Winter vacation!

Well, it's been a fun-packed week here in the freezing US. In a sneaky move by the Jewish schools over here, they take ten days off towards the end of January, rather than in December over the festive season. The official reason is that Jewish schools should not be bound by non-Jewish holidays, etc, etc, etc, but I think we all know that the real reason is that holidays are cheaper when it's off-peak.

So off we went on Monday to a place called "Great Wolf Lodge", a huge indoor waterpark complex about an hour away, in Pennsylvania. As you can imagine this place was swarming with like-minded modern orthodox American families. We knew it would be a bit of a "scene", but luckily we don't know very many people in this country so we could wander around enjoying blissful anonymity. Of course, this was not the case for most of the American crowd, who could be seen dodging old camp buddies and ex-girlfriends at every turn. In fact, a friend here said that Great Wolf Lodge during the winter vacation is like "shul in a swimsuit". I think a slightly more accurate description would be "shul in a burkini". Any woman there in normal swimming attire must have felt like a freak!

Food was nice and easy. In true American, "let's make everything ultra-convenient"-style, there were not one, but TWO kosher restaurants delivering food to the hotel every evening. Order by 2pm and receive your dinner at 6pm. It may have been cold and soggy, but it just about passed as food and it meant that we didn't have to worry about cooking, so we embraced it.

In addition to the insane water slides, wave pool, jacuzzis and general swimming fun, the hotel and surrounding area had lots of other family-friendly facilities and the kids really had a blast. And of course, by "kids" I mean Avrom. This holiday was the realisation of his dream - huge waterslides and an afternoon of snowtubing.

For the uninitiated, snowtubing is when you hurtle down a snow-covered hill sitting in a big rubber ring. Sounds like fun, right? For some reason, and despite his usual cautious, risk-averse nature, Avrom had been dreaming of doing this since we came in August, and he was thrilled to discover that the country's largest snowtubing park was only five minutes from our hotel. I'm not sure what my kids spiked my coffee with yesterday morning but by 2pm I somehow found myself at the top of a hill, rubber ring in hand, and nowhere to go but down. So down I went, and it was absolutely terrifying. I discovered that it was slightly less terrifying when I went in a "train" with other members of the family as the rubber ring didn't turn around, so I forced a reluctant Tzofia to go with me every time. She actually realised early on that it was all a lot less petrifying if you keep your eyes tight shut. Very wise words.

We went up and down, repeating this process for about an hour and a half, with Eitan and Avrom trying ever-more daring techniques, such as head-first, on the stomach, backwards etc. I kept gently reminding Avrom that he's an old man and needs to be careful, but there was no talking to him and he brazenly ignored my pleas. Thankfully, he somehow managed to survive the experience with all his limbs intact, as did the rest of the family. Luckily, the weather was on my side, as it was a cool minus 15 degrees Celsius (about 5 degrees Fahrenheit), so we had to leave slightly earlier than Avrom had hoped, in order to avoid our blood actually freezing inside our veins. Here's a pic of the Gilberts, pre-reckless behaviour. As you can see, I was still smiling at this point.

We left Great Wolf Lodge today, after 3 days of fun. It was a good holiday and a great place to go, though if you happen to be reading this and you're not Jewish, I would recommend you avoid the 3rd week of January.

Have a great week everyone!

[PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you would like to leave a comment (Please do!!!), you just need to click on the bit in blue at the bottom of the post, where it says the number of comments. If you receive this by email, you'll have to click through to the blog itself, which is at the top of your email. Also, if you sign in as "Anonymous", can you sign your name in your comment so I know who you are? Thanks!]