Yom Kippur

I've always gone home from Syracuse for Yom Kippur- never missed a year. This year its obviously a LITTLE difficult to get home in time so I spent the Day of Atonement Madrid-style. I woke up and went to Retiro (big park) with my friend and fellow Jew, Cara, to talk and think about how we can change and better our lives in the coming year. There was the option to attend services here but the only temple that we knew of was Orthodox and I wanted to be able to spend the day really thinking about my life and the year that has passed rather than sit in a temple. It would have been interesting to see what a Spanish service would be like, but I wanted to do things my way.

We walked around the park for awhile and then decided to rent a boat. The park has a decent sized lake in the middle of it where you can rent row boats for an hour. So, although we had some trouble first getting the hang of rowing, we were in the middle of the lake in no time. We brought notebooks with us and wrote down a list of goals for Spain and goals for life in general. It was a gorgeous day, and the perfect way to really think about life and what I want to get out of my experience here. Fasting wasn't has hard as I thought it would be, but after rowing and walking around for 3 hours I was exhausted.

After sundown, the school had a "break fast" for the us...bagels and cream cheese and lox. I have officially realized that I'm not a fan of lox. I never really gave it a chance but after trying it, I definitely know that its not for me. It has been so strange because I started fasting while everyone at home was still eating and now I can eat but they are still fasting- all because of the time difference. For dinner, my senora is making hamburgesas (hamburgers) and because she wanted to do something special for Yom Kippur, she's making me a chocolate tarte! Fasting all day has its perks.