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It is scarily easy to fall out of the habit of blogging once I'm home ... I would try another SED for September, except that the month is chopped up by the High Holydays, and I will be away from my laptop quite often. I'll try for twice a week posting and see how that goes.

Now that the accountability disclaimer is up, what have I been up to in the last two weeks? Slowly but surely, the house has taken shape. The Ikea drawers and shoe closet have been constructed (thanks to ADC and the boys); the dining room chairs have been re-upholstered in dark red basketweave (thanks to my sister-in-law E and the boys), replacing or rather re-covering Very Stained Beige (I didn't realise quite how awful it had been until we went to ADC's cousins for lunch this past Saturday, and their chairs had that same upholstery as we had had); we've bought new carpets and sent an old Turkish rug for cleaning and mending; we've bought a car (or rather leased one); all the boxes have been unpacked apart for two containing large kitchenware, which is waiting for the new kitchen cupboards (due sometime next week, I hope); I've made dentist and doctor appointments (just check-ups). Our lift is due to arrive at Ashdod port any day now, so - taking all the non-working days in September into account - the house should reach its more or less final shape by the end of the month.

ADC has gone back to work completely, and I've also been working quite a lot. I finished translating an article, really not in my field and really poorly written, yesterday and today I had much more fun editing an entry for the Encyclopedia of Islam, third edition, and then finalising an entry I had written myself. I don't think that there are that many editors who also write the same kind of things that they edit, and I am glad to polish my USP from time to time.

A and S had their first day of school today. Both returned to the schools they had attended before the year in America, and it seems so far that the transition is going very smoothly. Since getting back to Jerusalem both have been spending a great deal of time with friends, including sleepovers - making up for a year apart. Hard to tell yet what re-adjusting to school in Israel will be like, and I'm much more concerned about A, who has to get used to being back in a competitive environment where everyone is clever and wants to study.

It has been so nice to sleep in my own bed with my own sheets again. Last Friday we had TB over for supper, and I could see how happy ADC was to be cooking in his own kitchen again. I love my dishwasher!! The week before we had a family event, another bar mitzvah, so I got to see all my cousins - everyone is back from the US now, and as someone said, now that the older children are heading into high school and then the army, nobody is planning to leave for a while.  
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The weekend has been boiling hot, and spending Saturday on the Shenandoah River was a very good idea. We reached the rafting company at Front Royal around 10:30, and were on the river just after 11:00. We floated along until 15:30 - the Shenandoah was much wider and slower than the Jordan was when we went rafting there, and we got stuck at every "riffle" - places where rocks are high enough to cause very mildly choppy water, but it was still great fun. ADC and A did most of the rowing, and every so often we stopped at an island and had a dip in the lovely cool water. I am still trying to get the algae out of my shorts - admittedly I made them for this kind of activity, but still, I'd like them to look newish after only one wearing. You can float so well when wearing a life jacket! The boys insisted on racing the other people who had been in the shuttle to the rivers with us - two men who were camping with their six-year-old sons. Unsurprisingly, we reached our end point - 7 miles from the start - before them. On the way back, we decided to take a scenic detour along the Skyline Drive, in the Shenandoah Valley National Park. We had been there before, in early October, and this was our last chance to be there again. Unfortunately, I think we were too tired to appreciate it properly - and also the view, when we stopped at overlooks, was quite hazy.

After such an exhausting day, we had a much quieter time yesterday. ADC finally went to buy bagels for Sunday breakfast. He said that he was one of the few male customers not wearing a kippa, and that all the staff were clearly Orthodox Jews - which to my mind seemed a good indication of quality control, and indeed the bagels were delicious. I wonder why American bagels are so much softer than the ones Granny and Grandpa used to make - a difference between Polish and Lithuanian traditions, perhaps? We then slowly wended our way to the weekly farmers' market and listened to a few acts at the Takoma Park Jazz Festival. It was incredibly hot and humid - Tel Aviv seemed cool and dry in comparison - so we didn't stay as long as we might have. We ended the day by watching Flash Gordon, which A had been very eager to watch due to the soundtrack being by Queen. I saw sometime in my childhood, but remembered very little of it. It was quite hilariously campy and bad, with enough woodenness to furnish a carpenter in every scene with Flash and Dale Arden, on the one hand, and Brian Blessed chewing all scenery he came within point blank range of: "Hand me the remote control!!" sounded just like "Release the Kraken!!"
Today was the first day of the summer holidays. The boys and I have begun packing - in the sense that they went through all their school stuff, and there is now a pile of paper almost 23 cm high waiting to be recycled - and I began inventorying which of the things we bought for the house we plan to send in a lift and which we plan to leave behind as it's not worth sending them, when you factor in the cost of shipping and customs. Tomorrow a rep of one of the shipping companies I contacted is coming to do an in-home survey; another company estimated (based on my very preliminary listing) that we had about 5 cubic metres to ship. I think the cost of shipping will come to almost equal the value of the things that we are shipping, and that's before customs is calculated. The state really wants you to buy things in Israel, rather than importing them personally!
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Today was the last day of elementary and middle school in Mayland. Since A has finished 8th grade and S has finished 5th grade, today was devoted to their promotion ceremonies - a new usage to me, BTW. I had not previously run across "promotion" in this sense. I would have just said "finished primary school" and/or "finished junior high".

Anyway, we split up, with ADC attending A's ceremony (12:30-14:00) and me attending S's (11:30-12:30, clap-out at 15:15). It sounds as if both ceremonies were very similar: the children marched in, speeches by the principal and student representatives, a musical number, prizes, names of each student read by homeroom teacher. A's ceremony, from his report, was of course more elaborate, with a PowerPoint with pictures of all the children and a short film with all the teachers wishing them luck. The TPMS principal apparently spent her day going to various promotion ceremonies, elementary schools in the morning and the middle school in the afternoon. S received his certificate in his classroom. While everyone was milling around before the children had a picnic lunch (parents were sent home and returned to clap the mortarboard-wearing children out of school at the end of the day), I took pictures of S and his teacher and best friends on my cell phone. I hope they are viewable. ADC said the same for his pictures of A's ceremony, taken on a real camera and by a far better photographer.

On another note entirely, I spent my free minutes today and yesterday crafting: I finally finished my Tofino shorts, which I decided to lengthen by adding a cuff (just in time to go rafting tomorrow), and I swatched my next Miette cardigan. It seemed oddly appropriate to be knitting while watching Brazil. Very excitingly, when I logged into Ravelry, I saw I had a message from the designer of the baby blanket I knitted for my latest neice, asking permission to feature my project on the pattern's main page. Admittedly, I knitted the blanket in December, but only added the pictures (again, ADC must be credited) a few days ago. What a compliment! 
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Eep! I really fell off the SED bandwagon this week. I offer the horrible weather as an excuse - it rained almost non-stop from Tuesday through Thursday, and I really didn't feel like doing anything...

The school year is starting to wind down. S had "spirit week" and had to wear interesting clothes all week, culminating in a superhero outfit on Friday - he was given a Batman suit by a friend. Pity he didn't get it in time for AwesomeCon last week, but he is now sorted for Purim next year. A was invited to the honors evening at school, which took place on Thursday night. About 800 names were called up to receive some kind of honor, with some children being called up more than once. A was in the next to last group, children who had received straight As all year (the last group was 27 children who had received straight As for eleven quarters, their entire time at TPMS). I am glad that ADC went without me, as I think I would have very much resented not being able to knit had I gone. This paragraph kind of sums up the entire year's experience for the boys: S had a great time, and A was rather bored.

Also this week: finally, ADC took A and S to apply for social security cards/numbers. The cards should arrive within two weeks, so well before we leave. 
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It's difficult to believe that two weeks ago I was sitting in J's kitchen translating SR's bar mitzvah sermon, and her and LR's speeches. As we have a very cultural weekend planned (AwesomeCon followed by Fauré's Requiem on Saturday, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on Sunday), I have to finish writing this letter today!
So, as everyone knows, A, S and I had a very action-packed week in Israel between May 10-16, while ADC spent part of that time visiting colleagues in Arizona with whom he has a BSF grant. We managed to see a lot of people, but not everyone we would have liked to, and most people we did not get to see enough of, for my part particularly not enough of my siblings J and R (I think I saw more of my brother-and sister-in-law than I did of them). It was lovely seeing my uncle and aunt from South Africa and my cosin from London, their son, too, and I'm sorry we only overlapped for 36 hours or so.

A and Sl's favourite day was Tuesday, which we spent in Jerusalem, each one of us seeing friends separately. I think that this week has actually made them  more eager to come home: seeing all their old friends really emphasised the extent to which they have made acquaintances rather than friends in Takoma Park. I think the day I enjoyed most was Thursday, when I spent the morning at Tel Aviv University meeting friends and the early afternoon seeing [livejournal.com profile] eumelia s flat and having lunch with her at a very pleasant café down the road, before she took the three boys to see Avengers: Age of Ultron, which they all enjoyed thoroughly. ADC and I are very grateful to her for doing so, otherwise we would have had to take the boys to see it, and we would rather do other things on our weekends.... The bar mitzvah itself, of course, was in a class of itself. I was highly impressed with SR's reading from the Torah, and J and LR's speeches thoroughly embarrassed him, as is the custom.
The trip home was much less traumatic than the cancellation of the Amtrak line between New York and Philadelphia following the derailment would have suggested; after spending close to an hour on the phone to America, we were able to be rerouted to Baltimore, and ADC came to pick us up. By the time he went to Princeton to give a talk last Thursday, the train was running as normal again.

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we went on what is probably our last out of town trip before we leave Takoma Park in July. We spent Saturday at Gettysburg, and Sunday and Monday in Philadelphia. It took quite a long time to get to Gettysburg, and even longer to get from there to Philadelphia; about half the day was spent driving. The national battlefield site is very interesting and informative, with a film (narrated, of course, by Morgan Freeman), a nineteenth-century cyclorama and an excellent museum at the visitor centre, and the most authentic living history we've seen yet in the US (ADC questions whether we've seen any other living history; the RenFest in October certainly doesn't count). As we are so close to the solstice and so far north, despite arriving in Philadelphia close to 8 p.m., it was still light, which was very nice as we wandered around looking for a restaurant bear our hotel. We ended up at an Indonesian place, adding to the list of cuisines we are sampling here. Each of us thought that he had chosen the best choice of the dishes.
Saturday was our only full day in Philadelphia, and we were extremely thorough in our explorations, returning to the hotel nearly 13 hours after setting out in the morning. We didn't get to see the Liberty Bell, as the queue was incredible, but we did go to the National Museum of American Jewish History, Independence Hall, Reading Terminal Market, and the Delaware River Waterfront. At the NMAJH, we started with a temporary exhibition of Richard Avedon portraits, many of which came from the Israel Museum's collection. I found the permanent collection more interesting, though, especially the sections on the development of Reform Judaism and the post-WWII move to suburbia. Like the Tenement Museum in New York, a lot of the museum was a walk through ADC's family history. The Tenement Museum was a more intense experience, focussing as it did on only one of the times and places covered by the NMAJH. A particularly interesting aspect for me was the historiography: the presence of Yiddish, for example, alongside Hebrew in many cases, and the total absence of the non-Ashkenazi experience in the historical introduction, apart from the mass aliyah to Israel. At the same time, there was both a great emphasis on Jewish involvement in civil rights and feminism (neither of which would have happened, it looked like, without the Jews) and an acknowledgement that Jews today are both Republicans and Democrats.

After we finished at the museum, we had just enough time for a cheesesteak before going to Independence Hall. Everyone approved of the cheesesteak (even the vegan one I ate), as one should always try local foods, and it was the right thing at the right time. Independence Hall was a guided tour of a small building, with a very enthusiastic guide with great voice projection. I must say that I remain resolutely Old World-centric in what really interests me in history ... We continued from Independence Hall to Reading Street Market. We had begun our day there, as it was right across the road from our hotel, and the boys were enchanted by Mueller's chocolate, which featured various body parts made from chocolate. They desperately wanted to buy a heart or a kidney as an afternoon snack, but these were quite large and correspondingly expensive, so we forced them to make do with a nose each - which seemed lie quite a lot of chocolate, in any case!
We then decided to take advantage of Philadelphia's street art, and explored the city centre further by way of walking the abridged version of the Mural Mile. S took pictures of the murals, which were almost invariably on the walls of building that abutted parking lots - I don't think I've seen so many parking lots in such a small space! The murals themselves wee fascinating, and we spent much longer than the suggested 30 minutes looking at them and discussing what we were seeing. By the time we finished, it was past 6 p.m. and we were all starting to droop. We had supper at an excellent Italian restaurant, Giorgio on Pine, where our waitress was Italian and supper was still going strong when we left, just before eight - unusual for American restaurants, which often close for the night by eight. We finished the day by walking to the Delaware River Waterfront, mainly so as not to retire to the hotel too early. When we got to Penn's Landing, we were startled to see a Cold War submarine next to a floating fish restaurant.
On Monday, we spent the entire day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We walked there from our hotel, down Benjamin Franklin Parkway and looked at all the flags, in vague alphabetical order (except for the flags of Poland, next to a statue in memory of Copernicus, and of Israel, next to a Holocaust memorial from 1964). At the museum, ADC declined to take pictures of the boys by the statue of Rocky, as he doesn't like taking that kind of picture - and in his defence, there was quite a long line of people waiting to take that same picture ... We were too early for what looks like a very good exhibition of the Impressionists, but enjoyed looking at the Museum's own collection of that school. We stuck to nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, this time. A was very keen to see the Surrealists and Marcel Duchamp's urinal, while S was happy to see a Roy Lichtenstein. Both of them spent the last hour or so at the arms and armour hall by themselves, while Ariel and I looked at decorative art and rooms from English stately homes that had been transferred piecemeal in the 1920s and 1930s. I have to admit to being slightly underwhelmed by the PMA. Admittedly, the National Gallery and the Met are in a class by themselves, but I think that there was more art that spoke to me, personally, at the MFA in Boston. But maybe I was just tired after Saturday ...
Last Friday, the 22nd, A's entire year, the 8th grade class of 2015, went to Six Flags. He had a lot of fun, going on a roller coaster and dodgem cars, playing games at an arcade and eating pizza. Very sweetly, he bought fudge and brought it home for all of us. The same day, S had Authors' Tea at school: parents were invited to class to hear the children read poems or short prose pieces they had written. About half way through, juice and cookies were served. S read an alliterative alphabetical poem about superheroes. Apart from him, the best pieces, I thought, were an extract from a description of a baseball game from the ball's point of view, and a poem entitled "Divorce" in which one of the girls reflected on how life was in face better after her parents' divorce - everyone was much happier, and shhe had double the family. Almost all the children read something and some of them read two pieces. As usual with this age, the difference between boys and girls is immense. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the boys are still children, and the girls - at least some of them - are becoming introspective, mature.

As a result of the Authors' Tea, I have decided to sign up for a poem of the day by e-mail. I was surprised to see how much choice there is. Should I go for a classic daily poem, or a contemporary one? When does contemporary start? Does anyone have a recommendation?
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A's entire year, the 8th grade class of 2015, went to Six Flags today. He had a lot of fun, going on a roller coaster and dodgem cars, playing games at an arcade and eating pizza. Very sweetly, he bought fudge and brought it home for all of us.

S had Authors' Tea at school today: parents were invited to class to hear the children read poems or short prose pieces they had written. About half way through, juice and cookies were served. S read an alliterative alphabetical poem about superheroes. Apart from him, the best pieces, I thought, were an extract from a description of a baseball game from the ball's point of view, and a poem entitled "Divorce" in which one of the girls reflected on how life was in face better after her parents' divorce - everyone was much happier, and shhe had double the family. Almost all the children read something and some of them read two pieces. As usual with this age, the difference between boys and girls is immense. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the boys are still children, and the girls - at least some of them - are becoming introspective, mature.

As a result of the Authors' Tea, I have decided to sign up for a poem of the day by e-mail. I was surprised to see how much choice there is. Should I go for a classic daily poem, or a contemporary one? When does contemporary start? Does anyone have a recommendation? 
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Things are really back to normal now: I've just finished helping S with his spelling homework and given A his weekly Arabic lesson. Both of these things are part of our Thursday afternoon routine.

S has a spelling quiz every Friday. His teacher gives out a list of 30 words every Monday, divided into 3 groups of easy, middle and difficult. When we first arrived, S was doing the easy and middle words, but within 6 weeks he was moved to the middle and difficult group. He learns all the words, anyway, and I give him dictation every Thursday evening. This week's topic was words with TH, CH and SH. Interestingly, after only a week's break, S did much more poorly than usual - he normally get less than 5 words wrong, and this time he got 8 "wrongs", as he calls them. He was quite philosophical about it, and it was proof, to my mind, of the importance of reading in learning spelling - he read much less than usual in Israel, and even not having his cell phone this week hasn't meant that he's read more than usual, since he and A have played a great deal together (and of course, they have had to make up the lessons that they missed).

A's Arabic lesson went as could be expected. After a week's break, his reading had deteriorated, but I remember that happening to me after the summer vacation as an undergraduate. I am glad that I've set a specific day and time for the lessons, because they are actually happening and he's not dropping too far behind his class. After the Memorial Day weekend, we'll start having two lessons a week, beginning with a review all the vocabulary of the current plus the present-future tense (more correctly, the imperfect).

ETA: this is uploaded on Friday, as ADC came home just as I was about to do so yesterday.  
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... but a productive one. I completed about a quarter of the remaining part of the book I am editing, so I am well on track to finishing it by Friday. After supper I sewed for an hour, and then completed the neckband of my cardigan, and wove in all the ends. Only the buttons left!

The children had more exciting days. A's English class had their dramatic readings today, and apparently he did quite well. He chose an abridged version of Pirate Jenny from the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weil Threepenny Opera (the link is to Judy Collins' performance of it). Not being very musical, he had to work quite hard to learn it by heart and to be able to recite it not in a monotone. S, on the other hand, registered today for a MOOC run by the Smithsonian, called The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact on American Culture - right up his street, and I'm glad ADC knew about it. He is very enthusiastic about it, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was the youngest participant.
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Part of the reason I haven't written in so long, I think, has been snow-induced depression. The second half of February was appalling, with the schools closed or starting late almost every other day, either due to active blizzards or due to extreme cold and ice. It was only when daylight saving began, and we had a thaw, that I realised how much better I felt with the sun shining. That being said, we did do a number of things ...

We continued our exploration of the Smithsonian Museums with a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian. This had been highly recommended by DE, ADC's host, who also warned that this was a museum that aimed to celebrate the community,and thus was more activist and less strictly academic than the Natural History Museum, for example. All museums are political, I thought to myself, and thesis simply explicit about it. I must say that while I enjoyed the visit, and learned a great deal, I came away feeling rather depressed. In the end, museums dedicated to recording and preserving ways of life that are dying - if not dead and attempts at resurrection being made - are, in a way, an argument for white supremacy; or at least, for the supremacy of the Mediterranean basin, a region where teleological worldviews joined the Hellenistic scientific heritage (all shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam) over the rest of the world, in which cyclical worldviews (shared by most "pagan" native religions) did not advance technologically (cause and effect here is hard to judge). The museum rather reminded me of the Khoi-San museum/cultural centre we visited in the Western Cape, and a Bedouin village we once visited: traditions that once were vital for survival are dying, because they are no longer necessary. And since they are based on oral traditions, once they are gone, they are gone. And even if they survive, they are partly a game: there was a video of the whale-killing ritual of an Eskimo group: not only was everyone wearing parkas made of technical material rather than sealskin, it is no longer the case that they will not survive the winter if they don't have a store of blubber - you could see the tins of Heinz baked beans on the shelves. I definitely felt sorry for the North American Indians - most of them really didn't have a chance: their surrounding were so harsh that their material culture (or what remains of it) is really pitiful compared even to pre-Columbian Central/South America, not to mention the Old World. The attempts to restore traditions were interesting, though: one group, from the Hupa Valley in California, were so Californian when they talked about being one with nature etc (wearing plaid shirts, that well-known item of Amerindian dress, as they spoke to the camera). In Chile there are indigenous professors of the languages, who are academics as well as activists, and a case of a Catholic priest who in old age left the Church and returned to his ancestral traditions, becoming a shaman. We bought a book on the world in 1491 at the museum giftshop, which is now in my TBR pile.

Due to the snow days, the testing regimen at Montgomery county schools has been severely disrupted, and it feels like the PARCC assessments have been going on forever (S has maths today, still). These are tests meant to assess the schools, rather than the pupils, as I understand it, and both boys reported that the English/literacy tests were quite easy. A said, though, that the maths segment included material that he had not covered at school ... I really hope he will not have too much of a shock when we get home. He is making quite good progress in Arabic, now that we have set up a definite time and day of the week. Once or twice he has "cancelled" due to the science project measuring the relative rates of freezing of water, apple juice and Gatorade, but then I have insisted on a make-up class on the weekend; the only advantage of having been housebound by snow has been Arabic lesson for A, ukulele lessons for S (he can play several songs now, but is not keen on performing on Skype), and watching movies. We had a Kurosawa weekend a few weeks ago, when ADC and I watched Rashomon on Friday night, and then we all watched Yojimbo together on Saturday. The boys enjoyed Yojimbo very much, and we are considering adding A Fistful of Dollars to the Netflix queue (my memory is that is a rather more graphic. I'm glad we didn't show Rashomon to the children, even though it is deservedly considered one of the greatest movies ever made - I think they are too young for it, still, despite A' belief that now that he is 13, he can see anything that is defined as PG-13 and above).

We have finally begun to take advantage of the cultural opportunities available in Washington (apart form ADC's Meetup group), and have booked three classical concerts and a play. Moreover, at the beginning of March we went to a performance of The Chieftains, a Dublin-based group who have been performing together for sixty years. We have one disc of theirs, The Long Black Veil (with Sting, Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler, Sinead O'Connor, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful (separately) on vocals), which is one of my and S's favourite albums. We had no idea what to expect, really, at the concert, but it was like being invited to a party where all the other guests could play an instrument and/or sing and/or dance. The other guests included an astronaut, who played the pipes - and had played the pipes at the space station - and the Leahy family, who all played the fiddle and danced. They came on one by one: a 15-year old girl, a 12-year old boy, a 10-year old boy, a 7-year old girl and a 4-year old girl. Every time we thought now, that was the youngest, and then another child came on - playing the fiddle. Then they danced while playing the fiddle (except for the youngest girl, who conducted!). There were also a couple of local children's groups: a choir and one of the Irish dancing schools (whose upper bodies were much stiffer and more motionless than the dancers who were part of the Chieftains backing group), and a local bagpipe band, who wore eyesearingly mismatched tartan kilts. It was great fun, and good preparation for the St Patrick's Day Parade last Sunday (the 15th). The parade was amazingly well-behaved on the part of the crowd (almost nobody stood in the road), much quieter than expected (there was music only when the actually marching bands and/or Irish dancing schools went by), and including a bewilderingly large number of vintage fire engines. We speculated that this was a trial run for the Fourth of July parades for the fire engines, since I'm not aware there's anything particularly Irish about the fire brigade in the US (on the other hand, the large number of marchers affiliated with the police seemed to be obvious. Even Richard Scarry's police man is Sergeant Murphy, with his daughter Bridget).

The weekend before last continued our cultural activities: in reparation for seeing Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead at the Folger Theater in May, we watched Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet. We offered the boys the choice of Kenneth Branagh or Mel Gibson, and they immediately chose Kenneth Branagh, because they know him, both as Professor Lockhart and as Henry V. I suppose a completely uncut version is not the worst way of being introduced to Hamlet - we did split the viewing over two sessions - but I'm not sure this is my preferred interpretation of the play. Kenneth Branagh doesn't have enough self-doubt for Hamlet, in my opinion; he's too pleased with himself to consider suicide seriously. I think we will see the Zeffirelli version closer to the time, so that's what we have in mind when we see Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. Derek Jacobi as Claudius (yes, we got the joke) was very good, as was Richard Briers as Polonius. I'm not sure about Kate Winslet as Ophelia; again, I didn't like the interpretation particularly, so that's affecting my view of the acting. I'll have to see how Helena Bonham-Carter measures up ...

We have finally given in to homesickness and gone to see Jerusalem 3D at the IMAX theatre at the Natural History Museum (we also went to see the insect and non-dinosaur fossil galleries). It was so wonderful to see all the bird's eye views of so many places we miss, not just Jerusalem. I thought that it was very well done, not just Benedict Cumberbatch's narration and the chance to see the interior of the Dome of the Rock, but also the fact that they found three girls - Jewish, Christian and Muslim - who looked similar enough that at first glance you couldn't tell which was which. The Jewish girl had grandparents from Poland and Algeria, and the Christian girl had ancestors who came to the Holy Land from Greece. And everybody seemed to be eating the same food around big tables with large, noisy families. It was a good thing to see just before the elections, to remember why we want to go home.

We have new neighbours: T&S  moved to a condo in Bethesda, and have been replaced by AN &LN, and their children R (5) and T (3). We invited them over for tea the week before last, and had a lovely time (and this has already paid dividends in that we were able to find a connection from whom to borrow a travel cot for when JC and his family visit). AN is a lawyer, working for the appellate division of the Department of Justice, and L works for the Government Audit, where he writes guidelines (he has a graduate degree in philosophy). R had a wonderful time playing with A and S, although T was a little overwhelmed by all the newness, I think.

Of course, a high point of the past month for me was my birthday. A and S very sweetly bought a heart-shaped paperweight. My sewing machine arrived the day before, and ADC (who bought me sewing books) hid it so I would open it on the day, which I did. It took me an hour and a half to set it up for the first time, including winding thread from the spool to the bobbin (I love technical terms) and several attempts before I managed to get the thread through the eye of the needle. My machine is a Janome Magnolia 7318, which is highly recommended on the internet for beginning sewers. It has 25 different stitches, including a button hole, and I am very excited about using it. I've had one sewing lesson, so far, in which I learned a trick for threading the needle more efficiently, and made a drawstring bag. Sewing is definitely much more instant gratification than knitting - although I suspect that as soon as I try making something larger and more complex this will not be the case. I have bought fabric for the next lesson tomorrow, in which I will learn to make pyjama shorts, which I have washed but not yet ironed. I've also bought fabric for t-shirts and skirts, and I'm assuming that the first things I make will not really be wearable outside the house. But I'm having fun, and A and S have asked me to make them summer pyjamas already.
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This has been a very busy couple of weeks. Among other things I did a ton of knitting and also went to Baltimore twice, so apologies again for the lateness of my update on Thanksgiving and the week before.

I'll actually start at the end, what we did today, because it is closely connected to what we did two weeks ago: We spent the day at the Spy Museum. This involved a bit of sticker shock, as up to now all the museums we have visited in Washington have been free, but the children had been very eager to go since we arrived, and especially after we visited the cryptology exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library two weeks ago. That exhibition was extremely well done, and had several activities for children that S really enjoyed. The connection to the library is that two of the parents of American cryptology, William and Elizabeth Friedman, also researched Shakespeare, and were frequently to be found at the Folger, since they lived in Washington. The exhibition covered the entire history of codes and ciphers, with particular emphasis on the Renaissance (lots of names familiar to me from my article on possible Arabic influences on the development of cryptology in Renaissance Italy) and the Friedmans' career - William headed the team that broke Purple, the Japanese cipher used during WWII, and he considered Francis Bacon's idea of the biliteral cipher, where anything can be made to mean anything, to be binary code.

The Spy Museum of course covered much more ground. As you go in, you are asked to choose one of 16 covers, and throughout the museum there are places where you are asked questions relating to the cover and its associated mission. There is a long and interesting section on how spies are trained, followed by a smaller exhibition on the history of espionage from an American point of view, so a lot of emphasis on the Civil War and the Cold War. The current special exhibition is on the villains in the James Bond movies (very amusingly, a lot of the voice-overs throughout the museum have British accents, and the briefing movie, which starts the self-guided tour, almost sounds like Judi Dench). In addition to a lot of props, the most fascinating parts of the exhibition for me were the interviews with various retired intelligence operatives, either giving their opinion of aspects of the movies (like the CIA's equivalent to Q) or describing their own James Bond moments.

To go back nearly two weeks ago: on November 22, I spent the day at the MESA conference. I haven't heard so much Arabic in a long time - and the second most common non-English language apart from that was Hebrew. I didn't attend any of the talks, since there was no option of a one-day pass, and spent my time meeting people, either planned or unplanned. I had a lot of fun, and added two invitations to give talks to my future plans: one at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton in January, the day after my postponed talk at Rutgers (since it is on the way back to DC anyway), and another, to be confirmed once I am back in Israel, at NYU-Abu Dhabi (since I have a non-Israeli passport).

Abu Dhabi seems almost as far away as the moon, actually, but it is very exciting to think that I might go there. We saw two movies involving space travel - Apollo 13 at home with the children, and ADC and I went by ourselves to see Interstellar at the Air and Space Museum, where it was shown on IMAX screens. We also saw another episode of Cosmos, which discussed, among other things, black holes and wormholes, which was good preparation for seeing Interstellar. On reflection, I enjoyed Apollo 13 more, as the science made more sense to me. I will not go into anymore details, in case anyone is planning on seeing it and has not yet done so. But I think I am beginning to approach sic-fi the same way I approach historical dramas. Let me just say that I was impressed by the way Anne Hathaway's character was apparently able to cut her own hair very nicely and keep it trim through decades of space-time travel.

On a more mundane level, we went to ADC's uncle and aunt in Boston for Thanksgiving. It was lovely to see them, as well as their son and his family. While Number 2 Cousin is still too young (not a year yet) to really interact with A and S (although S did read to him and that was appreciated - by his mother), Number 1 Cousin clearly was thrilled to have new friends to play with and the three of them got on very well together. Unfortunately, it was much too cold to spend any time outside, where I think they would have had even more fun.

We arrived in Boston on Thursday, and basically spent our free time with ADC's family. On Friday, we spent most of the day at the Museum of Fine Arts, which was half an hour's walk from our hotel. We had been at the MFA during our previous visit to Boston in 2012, so there was less pressure, and we tried to see things that we had not seen before. ADC's aunt and uncle very kindly lent us their member cards, so we went in for free, and also got a discount at lunch and at the museum shop (which had a 30% Black Friday discount in any case). We had thought we would go to the Goya exhibition, but the queue was so long that we gave that idea up, and instead went to a number of smaller exhibitions: one on model planes and trains (and then continued to the permanent exhibition on model ships), another on the gowns and jewels of 1930s Hollywood, and another on current representations of national feeling, where we watched and excellent piece of video art called English Magic. Of course, the main thing that the boys came away with was a work from the mid-century American gallery, in which Andy Warhol took Jackson Pollock's drip art (and Marcel Duchamps' urinal) a step further by urinating on a canvas treated with copper sulphate(?) ...

Saturday was absolutely one of the coldest days we have experienced so far - and we spent a lot of it walking around. I am very glad I bought thigh-high terrycloth socks, they kept me very warm over fleece-lined footless tights. We spent the morning walking and shopping in Brookline's independent stores - Brookline Booksmith (where A bought the book of The Princess Bride and S bought both I, Robot and The Graveyard Book - I can hear my siblings cheering); Eureka, a games store where I bought (for S) a puzzle in which 120 cubes create together one of six works of art. This is obviously much more difficult than an ordinary jigsaw puzzle, since there is no help from the different shapes. I think we will work on it tomorrow while A is at flag football and ADC is playing bass for Abbey Road with his musicians' Meetup group. We met my father's cousin M for lunch, which was very nice. It always surprises me a bit when distant relatives thank us for making time to see them, because to me it was so much killing two birds with one stone: we have to eat anyway, so why not also meet someone at the same time?

After lunch we walked to Brookline High, and from there to ACD's uncle's house via Tappan Street, and ADC showed us where he had lived in 1984. We had the surprising experience of seeing a flock of turkeys cross the road (literally: a USPS van came along, the driver stopped and put his head out the window to ask: Why did the turkey cross the road?). We wondered if the school playing fields were a kind of common, like the cows that grazed on Parker's Piece and Jesus Green in Cambridge, but we were later told that the turkeys were a Brookline "thing" and wandered around people's gardens, usually.

Our last day in Boston was much warmer, around 9 degrees, and we went into Boston itself, and walked the first part of the Freedom Trail, from Boston Common up to Paul Revere's house. We decided not to go into any of the museums along the way, but to stay in the streets. We did go into the Old Granary Burying Grounds, which was fascinating. The link is to a handout that we used, which added a lot to the experience, even though the cemetery itself is very well signposted. I also really enjoyed the Old Schoolhouse, with the picture of a small John Hancock practising writing, a tiny Sam Adams standing and orating, with Ben Franklin running with a kite in the background ... We went past the monument to the Irish Famine, which I remembered from 2012, and noticed a new memorial, the New England Holocaust Memorial, six granite and glass towers with steam rising from eternal embers. The contrast between the abstract form of that memorial and the two sets of statues - starving Irish and well-fed Americans, who were actually the same people - seemed to express the different scales of the disasters.

The past week has gone by very fast. A has learned how to write a business letter (the assignment was to persuade the Board of Education that sports should be made compulsory in high school), and S has started a unit on swimming. ADC and I are trying to complete our self-imposed hobby-related tasks so that we can go back to reading and watching movies. We did watch the first half of Kurasawa's Seven Samurai this afternoon as a family, but we were too tired to watch anything by ourselves last night.
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My promised letter about our trip to New York last weekend has been delayed by the Arctic weather we have been experiencing: I suddenly found it necessary to knit both boys decent neck warmers that could be pulled up to protect cheeks and noses. So both ends of these past ten days have to do with knitting: last Thursday I went to the local mall and bought 12 balls of yarn for 37 dollars and change. (This comes to about 13 shekels per ball. I think the least amount I've ever paid for yarn per ball in Israel was 15 shekels, at the hole in the wall shop in Mahane Yehuda.) Once I complete all the planned baby/child gifts, I want to make sweaters for myself, finally. Anyone who is interested in anything for themselves may also put in a request (except for this who can knit themselves). The patterns I've chosen to begin with are Miette and Excuses.

So, last Friday we set off by train to New York. We walked to the metro (we ordered a taxi using an app, but it failed to materialise), rode to Union Station, took the Amtrak train to Penn Station and then the Long Island Rail Road to Port Washington - a total of six and a half hours door to door. I must say that Amtrak has very comfortable trains: there was WIFI and electricity at every seat, and wider seats and much more legroom than on any flight I've been on in years. The train started in DC, so we were able to sit in two rows, with the boys in front.

ADC's cousin AS and her dog Ella met us in Port Washington, and we walked to her house. Ella was very enthusiastic in her greeting, and AS said that she had been quite anxious before we arrived, since Ella associates the direction of the train station with going to the vet. Presumably part of her enthusiasm was relief at not having gone to the vet! AS has a lovely house, also with a finished basement (where the boys slept), and two storeys, the kitchen-livingroom-study and the bedrooms/bathroom. At the top of the stairs leading to the basement, she has a pantry, with lots of open narrow shelves, where you can see at a glance exactly what canned goods you have. I liked that very much, especially as our current pantry is a fairly deep cupboard above the countertop, where I can't reach the top shelf.

After breakfast on Saturday, we set off for Manhattan. It took us longer than we expected - I at least had not realised quite how far out on Long Island AS lives, and since it was the weekend, the train stopped at every possible station. We reached Central Park just before noon, and walked across it to get to the Met. The station we got out at is actually the station for the American Museum of Natural History, and probably when we go in January we will visit there, maybe together with OM and and her family, since they are members. A and S were very excited to see Central Park, which they recognised from Hair, and Shaul at least was slightly disappointed to realise that there were no hippies on the central lawn. It was really a beautiful sunny day, and as long as you were walking, it was not too cold. We bought chestnuts from a halal food truck with an Egyptian owner, and ate them just before going into the Met, where we spent the rest of the day - until 8 p.m. - apart from tea/supper with DF, GF and MF.

The Met is overwhelming - and it took us a while before we actually got inside, what with checking our coats and ADC's backpack, and buying tickets. A was very definite about wanting to see the Arms and Armor display, and that's where we spent the first hour and a half or so. The armour is interesting of course, especially the Japanese sets of long and short swords (the Met has the biggest collection of Japanese armour outside Japan), and there was a very nice set of two suits of armour made for Henry VIII, one from his youth and one, much bigger, from the last years of his life, but ADC and I were ready to continue long before the boys were. We then continued to two special exhibitions: one on Cubism, where I particularly liked the still lives, and the other on the Iron Age Middle East and Mediterranean. We recognised several items from the Israel Museum in that one! S wrote a report for school on our first day in New York. This was instead of the spelling quiz that he missed on Friday after lunch, and he took the assignment very seriously, starting with bullet points and then expanding on it.

We then took a break and met DF and GF (not forgetting baby MF) at E.A.T., a deli/restaurant close to the Met. We started with hot chocolate, continued to sandwiches and salads (except for S, who of course had roast chicken), and ended with cake. DF and GF are very nice people, and I'm glad we made the connection (DF is my first cousin, the son of my mother's late sister, whom I haven't seen since his own bar mitzvah, about 20 years ago). His month-old son MF is a very cute baby, who was quiet most of the time, but naturally waited for GF's food to arrive before waking up and demanding to be fed and changed...

After supper we returned to the Met for another couple of hours, going to the Islamic art galleries, at my request, and the Vermeer and Rembrandt portraits at ADC's. The boys were a bit too tired to appreciate the Islamic art, but perked up when we reached the Dutch Old Masters. When you see them all together, you really understand how much better Vermeer and Rembrandt were than their contemporaries. Rembrandt's use of light, in particular, is so much more subtle.

On Sunday AS went out and bought a huge quantity of bagels for breakfast. We have not yet found a good bagel place nearby, although we did get a flyer recently and have not yet checked the place out. Anyway, we had a slow start after a very hectic Saturday. After breakfast AS took us on a sociological tour of Port Washington, whose route she had not properly thought out, so we didn't get to see everything she had planned as we had to catch a train back to the city. We didn't have that much time on Sunday, as we had a 4 o'clock train back to Washington, and we spent it on Seventh and Eighth Avenue, window-shopping until we had lunch at a place on Broadway called The Counter where you decide on your own burger (they have a checklist for every stage - burger type and size, bun, toppings, sides). It was an entirely touristic experience, and was great fun. After that we went to Midtown Comics, where each big spent over $100. S completely wiped out his savings, but is very happy with what he got, as is A, who still has quite a lot of money left!

After that, we stated the long journey home. The train from New York does not start there, and at first we were scattered all over the carriage, but enough people got off at Newark for ADC to find two pairs of seats. The journey took much longer, as there were stops outside a number of stations to wait for a free platform, and all in all, we arrived in DC an hour later than anticipated. We took a taxi home ...

The main event of the past week has of course been the cold weather. I tried to stay at home as much as possible, and bundled the boys up for school (as you all saw). The house has proved to be very well insulated, but as the air conditioning is on a thermostat, I can judge how cold it is outside by how often it comes on during the day. ADC's fleece-lined pants from Land's End arrived just int he nick of time, and his only complaint so far is that the red flannel is shedding a bit on his underpants. A came home on Tuesday and said that his neck warmer (the second or third thing I ever knitted) was too loose and too short. So I unravelled it, and reknitted the wool in a smaller circle and added some extra black wool. Now not only is his neck warmer adequate to the weather, it in the colours of his favourite soccer team.

This evening both boys had events at school. ADC went with A to the International Evening, where ethnic food was eaten (8th grade had to bring dessert; ADC made a lemon cake) and there was a talent show emphasising ethnic music. It sounded like they had much more fun than S and I did at "Camp Read S'More", where, as we understood it, everybody would get into sleeping bags and read. In reality, there was and hour and a half of activities connected to reading: fishing for books (S received a copy of Stuart Little, so he is pleased), creating "story stones" and making s'mores. The s'more ingredients had run out by the time S got there, so we just came home early (and read).
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Our guest room continued to be used one more time before Halloween: My friend NN was in Washington for a conference, and had an extra night before she continued to another conference in Indianapolis. It was really a flying visit, but I was glad to see her, and she brought tons of stuff that she had missed during her own post-doc in Berkeley: za'atar, ptitim, couscous and halva. Well, she had to make room in her suitcase for all the American goodies she was bringing back for her kids ...

NN slept over on Wednesday night, and on Thursday S's school had a Fall Festival and parade. No scary costumes allowed (what?!), so S decided that his character Rorschach was in fact Moo, the spirit of cows. I went along to help get the children ready for the parade and ended up staying for the whole thing, as what parents were actually needed for was putting the Fall Feast out on the classroom tables. The amount of food brought was incredible, and there'd been no coordination, so we ended up with a dozen doughnuts for 28 children and more grapes than could reasonably be eaten, to say nothing of about 3 Capri-Sun juice boxes a head. Anyway, they all had fun and I met a couple of mothers I had not met before.

Halloween itself was something of a letdown in the end. S went trick or treating with some other children, A had to go out alone (it seems that at his age trick or treating is no longer done) and I think he mainly enjoyed carving a jack-o-lantern. To our surprise, not a single trick or treater knocked on our door - and as I had bought a 100-piece bag of Hershey fun-sized treats, after nearly having a nervous breakdown in the supermarket, this was a disappointment. Both boys returned with good hauls, and they have been very cooperative in sharing nicely. We have allowed them to eat up to three treats a day since Halloween, and they still haven't finished. ADC eventually made chocolate chunk cookies this past weekend to get rid of some the plain Hershey chocolate bars, which are almost inedible in their natural state.

Last Saturday, we went to another Smithsonian Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, which share a building. We did not have very high expectations, and were pleasantly surprised by how much there was to see and how enjoyable it was. This time we concentrated on the portraits, which at the moment have an emphasis on the Civil War, and we'll go back to see more of the art. There was one fantastic stained glass window made in the 1880s that we walked past on our way to an exhibition of Time Magazine covers from the Sixties, that you just had to stop and stare at, though. The boys did us proud - we were there for about four hours, not counting lunch, and I don't think there are many 10- and 13-year-olds who can spend as long as that in any art museum (a good sign for visiting the Met this weekend when we go to New York).

Sunday both last week and this past one were quiet days, going to the market and buying some of the 20 different varieties of apples in throning and A going to flag football in the afternoon. His team is not doing very well, so the season will not be extended into the play-offs, but he seems to be enjoying himself very much. S is having fun with his ukelele, and has learned his first actual tune: Swing Low Sweet Chariot. I have asked ADC to concentrate on the relevant tunes so that at the next Seder, we can be accompanied when we sing at the end.

Both boys received excellent reports at the end of the first quarter - A is a straight A student, including English! I am very happy that they are doing so well. S regaled us last night with the pecking order in the lunchroom, and while he is not particularly high on it, he seems happy where he is, and points out that because he is "new", he can't be at the top anyway. We hear less details from A, but he seems to be doing fine socially as well. Not that they have much time to go to friends or have them over in the afternoon, with homework and capoeira. S is going to the monthly comics jam at the library later today.

We continue to be more social here than in Jerusalem: On Friday we went to IP and HP for supper, and it turned out that all their family was there, to predictable chaotic results. It's nice having an adopted family, to provide us with a substitute for Friday night in Kfar Saba and Omer. On Sunday night we had M's ex RM who also lives in Takoma Park, over for supper. RMl lives on the other side of Takoma Park, and considering the detailed rundown of markets and other food shopping options she gave me before we arrived, I had been surprised that we had not yet run into each other at the weekly farmer's market. We had a very pleasant evening, and it was interesting hearing about the school system from a data analyst at an education NGO who doesn't herself have children in the system. It's rather sad how deeply the differences between blacks and whites have become ingrained - even middle-class black people seem to to visit museums.

On Saturday there was the first real cold snap. Luckily, we have all already for our winter coats - ADC and S at REI, and I at Land's End. ADC is very taken with Land's End, he has now bought three flannel shirts and two fleece sweaters, and has two pairs of flannel-lined pants on the way at the moment. I am experimenting with fleece-lined tights and boots under skirts, as I think that this will be warmer than just trousers, and have ordered very long socks from Sock Dreams for the depth of winter.

Despite the cold, it was very bright and sunny. We went to Georgetown, and wandered around - a practice run for Manhattan next week in a way, as the forecast is for much the same weather there. We started by walking along the towpath of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (the canal that was beaten by the railway in reaching Harpers Ferry), and then reached a busy shopping street, where people were standing in line up the block outside particularly trendy eateries.

I have been invited to give a talk at Rutgers, in New Jersey, in the first week of December, so am finally starting to work on research and not just editing. I will be giving a talk on the reception of Galen in medieval Arabic and Hebrew texts, and will have to make this as broad as possible, since I will be talking to the Medieval Studies Program and possibly the Classics Department, too. I can't be too philological, but will have to explain why this is an interesting and significant thing to be studying. (At the same time, further expanding my horizons, I am editing the dissertation of an archaeozoologist who did her MSc with ADC's late PhD supervisor, on the remains of equids [horses, asses and mules] found in Israeli medieval sites).
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Our first visitor is here - B, ADC's post-doc - and I am taking advantage of their being at a Phylopizza evening to write sooner rather than my usual later. For those of you who are planning to visit us, B reports that the bed is very comfortable.

We set off on Friday after lunch for North Carolina, to visit our friend SG, who teaches at Duke and lives in Durham with his wife and two small children. Having been warned of Friday rush hour traffic, we took the boys out of school early, and left the house about 15 minutes after our planned departure time (having discovered that S had mislaid - terminally, it appears - his raincoat and trying to find it), around quarter to two. Google Maps and Waze had earlier informed us that the drive should take about five and a half hours. We arrived at our destination at 9 p.m., having had the choice of bumper to bumper traffic jams or thunderstorms and pouring rain in the dark the entire way. It took us over two hours to get to Fredericksburg, the next sizeable town south of DC (and still considered commuting distance), including a section where Waze took us off the I-95 and onto country lanes where we had no idea where we were going. Did I mention that it rained all the way? After three and a half hours, we still had not reached Richmond, and I took over from ADC. I have never driven in such severe conditions in my life (I can hear you laughing, J. I would much preferred to have been in Cyprus with you!) - it seemed as if we were sliding along, we were going so slowly and the road was so slick. Much to my relief, ADC got back behind the wheel before the thunderstorm reached us - but he was totally out of it by the time we reached SG. Fortunately, the boys were unusually well-behaved for such a long car trip. The fact that we were on main roads and A could play on his phone probably helped a lot.

We spent Saturday recuperating, basically. After a late breakfast, SG and IG took the two children, YG and MG, in different directions for their Saturday morning activities, and we went for a walk around the local lake. It was incredibly humid and very warm - I wore a short skirt and didn't need any base layer. The lake was very pleasant, and the neighbourhood was classic suburbia, with no pavements, and two cars in every driveway. We had lunch in the sukkah, and not a moment too soon - shortly after we finished it began raining again. ADC and SG spent the afternoon cooking for supper, when we met another Israeli expat family, that of SK, who had also been part of ADC's D&D group way back when, and who had been on the executive committee of the graduate students' union together with me. The children played together - mostly S with YG (who is in second grade), and A with MG (who is three). I made a lot of progress on LR's shrug.

Following S's recent announcement that he was now much happier at school because he had "found the geeky kids", a great deal of the conversation involved the question of the difference between geeks and nerds. Considering the fact that there were four PhDs present, it is not surprising that geeks were declared to be Good Thing to be, but as A pointed out, there is very little that is geekier than debating what makes a geek ...

On Sunday, it was cool and drizzly - not quite English weather, it was less cool and the drizzle was heavier, but enough for us to decide that we would not do anything special on the way home, but simply leave after lunch and hope not to be caught in traffic again. We spent a couple of hours at the lovely Sarah P. Duke Botanical Gardens, while IG taught Hebrew to children (including her own ones) at the JCC, and then met up again for an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. As we had learned the night before that SK lived in a town where the children played cricket, rather than baseball, this seemed a safe bet, and it was. S outdid himself by eating six pieces of Tandoori chicken, while A was more adventurous and ate gulab jamun for dessert. We had an uneventful trip back, which indeed took the advertised five hours, so that we arrived home in a much calmer state of mind.

SG gave us a number of AA guides to the mid-Atlantic and southern states, so we are now better placed to plan our winter break. I think that driving all the way to New Orleans is not realistic, and a lot will also depend on the actual conditions in December.

Yesterday was Columbus Day, and lots of people had the day off work (a possible explanation for the traffic conditions to and from Durham). A and S had school, though, and not just an ordinary day - it was Open Day, and parents could come to class! I started with A, whose school day begins earlier, and attended US history, science and maths. In history, they practiced analysing evidence, using visual and written sources about "the event in Boston on March 5 1770" (commonly referred to as The Boston Massacre, in which 5 people were killed - but of course that is an interpretation in itself). As this was the first lesson of the day, time was given to the school TV station, Wake Up Takoma, and the Pledge of Allegiance was recited. I stood up, of course, but didn't quite know what to do - obviously I couldn't say it, and even putting my hand on my heart without saying anything seemed inappropriate. I eventually settled for crossing my arms, and had a bit of a flashback to assembly at Boston Primary School in South Africa, where everyone knew the words to Our Father except me.

In science, experiments involving air pressure were conducted at six stations, and now I finally understood why A had had to bring an empty soft drink can (we actually brought an empty beer can all the way from North Carolina) - some water in the can was heated over a hot plate, and then the can was quickly flipped into a bucket of ice water. If you were quick enough and hit the water at the right able, the can would implode. I enjoyed that lesson. I also enjoyed maths, because it turned out that I remember much more about linear functions, solving equations and deriving equations from story sums than I thought I did. All those extra lessons in high school were worth while, I guess. As I came into the maths classroom, a boy in A' group asked me if I was British like A, to which I felt that the only possible reply was "Even more so." When I took S to have his haircut on Thursday, the hairdresser - who is Portuguese - identified my accent as being "not British", but almost everyone else here thinks that I am.

I spent less time at Sl's open house, because that only ran until 11:30, the third-grade recess. I attended science and maths classes again. S's class is learning about motion, and they did an experiment involving measuring how far a container of sand could be propelled by a large rubber band placed around the back legs of a chair. As this meant lying on the classroom floor, I am sure that everyone had a lot of fun. In maths, S is in a different group, which is moving through the material faster, and they are currently learning decimals. We played a game where everyone had to say the decimals in full - not "two point five six" for 2.56, but "two and fifty-six hundredths". I didn't go to social science, but we received a note from S' teacher saying that they were going to start learning about the French and Indian War - the subject of A's most recent quiz in US history, as you may remember. I also had to miss seeing Conflakes, the teacher's pet corn snake, eat Lunch (a mouse), which apparently was a very exciting event - "one of the coolest things I saw in my life," S assured me.

If anyone wants scans of quizzes/worksheets/assignments that the boys have got back, just let me know. Also, for the ladies - I have been shopping online quite successfully, and now have several skirts and two pairs of boots to wear. I can send links to the precise items if anyone is interested.

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