Back from the States

I returned from the States and I am back in my Prague routine - including my traditional late night Motzei Shabbat which usually creates a huge sleeping deficit and completely ruins the rest on my week:-) The trip to the States was a very interesting experience - and I really mean it. Meeting my old friends, seeing American conservative communities, visiting JTS, talking for hours to Marcus and spending a lot of time with rabbi Hammerman and his wife Sharon gave me a lot of food for thought. It is always helpful to leave your world and have a little bit of an insight from the outside. Sometimes one has to go over the ocean to see a bit more clearly what is in front of ones nose at home. But anyway, let´s not be so serious especially today, on Purim.

Let me just share a couple of things I learnt during the trip.

1. I can fundraise - I had no idea that I could.
2. "No fat milk" tastes like dairy dish water, "no fat horse-raddish cheese" tastes like plastic with horse-raddish flavor.
3. JTS is not what I thought it was, but that´s ok, because I should not have thought what I thought.
4. After fundraising in Florida I realised that the idea that "everybody should have the same" that I learnt as a child growing up in a communist country is stuck in my head more than I thought.
5. I miss my American friends.
6. I am prejudiced about Americans. I am ashamed of it.
7. Brooklyn bridge is atually quite short.
8. Some buildings in the US are really tall.
9. American Jews are crazy about Chinese food. That´s funny.
10. Drunk American undergraduates behave the same way drunk British undergraduates do.

And a Purim bonus at the end. This is a picture my friend Jana and myself from today´s purim megilah reading and carnival - I did not know what to dress up like this year so I brushed up my university gown - I wish I could wear it more often:-):