May. 18th, 2015

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This entry is written at Ben-Gurion airport, on our way back to the USA, and uploaded after reaching Takoma Park again. This has been a whirlwind week, which culminated in SR's bar-mitzvah. I spent yesterday morning translating the speeches to English, for the benefit of the family members coming from South Africa and England. The celebrations began with supper at J's house, with the immediate family on both sides - a total of 21 people, many of whom are observant and therefore all kinds of things could or could not be done. J became progressively more frazzled beneath her calm facade over the 24 hours, and I think it is a very good thing indeed that she is taking tomorrow off work.

[livejournal.com profile] eumelia and I shared a room, and stayed up very late talking. This was a good thing for me, as she went home immediately after lunch today, and I was very glad of the extra time with her. The bar-mitzvah itself was lovely. SR is very musical and loves performing (he is the pianist in the local Conservatorium's classical trio), and read almost all of the weekly Torah portion, not just the maftir (final section) and haftarah (reading from the Prophets) that most boys do. I was given the honour of being called up for a section of the Torah reading together with A and S, and we received a very long section indeed. After the reading, SR gave a short sermon and then was bombarded with sweets. A was sorry that this was the first time he could not participate in the children's mad rush to gather the sweets, as he had his own bar-mitzvah last year.

After the service ended, there was food. Then there was lunch. Then my mother, my sister and my niece all gave speeches that embarrased SR to a greater or lesser degree. Then we went home and rested a bit (I confirmed that my mother was not being charged twice for the change in tickets and packed), then went back to J for tea and ate more.

Now we are at the airport. We were able to change tickets at check in, and the boys are now sitting togeter on both legs of the the flight. I must say that I am impressed with United's customer service.
melodyssister: (Default)
I was a bit too optimistic at the end of my last post - while I had a reasonable flight, sleeping quite a lot and almost finishing my book, S had a rather bad one: he threw up twice, after overeating at the bar-mitzvah. The first time was in the aisle, and the stewardesses sprinkled a clumping material (similar to kitty litter, I should think) and asked my help cleaning up. The second time was after he drank some water - he just spat that up all over himself ... I felt very sorry for him, but when we were about to disembark, and he couldn't find his cell phone, I did get upset. I couldn't understand how he could have lost such a thing, and we spent quite a while during our connection at Newark filling in an online form to report its loss.

Apart from that hiccup, landing went smoothly. As always, my J-1 visa raised queries from the immigration officer, but I was able to convince him that medieval medicine was actually effective (quite a few modern cough medicines, both over the counter and prescription drugs, are based on the same materia medica) and also customized to individuals (a very brief description of the ideal of Galenic practice, I know).

We arrived at BWI at 9:30 a.m., still on Israel time, i.e. 4:30 p.m., having set out from my parents' house at 8:30 the previous evening. When we got home and unpacked, Shaul's cell phone was discovered in a side pocket of his backpack - a pocket that I had not realised was there. So, all's well that end's well, but I'm still confiscating his phone for a week, so that he learns to be more careful with his things.

It's now 8:30 in the evening, and the boys have been in bed for an hour. I deliberately had them shower as  soon as we got home so that they could go to bed quickly in the eveing. In the afternoon we watched Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress, apparently one of George Lucas' inspirations for the original Star Wars. We'll listen to the interview with Lucas tomorrow, as despite the thrilling story and set-piece duels, the boys nearly fell asleep watching the movie, and absolutely did so while Ariel made supper.

I shall go to bed shortly myself ... tomorrow normal life resumes.

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