A Lil Bit a This and a Lil Bit a That

Egypt Night/ Night of Nefertiti
Apparently after our trip to Egypt, some people just couldn’t let go, so activities committee planned a night to show off everyone’s souvenir purchases… little did these people know that my purchase made theirs look like cheep Chinese-made stuff. Not really but mine was pretty amazing. Moon, Cate and I gave each other Egyptian nicknames while we were in Egypt so I decided to use my dress bought in Egypt as a costume for my namesake, Nefertiti. Bryan jumped on my awesome scheme and dressed as Nefertiti’s husband Akhenaton. Moon was my makeup artist, which completed my ensemble. Everyone looked AMAZING! I’m pretty sure we became Egyptianized while in Egypt. Bryan and I walked the runway in the fashion show and I won “the most suggestive” award… oops. (That’s not what I was going for Mom and Dad). However, we decided that we should take full advantage of this award and take Biblical pictures of Potipher’s wife and Joseph. I think we’ll be contacted by the church soon for the use of our picture…

Pita Murderer
Who knows how these things get started?! Bryan, Shelby, Richelle and I were having a peaceful lunch on Sunday, discussing how we eat waaay too many pitas here, one thing led to another and we decided to have a pita eating contest for dinner. Weren’t we just saying we eat too many? Hm… Anyway, we spoke with Jimmy the chef about having an ample supply of pitas for dinner. With a skeptical look on his face, he agreed to have a separate batch prepared for us at dinner. Of course, I can’t do anything without dressing up for it, so Richelle and I suited up for battle ten minutes before dinner began. (Embarrassingly, we forgot that Bishop Burton is staying at the Jerusalem Center… he definitely saw us in our sweet outfits!). With war paint under our eyes and marathon numbers taped to our shirts, we rushed into the cafeteria to the song “Eye of the Tiger” while Moon announced our fighting names. Richelle, aka the Pita-nator and I, the pita murderer, sat down to a table full of pita and two boys looking up at us very afraid. I’m still not sure if they feared our pita eating or were just afraid of how we looked, but nonetheless, the games began after hands were shaken. The rule was that there had to be something on the pita, so I loaded a plate with peanut butter and honey and lightly dipped my pita into it from time to time. I tried the whole dipping it in water thing, with the hotdog eating contest as my guide, but that is NASTY! Hot milk was a little better… only a little better though. Finally, at pita number 8 I started slowing down. The branch president came over to cheer us on so I took another… I have too much pride to quit. Then on number 10, the Jerusalem Center Director came over to make us stop. I think he was embarrassed since we had Bishop Burton staying here. I’ve never been so happy to be stopped from an activity. Who knows how many I would have eaten for prides sake. The final tally was Shelby- 15, Bryan- 14, Richelle- 11, and me- 10. Richelle could have won it though. She was slower but she has total endurance, plus she only weighs about 110 pounds and the skinny ones are always the fighters! So in total, we four ate 50 pitas. Dad has been sending me e-mails threatening to fix pitas and hummus when I get home, maybe in 2 and ½ months I’ll be ready again… maybe.

Israeli Elections
My blog is properly named Miriam’s Shenanigans, because that is all I’ve posted in a while! Yesterday were the Israeli elections for the Prime Minister/ Parliament. Richelle and Moon saw t-shirts for the elections the other day, so we decided to find some to buy. Now, when we three put our minds to something, we don’t give up easily. Yesterday the weather turned chilly, while the wind blew hard all day and it rained/hailed continuously. Nothing could stop us from our journey though! We got a cab to West Jerusalem and began our hunt after picking up a scrumptious brownie filled pastry from our favorite shop… did I mention they have good food around here? T-shirt shop after t-shirt shop, rejection after rejection, we started to get down trodden. Finally we stopped in to see the Canon store people, because my roommates are good friends with them, and they told us to walk about 5 mins north on Ben Yehuda Street to some headquarters. After just about getting blown away by the wind, a total Mary Poppins experience, we found this shady looking place with campaign posters galore. So we waltzed all up in the headquarters of this man running for Israel Prime Minister, stuck our heads right into his office and received immediate attention from the secretary. She asked if she could help us and we said we’d like to buy some shirts. Having already gotten many strange looks, we got another one from her with a “why?” attached. I started getting slightly nervous that we were about to get into trouble until she continued with “why buy, I’ll give it to you for FREE!!!” We all cheered and she cheered too! People began sticking their heads out of offices and glaring, some old man even growled at us but then laughed ha… weird. Our new friend promptly returned with posters and t-shirts for us. We went outside the headquarters and were about to take a picture when some woman walked up and explained that she is from a newspaper in Texas and asked if she could take our picture. I guess we’re just dang photogenic because I have no idea why she would come to Israel and get pictures of Americans. So off we went, back to the cab, soaking wet and redeemed in our excursion with the treasure of unique t-shirts. Upon further investigation, the candidate, “he who shall not be named”- not because it’s bad but because I don’t know it, is kind of a communist. So I pretty much don’t want him to win at all, but doesn’t that make it so much cooler. I have a corrupt man’s campaign t-shirt from Israel… don’t get jealous ya’ll.