melodyssister

We spent the first half of the weekend - Friday evening through Saturday afternoon - visiting our friends in Baltimore, KM and AM and their children IM, AW and CR. KM was instrumental in me being able to come to the US, as he sponsored my J-1 visa, and he and ADC have been friends from childhood (their fathers were postdocs together). IM and AW are a year and a half younger than A and S respectively, and the four boys have always got on extremely well (CR is a sixteen-month-old toddler, so is not really part of the equation yet, as far as they are concerned).

We have exactly a month left before leaving the DC area, so we were very pleased to be invited for the weekend, actually just as ADC had been about to call to ask when we could see them. As we left Takoma Park during Friday evening rush hour, Google Maps took us on a different route from our previous visit, and after a whole year in which I had only seen the part of the Baltimore that was the route between Penn Station and Johns Hopkins' Homewood Campus, this weekend I saw two areas that were quite different. To begin with, we ended up going through a rather depressed area of Baltimore before we reached the Ms' house, on W 34th St. We discussed with the boys how you identified a poverty-stricken area: peeling paint, boarded up windows, no greenery, no chain stores but rather corner shops prominently advertising liquor. A added children playing outside on the pavement and adults sitting on the steps leading up to the row houses, and S added that those adults were smoking. As we moved north, the neighbourhood improved - this seems to be a near constant, north is better than south (if your city has an up and a down, like Haifa does, with Mt Carmel, then up is better). I wonder if there is any explanation for that.

After supper, we went to get ice cream at the Charmery, just around the corner on W 36th St., and saw another side of the city. This was the hipster Baltimore, which KM and Am had said was like Zichron Yaakov in Israel, with boutiques selling various kinds of handmade food and clothes. They were quite right, and we were sorry to see that we had missed happy hour at a chocolatier. We were not too late for an oyster stall, and to our surprise, S agreed to try one (we assume because IM, rather than one of us, told him that it tasted good). He wasn't impressed, but at least he didn't reject the suggestion out of hand.

We had planned to go to the Aquarium in the morning, but once again we didn't make it. The Ms are very big on board games, and had specifically requested that we bring Seven Wonders with us. We played after coming back from the ice cream, and ended up going to bed very late. Once we got up in the morning, AM made waffles, after which the boys (including the fathers) began playing Clue, while AM and I took CR to the playground. When we got back, because CR was getting hungry, the game was still going on, and by the time it finished, we decided to just go back home and do homework and watch You Can't Take It With You, which is exactly what we did.

Today was a glorious day, not too hot and not too cold. As we have been warned that spring in the greater DC area is fleeting, we decided that there was no time like the present to go on a hike. We chose the MD Great Falls park (there is a VA Great Falls park, too - I find the lack of imagination shown by early European settlers very irritating), where the Billy Goat Trail promised to be the kind of hike we are used to from Israel: a bit of rock scrambling, a bit of level path, and a lot of wild flowers. Just as we started, we saw a magnificent Eastern Swallowtail, and along the towpath, by the locks of the abandoned C&O Canal, we saw red-eared sliders (orange-bellied terrapins, as I called them at first): At first we thought we were seeing rocks in the water, but then they moved very slightly and we realised that these were terrapins. At the end of the route, we saw actual snapping turtles, looking just like in The Bears' Vacation! (ADC asks that I clarify that I know that the Berenstain Bears were at the seaside and therefore they cannot be the same species).

The rock scramble was, as always, a bit terrifying but I did it in the end. S, who has recently claimed a fear of heights, seemed to have forgotten that, and announced that he had had a wonderful time when we got back to the car. A is a mountain goat, so of course he enjoyed himself. He has finally begun using the GPS he got as a bar mitzvah present, and today he also took more pictures than usual.

We came home, tired and pleased as the Hebrew phrase goes, showered and went out to eat at Nando's in Silver Spring - marking the third country/continent in which we have sampled their chicken, after England and South Africa. The day ended with watching the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of ST:TOS.

It's been so long since I updated here ... probably because all the festivities have meant more frequent Skypeing with Israel.

It is already three weeks ago that we went to the National Mall, finally. A has been reading a book on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln for a book report, so we aimed for the Lincoln Memorial. On the way, we went through the World War II Memorial, and on the way back we went through the Korean War Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial. All the memorials were impressive and moving. The World War II Memorial has two arcs surrounding a central fountain. The eastern side is devoted to the European theatre, and the western one to the Pacific theatre, and right at the back is the Wall of Stars, with a gold star representing each thousand Americans who fell in WWII - I can't remember the precise number, but it is slightly less than those that died in the Civil War. When you consider who much smaller the population was in the 1860s compared to the 1940s, it really hits home quite how bloody the Civil War was, making this a fitting preparation for the Lincoln Memorial. It was very interesting to read the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Speeches, from which we all know a few phrases. I can't imagine any current-day politician using such complex sentence structures, and being remembered, rather than mocked. At the Korean War Memorial there was a group of veterans having their photographs taken with their families, all white, while at the MLK Memorial, all the families having their pictures taken were black.

The rest of that weekend was very social. After returning home from the Mall, we recrossed DC to Arlington, where ADC's host D was having a barbecue for his group. Very nice people, and D has a wonderful library, with a section devoted to spycraft and cryptography, so of course I said I would give him an e-print of my article on medieval Middle Eastern cryptography. I don't often get the chance to offer my articles to ADC's colleagues! Next day was spent in Baltimore, finally getting together with KM and AM as a family. The four boys, as usual, acted as if they had never been parted. After lunch, we had a great time just hanging out at their house, while CM, the baby, had her nap, and then we went to the harbour, where ADC took the three older boys on a paddle boat in the shape of a purple sea serpent.

Rosh Hashana was once again supper with the Ps on the first night, followed by supper with the Gs on the second night. Both evenings were very enjoyable, in their different ways - the Ps chaotic as usual (and with two cakes for dessert, to S's delight; A was more excited about the green beans - IP prepared 5 pounds, and A and YP ate most of that). At the Gs, we met their younger daughter J, who is also at the State Department, and who was very quiet. H was very happy to explain the American system of government to A, who is learning about the American Revolution (he's just had a quiz on the French and Indian War, and I must say that I never expected to know so much about the importance of the Ohio River). G was very pleased to hear about S's ukelele, and made him promise to bring it with next time we visited.

The boys had school on Friday, breaking up a long weekend, and then we had a strenuous couple of days. We spent Saturday at the Shenandoah Valley National Park, listening to The Seeger Sessions on the way - the same way we used to listen to Songs from the Wood in England in the spring. We had planned a route for a hike, and were shocked to arrive and discover that the relevant parking lot was tiny and completely full! We ended up walking along a random section of the Appalachian Trail, and enjoying ourselves, but overall it was a bit disappointing. We also saw lots of farm stalls on our way to Shenandoah, but on our way back, taking a different route, there were none. So, next day, on our way to Calvert Cliffs State Park on Chesapeake Bay, we stopped at the first farm stall we saw, and bought - among other things - corn that was still wet with dew, and red potatoes to make mashed potatoes for S's first birthday meal. Calvert Cliffs was great. We had been warned of insect bites, since it is a wetland caused by beaver dams, so we worn long pants and covered arms, necks and face with both Sano-Dy and Autan. This proved to be a successful strategy, as no one was bitten at all. We didn't see any actual beavers, only dams, but we saw terrapins, herons, water lilies and cardinal flowers. We took a meandering path to the beach, which is a major fossil site, where the boys paddled in the water and collected shells.

The next two days were spent on field trips - A went to Annapolis on Monday and S went to Mount Vernon on Tuesday. It sounds like S definitely had a better time, since he returned clutching the visitor's map and insisting that we should go there again as a family, whereas A came back and announced that there was no need to go to Annapolis. Tuesday also saw the beginning of S's birthday celebrations, which are not yet over, in fact, as I think that some presents have not yet arrived. So far, he has received a ukelele and accessories from both sets of grandparents, a video camera from his parents, earphones from A and games from his uncles and aunts etc. Everything has been received with gratifying enthusiasm, almost as much as the two birthday meals - breaded chicken with mashed potatoes on Tuesday and home-made pizza with green olives on Wednesday. The birthday cake was brownies, as we discovered too late that we had no cake pans. Can cupcakes be baked in the paper cups without a pan to support them? We weren't sure, and decided not to experiment, but brownies can be made in pyrex dishes, of which we have a plethora.

Yom Kippur felt rather strange, as it always does for me outside Israel. A and I went to hear Kol Nidre at the Adas Israel Conservative synagogue, one of the biggest in Washington, which has a free outdoor service. It rained on and off, during an abbreviated service (as usual, I was not happy with what was left out and would have chosen to keep other piyyutim), that still managed to go on for nearly an hour and a half until it started raining so hard that we were allowed into the synagogue building. At that point there were about 3 pages of the photocopied handout left, so we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated to the Red Line and took the metro home. Next day, the rest of the family enjoyed a fry-up and joined the IPs for their traditional Yom Kippur hike, this time to Sugarloaf Mountain. I stayed at home, read the machzor and knitted. In retrospect, seeing as a cold snap started, and I normally walk to and from Hod ve-Hadar twice while fasting, in much higher temperatures, I probably could have participated in the hike. When everyone got home, we watched The Incredibles, and then rejoined the IPs for breaking the fast. We met several nice families there, one of which has two boys - one of whom is in A's US History class, and the other will be in flag football with him. ADC and I spent quite a lot of time talking to the parents, so we have probably made new friends.

As I said, we are having our first cold snap, and yesterday (Sunday) we all left home wearing sweatshirts. We spent most of the day at the Takoma Park Street Festival, which incorporated our weekly market shopping. Music played on three different stages, and there were all kinds of stalls, selling a wide variety of gift-like things. I bought a pair of purple glass earrings, ADC bought two serious handmade wooden cutting boards, we bought two ceramic bowls and the boys jointly bought a Lego set. I ate a vegan crab sandwich, with coconut meat instead of crab - obviously, I have no idea how close it was to the original but it was tasty!

Knitting update: Since the last time I wrote, I completed a baby sack and matching hat for my newest cousin, in New York. 20140928_084437

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Entries tagged with travels: md

A different side of Baltimore

SED - The first real hike of the season

After the High Holydays

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