Some updates and some thoughts

What should I begin with? the update or the thoughts? hmmm...
update- coz it's not gonna be very long... Tonight is my last night in this apartment (I should be saying my apartment, or maybe I should even say: our apartment) before I go back to Israel. Tomorrow we're going to Rob's parents' for the weekend and my flight back is on Sunday night. We're gonna meet about 15 members of his family- all gonna stay at his parents' house (yes, it's gonna be like camp or something). They are all coming for a special occasion called "Landkreislauf"= the Landkreis (= district) race. Every year there's a relay race in that region, there's usually about 200 groups, each has 11 runners. The big prize is winning the race, and everyone gets a T-shirt of that year (every year it's a different color...). This year Rob's family decided to celebrate his grandma's 85 birthday in a special way: 11 of her 19 grand kids are gonna form into a group and run for her in the race. They even got matching T-shirts with "85" in the front, and in the back it says: "Elfriedes Enkel" = meaning "Elfriede's grandchildren". I specifically wanted to see this race- and that's one of the reasons I stayed in Germany until now... They are all coming from Austria except for Rob, his sister and brother and one cousin. I already know I'm gonna hear a lot of German, even more than I did so far here in Germany, and I'm gonna be "the girlfriend from Israel"... I already met about 4 of his cousins, and they were super nice. So I still have hope to have fun this weekend... lol... I volunteered to be the photographer of the occasion- hope I get to take as many pictures of the ppl running as possible...

and now:

some thoughts.

well. I was watching the half finale of the Eurovision contest (until I was too bored with the poor quality of the songs) online (the internet is the best invention ever!), and a few thoughts popped out in my head. Especially the language issue. I used to love this contest when I was young, used to wait for it every year, maybe because it was a contest with Europe that Israel was a part of, maybe because I was allowed to stay up until it's over (which was really late for what I was usually allowed) and maybe because I like music (but that couldn't be a reason coz the music there was never my taste really). But I think that the main reason was the intentionality of the contest, and above it all- all the different languages I could hear. It was an introduction to other cultures and other languages- served on a silver plate. You didn't have to open the encyclopedia (back then we used real books- there was no internet and no Wikipedia!), you didn't have to ask a million questions when your cousin came back from abroad- you just had to turn your TV on once a year for a couple of hours and watch this contest. They even used to show short flicks about each country and their views and customs. But today it's all different. Today most of the countries send pop songs that all sound the same, they sing mostly in English- and if it's a good song it's nice- coz then I understand the lyrics, but if it's a bad one- it's terrible, for example: "You don't know how much I love you, you don't know how much I need you" in bad eastern European accent, they dress up really badly (or should I say dress down? they hardly wear anything on their bodies!) and they mix different cultures in one song- which usually I'm really not against culture mixing, I mean- just look at me and Rob and you'll say the opposite, but god, when a song starts with a man dressed in a 1001 nights costume, and plays the violin, and then another man dressed the same is banging a gong that looks Chinese and has a Chinese character on it, and then the singer (from Malta) sings in English- I say enough!
So the contests these years are a bit dull (if not very), un-educating in the cultural manner (which was the whole point) and generally lost it's flare...
But a habit is a habit- and it's hard to kick a habit- so I watched the half finale a bit, and hopefully the Israelis will make it to the finals...
Hope to write again soon, I'm not sure when I'll have time, there's a good chance it'll already be in Israel!