Today is our 6-month Teaneck-iversary! Much has happened since that fateful day when we missed our flight at Heathrow airport, and it's all been great. (Except, perhaps, for Hurricane Sandy, which was slightly less great.)
I'm pleased to say that we have found the community here to be incredibly welcoming and hospitable. In our 6 months here so far there has barely been one Shabbat when we haven't been invited out for a meal, which is quite impressive given that Avrom is a vegetarian and therefore an extremely annoying guest. Despite my occasional comments here about Teaneck people and their coffee and manicures, the people that we've met have actually been very down-to-earth, fun and friendly. Both the school (Yeshivat Noam) and the shul (Rinat) have been the perfect choice for us, and we have only encountered exceptionally lovely people.
Of course, now we are in the process of inviting all these lovely people back to us, and we're really enjoying hosting them. The good thing is that I can roll out my standard "first-time-visitors" Shabbat lunch menu every time! Easy!!! I think my own family will start complaining very soon about the repetition, but unless they want to take over the cooking responsibilities, I'm not interested in their whinging. (I expect some of my friends back home are mumbling to themselves that my "second-time-visitors" and "third-time-visitors" Shabbat lunch menus aren't noticeably different from my "first-time-visitors" menu. To be fair, there is some truth to that.)
This Shabbat we were delighted to host another visitor from abroad. A friend from Israel was in the US for work and needed a place to stay for Shabbat. Despite wracking his brain for an alternative venue he ended up with us here in Teaneck. We had a great time catching up and he was even willing to join in a game of "Apples to Apples" with the kids after dinner on Friday night, despite being completely exhausted, and at certain points of the game, actually asleep. He also amazed the kids with his record-breaking shul-going over the weekend - I don't think they even realized there were so many shul services available. In an impressive show of hospitality, Avrom agreed to accompany him on Shabbat morning for the BEGINNING of shul. I'm pretty sure Avrom has never seen the beginning of Shacharit before, so I was a little nervous that he wouldn't know what to do. In the event, they even had time for some pre-shacharit piyutim, as Avrom got the times wrong and they showed up 15 minutes before the start. Avrom was delighted, of course.
This weekend was President's Day weekend, so we had Sunday and Monday free for wholesome family fun. We spent some of the time finalising Purim costumes and mishloach manot. It's several days before Purim and we are almost ready. This is unheard of. Well done Gilberts! We also managed to find some fun things to do in New York, but the options were severely limited as it was unbelievably freezing and windy outside. I am now officially bored with this cold weather. I don't know why people put up with it. There is a limit to how many museums and art galleries one can shlep one's kids (and husband) to without them (him) complaining. (During one of these outings this weekend we encountered a stall run by the "Harry Potter Exhibition". When Tzofia and I asked them some questions about it, they gave us some very strange looks before answering. I realized that they thought that we were putting on our British accents, just like they were.)
That's all for now. We are looking forward to Purim, Teaneck-style. Hope everyone has a good one!
פורים שמח!!
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