Uh-oh?

The CK refused to go to school today. Or, rather, the CK refused to stay at school today. I was planning to walk the boys to school, but because I had a bad headache, Pentheus was going to walk them without me. Before Pentheus and the boys left the house, I heard the CK crying and screaming that he wasn't going to go to school if Pentheus walked him because he was going to miss me too much. Pentheus did a great job of calming the CK down and they left. Twenty minutes later, I heard Pentheus's key in the door and then heard the CK come in with him. Pentheus came back to the bedroom immediately to tell me what happened. Apparently, although the CK went to his classroom, he wouldn't go in. Pentheus tried to persuade him to enter the class, and although CK teared up, he wasn't super upset. So, Pentheus walked back to the dira with the CK, but also with the understanding that the CK would go to school tomorrow, no matter what. I talked to the CK as well, and he promised he would go to school tomorrow, and understands that there is no TV or screen time while he is home today. The CK is now prone on the couch reading "The Boy Who Spoke Dog", a book about a boy named Jack who washes up on a mysterious island after a big storm in San Francisco. I hope tomorrow goes smoothly.

We had a nice Shabbat. Friday night we went to services at Shir Chadash, and enjoyed them. There were a lot of people, on both the men and women's side, including a bunch of post-high school American young women who had just finished a year-long study program in Jerusalem. While we don't know for sure that Shir Chadash will be our synagogue of choice while we are in Israel, we do know that we liked it enough to reserve seats/tickets for the Jewish high holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) which are coming up in about 3 weeks.

After services, we had a late dinner at around 8:15 pm. The beef dish I had bought at the prepared food store was interesting but good, I think. I had bought it thinking it was pepper steak or something similar. It ended up being some sort of sweet and spicy brisket with vegetables. It was too spicy for the boys, who ate the roasted chicken and terriaki chicken that I had purchased as well. Once the outside temperature cools down a bit later this month, we will begin cooking more for ourselves. The kids are aching for Pentheus's panko chicken! I had bought a chocolate babka from the supermarket in Talpiyot on Thursday, and we opened that for dessert for the boys. Although they said it was very good, the kids thought it was "too gooey" (i.e., there was too much chocolate) for them. I agree it looked pretty gooey - I literally could spoon out the chocolate from the cake part, but I was surprised that the boys would ever say that!

Yesterday morning we went to a "Shivyohnee" (egalitarian) service hat meets at the community center in Baaka. There was a "mecheetzah" (separator) between men and women, but it seemed more symbolic to me, as it was a semi-sheer white curtain, and men and women could "see" each other through the mecheetzah. A woman led the introductory prayers and other women participated in the Torah service (both being called up before the Torah was read and reading from the Torah itself). Men led the formal morning service and service after the Torah service concluded. There were a lot of people there, including lots of pre-teen girls. Turns out that it was one of the girls' Bat-Mitzvah, and the pre-teens were her friends coming to celebrate with her. The Bat-Mitzvah girl did a good job, and there was a lot of excitement. After the service, in honor of the Bat-Mitzvah, there was a tent outside with a lot of good food, including ice-cream and candy, which made the boys very happy.

The people at Shivyohnee seemed very nice but weren't super welcoming, in terms of coming up to us and introducing themselves, as many have done at other congregations. I think it's because a lot of the people there were guests for the Bat-Mitzvah, and not actually members of the congregation. Many of the conversations during the kiddush lunch were in English, and there are clearly many former Americans in attendance. Before we left the lunch, the CK was reading one of "The Puppy Place" books about a family who fosters dogs, and a woman came over to talk to us. She and her family are from Ann Arbor (Go Blue!), and they have just come to Israel 10 days ago for her sabbatical year. Her children are 8 1/2 and 6 and started school last Monday as well. We talked with them for a while and made plans to contact each other. I do hope we end up seeing them, if only to switch English books with their kids, but hopefully to establish a friendship with another family. We'll see.

We then walked about 10-12 minutes to Pentheus's friends dira in Mekoor Chaim (Source of Life), another neighborhood in the area. (Interestingly, Mekoor Chaim is the only street in the neighborhood, but it is a fairly long street.) They are a very interesting couple. They moved to Israel from Canada 30+ years ago. The wife is an engineer who worked with Pentheus in 1990, and her husband is semi-retired book binder and a Jew-by-choice, who had grown up Catholic. The husband is fluent in Esperanto and an active member of the Freemasons in Israel. They have two children and a few grandchildren. The boys were excited because they had some English children's books and many toys and games. We played "Hamesachehk Chaim" (The Game of Life) for a while. We liked lunch: a corn and onion "pahshteedah" (kind of a quiche), tofu and mushrooms (pick-out-able mushrooms!) with soy sauce, challah, cut up fruit, a green salad, and a vegan chocolate cake for dessert. We had a lovely time.

(As I wrote the last paragraph, the CK volunteered to fold laundry to take a break from reading. Hmm, I could come up with a lot of things for the CK to do...)

The boys went to the park in the afternoon while Pentheus and I napped. (We could really get used to this "walking themselves places" thing!) We played Uno and Bananagrams when the boys returned and had a light supper around 8:10-ish after Shabbat had ended. It was very hard to get the boys to settle down to go to sleep last night; we're definitely not used to having school on Sunday! I was very tired and had the beginnings of my headache, so I went to sleep just after 10:30. Pentheus stayed up for a while to begin filling out the many Cambridge Public School forms that are required each year. We want to fill them out and send them back now so that we will be in the School Directory and receive all of the necessary info for when we return.

During dinner Friday night, apropos of nothing, the WK said, "You know, now that we are in Israel, there's really no reason to go back to Cambridge." After Pentheus and I exchanged quizzical looks with raised eyebrows, I asked the WK what he meant. The WK said something about how if he is learning Hebrew here, he might as well stay in Israel so that he could use his Hebrew, rather than likely forgetting it when we go back to the States. Will have to follow up on that a bit more.