Things are starting to get critical. I’m leaving in a day and still haven’t done laundry, made key copies, or cleaned my apartment. Eeek! Det börjar brinna i knutarna, sagt man auf Schwedish.
I spent half the day yesterday frantically sending emails to get my shit in order work-wise before I leave. The other half was spent running around town like a headless chicken buying stuff for my father and buying myself a pair of canvas shoes and a linen shirt (both feel like essentials for the modern summer traveler).
I am about (insh-allah) to publish the long article about Chabad’s outreach activties in Williamsburg that I wrote for a class. Thus I wanted to touch base with Leah, the Chabad lady (who I should clarify to those who don’t know is 26 years old, in case anyone is picturing an old woman) to make sure she was ok with appearing in print and also make sure that there were no inaccuracies in the article.
Earlier Leah had offered to lend me a book about a Lubavitcher family by a writer named Lis Harris — originally a series of articles that appeared in the New Yorker. So, I popped by for the book and for a chat. (Since I hadn’t heard back from Leah after sending her the article ten days ago I was secretly worried she was offended by it). All went well and I emerged from the meeting with two extra books on loan (for my spiritual edification, courtesy of Leah).
Leah also introduced me to a custom I was not aware of. She gave me a dollar to give to charity during my journey (tzedakah) also to protect me during my travels. Apparently this act of giving for someone else is called Shliach Tzedakah (Shliach means emissary, I am her tzedakah emissary of sorts). And yes, I am probably ruining it by blogging about it, but whatever.
After I deliberated for a while over which country it would be best to give the dollar in, Leah gave me two more so I will have one for each country.
I am guarding the three dollar bills in a separate, secret place for depositing one in Stockholm, one in Berlin and one in Tel Aviv. Though it occurs to me now I will need to change them for local currency. Ah well, I will figure our a way around that.
Last but not least, in the evening I had a very enjoyable dinner with Miki and Sanna at Wild Ginger, my favorite vegan-Asian restaurant. As usual I was paralyzed by choice, I am so used to only having one vegetarian option. I can’t handle a whole menu full of choices.
