Plan B

We had 2 very miserable weeks, when we had to pull back all of our plans and look into what exactly we would be doing next year. I asked for some sort of job at SAR, but there was nothing really available. We decided that LI was actually our best bet. We would go there for a year, and replan our aliyah for summer 2009, perhaps. We went to Plainview for Shabbos. Plainview was close to Donny's office (a 20 minute commute each way), we knew the Rabbi and his wife, who were friends of ours, and it seemed like a nice, warm community. Over Shabbos, Ariella hit it off with the rabbi's daughter and was very excited to move to "Tiferet's." As a bonus, the shul was looking for a youth director. It seemed like the perfect combination - the job didn't pay much, but came with a nice-sized 3 bedroom aparment (above the mikvah.) I could do the youth director job, we would live rent-free for a year, have Donny home more often, put Ariella and Yaakov in HANC, and regroup while we planned for Israel. I had a quasi-interview for the YD job while we were there for Shabbos. I thought, (modestly), that the job was in the bag - I was an experienced teacher, and would be devoting all my time to it (as opposed to the past YD, who had done it in addition to a full-time job.) We even went to see the "mikvah house" Saturday night. Although Ariella said, "This is a baby house - it's too small!" it would definitely be livable for a year.