Where is home..

So as you probably know by now, I went back to Orlando last weekend. It was mostly to see Rami, as my time with friends is this coming weekend, but I did manage to surprise my sister and Christine pretty good by having Rami invite them to dinner and then showing up. Hehe, so that was fun. And seeing Rami was great... But seeing the campus, and Orlando, was really hard. I spent alot of time in that airport, in that tower, in that dorm room, in all those places that used to be home. And now, home is in Houston and it looks really weird from the air, stuff I cant recognize.
I worked super long days in order to the the 9/80 which is 80 hours in 2 weeks but instead of doing 8 hrs for 10 days, you work the same number of hours in only 9 days, adding the extra 8 hours to the first 8 days. So I did that, which was alot of long days, in order to get out at 3:00 on thursday and get Friday off. My flight was late cuz of the weather in Houston, though of course the weather in Orlando wasnt any better, thanks to Tropical Storm Fay. Then we got Pita Pit (yay! super yay! love a pita pit gyro!).
The next day I helped him get ready for school... buying books and groceries. Then we went to services and dinner at the Chabad rabbi's house. It was certainly an interesting experience. In case you aren't familiar with the finer points of Chabad judaism... the women and men sit separate at prayer, the rabbi doesn't touch women other than his wife (like to shake their hand or anything), and theres hand washing and wine drinking and... Well you know me so you know how I take the whole women sitting separately thing. Its an equality thing, because separate but equal is not really equal, and a specific to my female engineer kind of feminism thing, because equal doesn't mean the-same-as and I don't want to be equal but different, I want to be the same. Its a holdover from the days when women weren't really educated in reading and writing and all the things necessary to pray, and so our non-praying presence was a distraction. And in general I do not like the hold overs from the days before women were equal because that, to me, is the same as holding over the idea that women are not equal. In specific its not equal because the rabbi (a male) stands over with the males and we in the women side cant see him. Plus the girls really arent given the same incentive to shut up and pay attention so they don't. It makes immersion in the service difficult, feels isolating. And I'm not sure that I will ever be able to mesh super girl power engineer with that separate and unequal dogma. But I thought about it, and I love him and I have decided that I can just button up and deal with it, if never learn to like it.
We saw the house bunny (cute but dumb.. as expected) and rented Untraceable (really good but not for those who cant do weird torture scenes cuz its bizzare and gross), and saw Deathrace which was actually really good, for what it was. Joan Allen, man, she is a scary lady. And I got pita pit and longhorn (mmm desert pear margarita) and steak and shake. And I got to go to publix. Which is just awesome, and Kroger can never compare. And we made funfetti.

Its weird because Orlando felt so much like home, all the familiar places, people, things. But then I got back, got into my car, and drove back to my apartment and this kinda felt familiar too. Instead of making me feel better though, it made me feel worse. Where is home? What is home? Do I really have a home? I don't know. Anyways, going back there tomorrow. Then I don't really know what, because operator class starts on the 15th and then we supposedly have about 2 months of this heavy scheduling with no days off expected and the Jewish holidays are using up any potential bargaining I have. I guess if nothing else Rami and I will have to see each other for a regular lengthed weekend, without the extra day. Would suck but better than not seeing each other at all. I wonder when time starts moving faster, when it stops seeming like a week lasts forever. I just wanna get into it and wake up and have it be 3 years from now, have this stuff mostly behind me.

One cool thing is going on... I'm learning russian. And its really hard. More on that later. Love you all.