Cleaning the kitchen and other Pesach rituals

Well, last night we de-chametz-ed our kitchen. Not too hard actually. I took everything out of the food cupboards and cleaned the cupboards. I then replaced everything in the cupboards (you can tell I thought this through before I started, can't you!) and we sealed them up - having come to the conclusion that we have so little kosher-le-pesach foodstuff that it could live on the counter for the duration. We then cleaned the counters thoroughly. The toaster went into a series of bags and was taped up and hidden, and the microwave interior was thoroughly cleaned. Behind the microwave got cleaned, possibly for the first time since it took up residence in the kitchen.

The kitchen is now clean, and as our cleaner is in today she has very clear instructions to clean the oven thoroughly, to mop the floor thoroughly. I felt a bit bad about getting her to do this, but seeing as I have to get up at 6.15 in the morning and it was already 11.30 when we finished the other cleaning, I took a guilt trip on the chin and got some sleep. Plus, as Mr Wonderful pointed out, she's the cleaner and this is what she really should be doing anyway.

So I went to bed happy in the knowledge that we had done as best we could - as regards cleaning and de-chametzing (I wonder if there's a proper term for this...) the flat, at least.

However, now comes the Seder night meal. This is a meal filled with symbolic cups of wine and foods. The meal is governed by the Haggadah (good explanation on wikipedia), which is a book explaining the exodus from Egypt and why Seder night is different. It's a bit complex so I won't even try to summarise it, but suffice it to say that both Seder ngihts I have previously experienced led to a certain amount of debate concerning when exactly each cup of wine should be drunk. The Haggadah is supposed to present an order which is uniform but the multitude of different books always have slight differences. Some would say this encourages discussion and ensures nothing is done unquestioningly, but the first time I encountered this I was slightly surprised - disconcerted even. If these guys can't agree how to do it and they've had 50 years of adult experience of this, how was I ever going to work it out?

This will be my third Seder experience. I'm nervous. I remember having problems with eating the boiled egg in salt water (makes me retch if I'm not very careful), and the massive amount of Hebrew spoken. This year we're going to my Hebrew teacher's house, and she's having 17 people to her Seder night. This would normally get me apprehensive, but add in the boiled egg/ salt water (bleurgh) and the fact that I'm going to be reading a passage in Hebrew has led to the inevitable conclusion of butterflies of hitherto unprecedented levels nesting in my stomach. Now, I want to read the passage but I sometimes confuse the sound "o" with the sound "u"; mistake "r" for "v" and have been known to even (I'm proud of this) mix up "b" with "v" and "k" and "ch". In my defence, the letter groups I mix up do look similar but I really should be over this by now.

I've got to go home and practice this before making a complete banana of myself by either (a) retching at the table (not good manners, from my brief research into Debretts) or (b) reading my Hebrew worse than a small child, especially as one of the 15 other people could well be offended by action (a) or (b).