Sandy's Coming for a Visit!

Greetings from Mercedes Street!

Things are going well here, though we are gearing up for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Sandy. I think we are all feeling a combination of excitement and sheer terror about the impending doom. We have been told to expect fallen trees, a flooded basement and a 3-day power cut, during which there will probably be no school. Yippee! I think the kids are due a break from school anyway - they went ALL of last week. We don't want them overdoing it. Luckily, next Tuesday they'll have the day off for election day, so not much risk of that.

We have been warned to prepare ourselves for the storm and the power cut, and have received plenty of advice from experienced locals, some of it quite alarming ("Tape down your windows." "Put passports in a ziplock bag by the door for a quick getaway."). Avrom (yes, Avrom!!!) just came back with Leora and Eitan from the supermarket, laden down with essentials such as bottled water (apparently the water supply could become contaminated - yikes!), batteries and candles. Of course, there were some questionable purchases, too, such as chocolate eclairs, Halloween cupcakes and wasabi peas. No surprises there.

Anyway, we hope that the weather reports are exaggerated and that Sandy just passes by and waves at us from a distance. We'll see...

Meanwhile, the week came and went without too much excitement. Avrom was in Israel from Sunday to Tuesday for work. Don't be offended if he didn't make contact. He was very busy, and I think the 2 quick deliveries that I begged him to do in Ra'anana used up all of his spare time. He even took an adorable little present (which I was rather proud of) for our new nephew and forgot to give it to him, bringing it all the way back here.

(This was particularly annoying because it meant that I had to spend a very unpleasant 10 minutes in the Teaneck post office yesterday trying to send it by post. The post office guy was the most miserable person I've met in America so far, and was completely uninterested in entering into a discussion with me about whether the small envelope I was sending was a letter ($1 postage) or a package ($5 postage), even though it weighed almost nothing. He was really quite menacing. Certainly lived up to the crazy postal worker stereotype. Won't be going there again in a hurry.)

So we had an Avrom-less Sunday, but I was not going to be put off by that, and decided to take the kids to the nearby Fort Lee Historic Park for a bit of a history lesson and a mini-tiyul. It taught me two things: (1) We need to mug up on our American history if we are going to make any sense of these day-trips. (2) Going on a tiyul the day after 2 of your kids have been out at sleepovers is not a clever idea.

Luckily, they somehow managed to push through their initial exhaustion and extreme grumpiness and we actually ended up having a very pleasant afternoon wandering among the canons and pretty autumn foliage, and posing for photos. Here's one of them. See if you can figure out which two were at sleepovers...And which one is the biggest poser...

As you may have noticed from my impromptu post yesterday, the elections are pretty big news at the kids' school. They've all been learning snippets of information about the electoral system, the issues and the candidates. Leora had to learn Obama's and Romney's birthdays this week. I'm not quite sure how that piece of information will come in useful, but you never know. And of course the kids got to meet the candidates yesterday when the school brought in two life-sized cardboard cut-outs of them. I'm sorry, but I just found that very funny. Don't ask me why.

This week we look forward to celebrating our first American birthday - Maya will be turning 9 on Monday. We're not sure what we're going to be doing for it yet, but I suspect it will involve torches (flashlights), candles and scooping water out of the basement. It will be a memorable birthday, no doubt.

Before I sign off, I have a service announcement: If you would like to leave a comment, don't be put off by the request for a URL. Just ignore it and leave your name. And I'm going to remove the robot test for now to make things a bit easier. But please don't let your robots have access to my blog because it won't be able to detect them. (If you've never tried to leave a comment then you won't get this robot talk. Never mind. Just ignore me.)

Have a great week!

I think it's time for us to leave!!!!

This was just posted on the school website:

Don't worry, they also had an Obama.

Can you imagine this in Ariel School???

Me again

Hi everyone

I hope things are going well with all my faithful readers - especially those kind souls who, according to my Google statistics, are checking out my weekly updates from Russia and Germany! Zdravstvujtye! Guten tag!

Contrary to what I wrote last week, we didn't make it to the Statue of Liberty in the end. There were no tickets. Apparently it's quite a popular attraction and you have to book early. Luckily we found this out in the comfort of our own home, and didn't trek all the way to the ferry. So, in a display of great flexibility and spontaneity, we changed our plans and spent the day at the Bronx Zoo. Yes - that's the zoo where some guy threw himself into the tiger enclosure a couple of weeks ago. Lovely. We saw some cool animals and learnt some interesting stuff - did you know that a panther is just a black leopard? If you look closely you can even see the spots. I can't believe we never knew that. Anyway, we had a fun day out with only a small amount of bickering and whinging, and Avrom spent at least 60% of it not on his emails or talking on the phone. So that's not bad.

School is still going well. I found out today that Tzofia pledges her allegiance to the flag of the United States of America on a daily basis. That came as a bit of a surprise. For some reason the bigger kids don't do it. Must find out why that is. Another part of her morning routine in kindergarten is the "Question of the day". Every morning, there is a question written on the board for the kids to answer by writing their names in one of two columns. Typical questions are: Do you like vanilla or chocolate ice-cream? Have you ever been to Israel? I was a little taken aback when she told me one day this week that the question of the day was: "Who do you like more, Jackson Pollock or Monet?" In case you're wondering, she has a strong preference for Pollock, but you'll have to discuss it with her if you want an in-depth explanation. She said something about "it's cool how he flicks the paint".

We are really enjoying the incredible autumn (sorry, fall) colours on the trees. In fact, I feel I ought to post a photo. This is what we see when we open our front door.

That doesn't really do it justice. It's much more like this:

But without the water.

Anyway, it's all very pretty, but I think the kids are getting a bit bored of my constant oohing and aahing.

That's all I have to report for now. Have a great week and be in touch! I'm sure something interesting must be going on in Israel, England and Australia - we'd love to hear. Also happy to hear the latest gossip from Russia and Germany.

Post-chagim Update

Hi everyone,
I hope you have all enjoyed your first few days of non-chag. Long may it continue!

The kids happily returned to school on Wednesday after a very weird Simchat Torah of not keeping 2nd day, but still going to shul for the Simchat Torah festivities. It felt quite odd and was a little tricky to explain to Tzofia. But the kids were impressed with the shul's candy offerings so overall it worked out OK.

Eitan had a particularly good few days at school - he received his own personal iPad which will be used in all lessons for the year (only for 6th grade). It is not 100% clear why they need them but I'm sure they will be invaluable for his education. He also went on a school outing to a place called Bounce, which is basically a huge trampoline-filled facility. They played trampoline dodgeball and basketball with their classmates and teachers, and generally had a blast and narrowly avoided breaking any limbs. I think it was intended to be a team-building experience. Hmmm. Not completely convinced. Someone here told me that the schools are all about making the kids love school. I'm beginning to see what they mean. It's good to love school but I'm also looking forward to the kids learning some stuff. We'll see how all that pans out.

I had an epiphany this week while I was sitting back pondering the wonder that is school lunch. Why does it make me so deliriously happy? Well, firstly, the kids really like the food, so that helps. But I realized that I am actually winning three times over: First I don't have to make sandwiches every morning (yay!). Second, I don't have to rummage around to find something for the kids to eat for lunch when they come home from school, because they've already eaten lunch! And third, I don't need to make big elaborate dinners because the kids have had a decent meat meal at school (most days), so I can get away with Grade B dinners like jacket potatoes or pasta. OK - I never did make big elaborate dinners, but you know what I mean. This is seriously life-enhancing. Why would anyone ever give this up? If we end up living in America forever and ever, you'll know that this is the reason why. Well, this and the pineapples. (Don't worry - no plans yet to live here forever and ever.)

I remembered a couple more things to add to my list of stuff we like about America. The first is the huge washing machines and dryers. Love them! But why do they need to be in the basement? I don't know about Americans, but us Brits tend to generate most of our laundry upstairs. Looks like they didn't really think this one through. The other brilliant thing we encountered recently was a drive-through ATM. Fantastic! On the negative side, we are not enjoying the cold weather, and especially the part when people tell us that this is nothing compared to how it's GOING to be. We miss our lovely Ra'anana October climate. But at least we don't have to get out of the car to take out cash, so that helps.

That's all for now - tomorrow we plan to check out the Statue of Liberty. We figured it would be pretty embarrassing to come back from here without having seen it.

Have a great week and be in touch!

Sukkot Update

Hi everyone - don't worry we're nearly at the end of the chagim - hang in there.

Our sukkot has gone well so far, and our sukkah has remained standing - hooray! The kids enjoyed the shul sukkah hop but were sad to have missed out on their annual visit to the Barths' sukkah. :-(  As I mentioned, Leora brought a bunch of girls (about 20 of them) here for her sukkah hop, during which Avrom and I remained locked upstairs so as not to shame her in any way. They came in chattering loudly, sat for 10 minutes while chattering loudly, and then promptly left, chattering loudly, having eaten about 5% of the 7 types of junk food that I was instructed to purchase for the occasion.

We had a couple of nice day trips and the kids have enjoyed hanging out and improving their bickering skills, which had sadly been starting to wane after a few weeks of school.

We had another breakthrough this week when we finally discovered where we could buy challah around here that doesn't taste like plastic. After several weeks of sampling the local challot we were getting seriously concerned that I would have to start baking them every week, which would obviously have been a very worrying turn of events. Thankfully, after a tip-off from a local British family, we discovered Teaneck Kosher Supermarket (a very imaginative name) and have been saved from any further challah-related angst. Phew!

In general, as you can see, things are going well here and we're feeling pretty settled, but we still miss plenty of things about home. The following is a quick summary of how we feel so far:

Things we like about living in America:

• school - everything about school: the buildings, the teachers, the kids, the ipads, the smartboards, the general air of calm and serenity, the lunches, the long day (actually, that's something I like) and of course, the gorgeous toilets that never run out of toilet paper
• Sundays
• not having to listen to Avrom trying to talk Hebrew
• pineapples
• turning right on red (love it!)

Things we miss about Israel:

• people that we know and that know us and understand what we're talking about
• school being next door (though I don't miss the daily phone calls from the kids begging me to bring books, clothes, food etc)
• our lovely, convenient shops on Sheshet Hayamim 
• non-religious people 
• decent bread
• edible fruit (other than pineapples)
• sidewalks (pavements) and street lamps (For some reason, Teaneck doesn't really believe in either, which makes walking at night a particularly terrifying endeavour.)

That's about it - I'm sure the list will change as time goes on. 

I hear that leaving a comment on this blog is tricky - I have no idea why. Maybe using a different browser would help. Or restarting your computer. Those are the only computer tricks I know. Sorry! But, please be in touch somehow. We'd love to hear from you. 

Have a great week and spare a thought for us on Simchat Torah when you dance around the roundabout on Sheshet Hayamim. Don't suppose that'll be happening here. (They don't believe in roundabouts in Teaneck either.)