Everyone's trippin'

First of all, welcome to Loyal Reader #17, Elana! Glad to have you with us! And thank to Elana, Sharon, and Risa for their comments regarding Biur Chametz Around the World. Elana - next year, please send one of those 7 year olds over here - we need some serious help, fire-wise.

In other news, Donny's trip is going well. And here I refer to his successful purchasing of the rest of the books in the "Outlander" series for me. Yay! As we tearfully parted goodbye on motzash, I pulled Donny close and whispered in his ear, "Don't even THINK about coming back without my books." So all is well on that front. It seems he has had more trouble checking off Ariella's wish list, as the stores in San Fran are on the more upscale side. While I'm sure she and Yaakov would have fun tossing around a Faberge egg, she is really looking forward to more Leapster games, so Donny may have to take a trip to the seamy side of the city, in search of cheap electronics stores.

In other news, I chaperoned a school trip yesterday! All of the ganim in Modi'in are going this week to see a play at the Cultural Center. On Sunday the ganenet called me and asked if I would come. Apparently, they require two parents per class, and Ariella probably told her teacher, "Oh, call my mom. She sits around all day and does nothing." (Although as I'm sitting here and blogging at 10:30 in the morning, maybe there's some truth to that...) So I went to school, and the excitement in the air was palpable, in the form of kids shoving each other, crying, or running around in circles shrieking. Morah Maya paired up the kids, girl boy, and Ariella was unfortunately paired with her mortal enemy, Yoel. She refused to hold his hand (and after seeing where he put it, I didn't blame her) but eventually was persuaded to do so when I told her I would hold her other hand. We boarded the buses, no small feat with 3 ganim of over 30 students each. As it turned out, there was not enough room on the buses for all the necessary parent chaperones. I volunteered to drive, and said I could take two kids with me. The teachers looked at me in horror. "ASSUR!" they gasped. Ok, ok, calm down, ladies. So I drove one of the teachers and we met the bus there. It took a looooong time to get all the kids inside and seated, but finally the play began. You will be very proud that, aside from a word here and there, I understood the whole thing! And it was told in verse! Granted, about 3/4 of the play was wordless dancing, but STILL. When we used to watch plays at SAR, they tended to be about 15 minutes too long. This seems to be a universal truth. The play would have been excellent at thirty minutes, but at nearly an hour....well, you could actually feel the restlessness of the natives. All in all, though, the fifty million kids that were there were very well behaved. We returned back to school, and I made Ariella the happiest girl ever to live by taking her home with me a little early.

This Friday she has a trip as well. In a "This Would Never Happen in America" moment, we got a note on Sunday. Handwritten (which meant the teachers wrote this 32 times. Like the teachers walked into gan that day, smacked their forheads, and said, "Oh YEAH! We have a trip on Friday. We should probably, like, tell the parents! Especially since we're making them come! Let's write permission slips! Thirty-two times!"), it said that the class was going to Ein Yael on Friday. Each child needed to go with a parent, and everyone was driving themselves and meeting there. This posed a bit of a problem for me. Let's do the math:

Two parents - one parents = one parent
One parent + trip from 8:00 - 1:00 with one child + needs to pick up second child no later than 11:45 = ain't gonna happen.

I explained this to Maya. She said, Oh, you can join up with another family and go with them. I tried to explain further that the problem was not the driving itself (although, in another famous equation, Gila + driving to Jerusalem = bad news), but that I couldn't actually come. No, you have to come. All the parents have to come. I tried again. I CAN'T come. Physically impossible. There's another one of these short people who calls me "Mommy." He needs me on Friday also. Finally she relented and said, Hey, Ariella can just go with another family! Brilliant! So Aiden to the rescue!

And now I return to making my meatballs. (Donny away = making dinners that I like.)