melodyssister

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.  

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! 

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.  

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.

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).