Just an update on what I have been up to this week:

Spent a lot of time with Kristina, a fellow Fulbrighter this week. Her field is private philanthropic organizations - she is a person who is sensative and very concerned about others. As we were deciding what movie to watch on Thursday (eliminating any movie that could potentially contain suffering or bad things happening) we came across "The Way We Were," about which Kristina posited plaintively, "I don't know about this one... why isn't it the way we ARE?"

Then Friday evening Kristina, Danny, Kim and I made my mom's famous matzoh ball soup. I went to the kosher store that I passed one time in the second district on the other side of the Danube to get the matzoh and matzoh meal. The young orthodox man working there asked me if I wanted Israeli or French matzoh and meal, and I didn't realize there was a difference, but he explained that the French version of the meal was finer and of the matzoh was thinner and lighter. I didn't feel like living dangerously so I just got the Israeli kind.

The batch did turn out well, even though the balls did fall apart a little (I know, mom... more matzoh meal next time...). Kim chopped the onions and deboned the chicken, Kristina peeled and chopped the carrots, cut up the celery and stirred the matzo and onions and Danny helped make the balls. As for me, well, I supervised... The soup was good and my favorite comment of the evening was when (after we'd been at it for a good hour and a half and still weren't done) Kim asked, "so, they were fleeing Egypt and they had time to stop and make this?!" (it was actually matzoh itself that they made, not the soup, in case you were wondering). We had a lot of balls left over even after utilizing all the pots in Kristina's kitchen. We even had some matzoh left over and Kristina wants to make matzoh brie out of it. I have never actually made matzoh brie, so I went online to find a recipe. I learned that there are about 100 recipes for matzoh brie, the most international of which was the "matzoh brie parmigiana." Hey, why not?