I have only a month left with my kids. I can’t in all honesty say that I want to stay here – cause I really can’t wait to start my life in Israel – but they will be sorely missed.
This past shabbas was probably my favorite one so far this year, despite my physical maladies that began last week and continued until yesterday…turns out I was allergic to a drug I was taking…and OF COURSE that drug was legal :^P…this week the feeling on campus during shabbas was actually…content and happy…
So on shabbas I have been taking a group of students on a hike almost every week for several months now. It is a really nice way to spend some time with them. And if I didn’t then I would probably get stuck manning the student union (which entails giving permission to leave campus, getting talked into playing ping pong and pool and being forced to give an explanation as to why I can’t open the school store on shabbas AGAIN AND AGAIN). Needless to say, I love to hike and I love to be outside so I started the tradition back in March. It has seriously caught on. We had 5 kids last week…the campus is turning into a bunch of greenies! Here is one conversation I had with a student as we were leaving for the hike.
Me: When I got back from break and I saw all these flowering bushes I thought the groundskeepers had been real busy…but apparently they have been here all along and I never noticed.
Student: Yeah, they were really magical at first but I got used to em.
Me: Magical?
Student: Yeah I thought I was a fairy princess in a secret garden for a few days.
Me: A fairy princess huh?
Later on in the hike as we read an informational sign about how to maintain a bird-friendly yard:
Student: Yeah, once we had a woodpecker in our yard. One morning my dad got so mad he went outside in his boxers yelling at it. He went back inside when that didn’t work and got out his bb gun.
Another Student (actually, the same as the fairy princess from before): Hmmmm. We had a woodpecker in our yard once too. But, er…it was more like. Oh! A woodpecker! Lets get the binoculars and watch it for three hours!
Student: Yeah…that’s the difference between your family and mine…
So, which was your dad: bonkers with bb gun and boxers or bonkers with binoculars and a membership to the Audubon Society??
On a different note…
I received an invitation this week that totally floored me – I am incredibly honored and I can’t wait to go. One of the local families that is very involved in many of the Jewish organizations in the G-spot has daughter that is going to become bat mitzvah in the next few weeks. They are really lovely and have been a big support to me throughout my year here. I am fond, to put it lightly. Two of the daughters are day students at the school where I work and the third, the youngest, who is also the one becoming BM, goes to the local day school. She is a very sweet young lady who is a real hoot and an intelligent chic. Her mother arranged for a special ceremony to be held in her honor. She told her daughter to invite only 20 people – entirely at her discretion. So the 20 or so of us (all women) are going to come together next Monday and tell stories about the bat mitzvah as we tie the tzit tzit on her tallis (which, by the way, was hand painted by her mother on silk – it is stunning). For all of the whacky traditions that are created left and right to try to breath some life into Jewish ritual, this one I find really intriguing and I can’t wait for Monday. I am floored that I was even invited…it is just so cool!
For the bat mitzvah’s present I was having some problems. You see, I wanted to get her something meaningful…and I wanted to make her present – more personal and more meaningful. After some brainstorming with her mom we decided that I would do a photo shoot with her and her two dogs. I am psyched cause it has been quite a while since I have been commissioned to do a photo shoot for any reason. I am going to have to resort to just using my digital – I already brought my film SLR home to Cuse at pesach…I don’t trust it still…It just feels different to go through the process with the SLR and then in the darkroom. I guess you could say I feel like I build more of a relationship with the image. So it goes…for now…
Laila tov yall.
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