Homeward bound

We go home in exactly one month, and life is starting to turn more towards the States than Israel. It's hard to be present and in the moment when so much stuff is going on; finals, Scotland trip, moving to CA, moving to Cincinnati, finding an apartment, insurance, Jonathan finding a job, etc. We've even packed up three boxes of books to take to the post office and ship home. Whenever anyone came to visit, they always brought stuff with them; it was fabulous at the time, but it's proving more difficult now to schlep it all back. (Though never let it be said I’m ungrateful – I don’t know what I would have done without a new book infusion every now and then.)

Taking the cats home is becoming somewhat of a hassle, too. They need health vaccination forms at the vet, papers and stamps at the Ministry of Agriculture (which we can only visit on Wednesdays between 1:30-3pm), and then more papers with the customs agents at LAX... it's totally worth it, though, of course. All I'm saying is that they better appreciate it and snuggle with me lots!

On our way to dinner last night at Sharon and Nathan's, the visually-impaired woman I read to once a week, we had a mini-bus adventure. Jonathan, myself, and Rebecca (who had stopped by to chat and walked us to the bus stop) waited 20 minutes, which is a pretty long time for the #7. We got into a great discussion of how we are best suited to various rabbinic professions (e.g. should we be professors, congregational rabbis, chaplains, directors of a camp, or work in a college Hillel?) We saw the bus coming, hugged goodbye… and then it just whizzed right past! It didn’t even stop. We had to wait another 20 minutes to catch the next one. Needless to say, we were a bit late for dinner.

Jonathan has been making more oatmeal cookies to replace the batch that was burnt in the bomb threat, and the HUC students he's shared them with love them. Sharon, Nathan, and my dad’s family, however, didn’t. I had totally forgotten that Israelis don't like sugar. Nathan told him, “Whenever I have a recipe, I always halve the sugar.” “No kidding!” Jonathan said. “I always double it.” It's a cultural thing, I guess - Israel is so intent on veggies and whole wheat, that sugar and many processed foods aren't nearly as popular.

School-wise, nothing much interesting is happening. We had a ceremony for Yom Hashoah, and walked outside for the two minutes – it was amazing seeing taxi drivers stop their cabs and get out, and hearing construction noise stop for two minutes exactly. Aside from that, though, the only news is non-news…. It seems like all the teachers have realized that we only have two weeks of classes left, and they apparently have a month’s worth of lesson plans. I’ve never had so much work! It feels like I’m back in high school – I’ll have two finals per day during finals week, and three papers and two Hebrew compositions due beforehand… thank goodness I wasn’t behind at all, otherwise I’d be really lost.

One fun anecdote though: in discussing our upcoming final yesterday, my teacher, Osnat, informed us that we will be tested on all the verb form possibilities at once, not one at a time like we've been doing. We were a bit surprised, then worried - that makes the test much much harder. Then we asked if the verbs would be all mixed up, and she looked horrified. "Lo, lo!" (she explained, "no."). "Ani lo l'hiot sneaky!" (I won't be sneaky!) I loved her use of language, just as much as her announcement making it an easier test.

Oh, and Joe got his visa! We wanted to see it, but it was safely tucked away in the HUC safe. I’ve never been more happy with my Israeli passport. It’s saved so many problems. Even little things like paying for the water bill - they always want ID, and giving them the Israeli passport number saves on the explanations of "This is a CA Driver License? You don't own your apartment? Who is the landlord? How long have you lived there?" etc.

Oy, it got late. Off to light Shabbat candles...