Waaay back: Pre-Pesach

So, Pesach. The break is a month long, and Hepzi and I spent the first 2 weeks in Amsterdam and Poland. No, we didn't do anything wild and crazy in Amsterdam, we saw Anne Frank's house and the Spanish-Portegese shul, toured for a bit in the countryside and had a relaxing shabbos. We went to a museum Sunday morning and took this tiny Italian plane for the short hop over the the boot-shaped country. That's still how I identify it on a map, by the way. Italy is a bit more complicated, so to sum up it was basically a whirlwind of museums, shuls, and finding food to eat. We were in Rome until Wednesday afternoon, Florence until Sunday morning and Venice until Tuesday afternoon, when we hopped a long train back to Rome for our flight early Wednesday morning. We were at the airline booth before the security, and the people wouldn't check us in until security had played 20 questions. ("Haim at m'daberet Anglit?" "Huh? I mean, kein, ktzat." Then they give you fishy looks) We actually met Chava on her connection in Rome, and took the sheirut back to school together.
So, that left me a few days to prep for Pesach. No big deal, right. Oh, I wish. First, I checked my e-mail, casually seeing what I missed, only to find that I needed to choose college classes for next year, and I needed to send my choices by 9 am Eastern to my college. Needless to say, I flipped. I was up until 3 in the morning, on my phone with a Dina M. (she's at Queens now) going over teachers and classes and time slots and I finally sent it in. (For the curious, my classes are all in place and my scheduale is nuts)
Then I found out, that due to construction, the washing machines were not working as promised. Now, that washing machines had been out of comission since a day before break, so I had 3 weeks worth of laundry to do, and not enough clothes to cover me for all of Pesach. So I got a little panicked and ended up calling Aviva G., a friend of mom's in Katamon for the year, and she let me use her washer and dryer, and she totally saved me, as I had no clue how to wash all of that in a bathtub.
After all of this, Shoshi and I checked out plans for the first days (in Efrat) and planned that we needed to buy 4 bottles of wine and a few afternoon snacks on Friday before catching the 167. We bumped into some people we know on Ben Yehuday (who doesn't) before catching the bus and being unable to find the entrance to the Ohr Torah Stone guest house in Efrat. We had the building, we just took ages to find the door. Then we prepped for Shabbos and ran off to shul to bring in shabbos. Next time: Pesach!