you bring your bathing suit?”
• B: “No, it’s like winter outside”
• A: “They have spa, you can wear mine”
• B: “Uhh, no I can’t”
• A: “Yes, you can, it’s like gummy”

Dance the night away,

Jenstonia – it’s supposed to snow on Friday.

The PERFECT Sandwich

This will be my last post in America – though I’m not promising anything. So read up:

1. 1/3: Round challah bread. Slow roasted brisket. Apples. Honey. Kugel – hold the raisins.
2. 1/3: One week in Tallinn, Estonia.
3. 1/3: Repent sins with a side of 24hour fast

I know I overuse and abuse the adjective “PERFECT”, but this recipe is really sitting well in my stomach. With 5 days remaining until I make moves to Estonia, I realized I’ve been served a pretty fantastic high holiday sandwich.

Why? How? Are you using another metaphor to prove your point? Yes, of course I am. If I could use a metaphive, I would.

I’m being served the perfect sandwich because a higher power is basically saying, “Happy Jewish new year, indulge in foods that are 1,200kcal per serving; get on a plane to Estonia – because the altitude and sodium from the brisket will do wonders to your ankles and phalanges; during the first week, you’re off the hook if you offend anyone, so please lose your passport and proudly get lost finding your apartment coming back from your first outing. Come to Shul on Yom Kippur, pray and pound your heart out, and don’t even think about food. Have an enriching, meaningful year.”

Of course I won’t intentionally stuff up my first week, but I’m also finding it peaceful that maybe I don’t have to be so hard on myself if I do end up getting excommunicated my first week. Not likely, but the sandwich is looking good for me.

To everyone observing, HAPPY 5773 – wishing you a sweet, happy, and sandwich-filled year! Make sure you check out Tallinn’s FB page here and sift through some photo’s!

Cheers,

Jenstonia – reporting from America, but not for long!