On the beach and at iCon

For the past five years, my parents have been taking all of us - me, my siblings, our spouses and children, now 16 people in total - to the holiday camp at Dor for a few days during Sukkoth. Traditionally, time is spent sunbathing, swimming and eating. My father gets up early to go fishing, and various children and adults accompany him. There is barbecue two out of three nights, and ADC and I make a vegetarian meal on the third. We get away from the beach for one morning or afternoon. 

This year, we arrived later than usual, as we went to the market on Friday morning and then continued unpacking until S got home from school. When we arrived, it turned out that we had more space than usual, as my parents had bitten the bullet and instead sharing a chalet with eumelia , she was by herself in a honeymoon suite / 2-person igloo, including a jacuzzi, which meant an extra kitchen and fridge, as well as empty floor space for the traditional board games played by the boy cousins, ADC and myself in the afternoons. We also had a slightly different location from the usual one, and it was even more peaceful than in past years.

On Saturday, S and I joined my father for fishing, together with my brother-in-law, R and his children SR and LR. While the men fished (quite successfully), LR and I looked for shells and talked. I haven't spent much time alone with LR, and I enjoyed the bonding experience. She is very conscious of being a girl, and in some ways she is very Victorianly accomplished- she plays a musical instrument (cello), learn dancing (flamenco) and loves drawing (on Monday she sketched the fishermen and the fish); so Victorian with a twist, I suppose. It was warm even at 6:30 a.m., and I was glad to be wearing an activewear t-shirt and shorts (the first pair I made) over my swimming costume, for a bit of extra protection. 

After breakfast, we had a quick swim and then showered and changed before setting off to visit NN, almost exactly a year after she visited us in Takoma Park. It took us a long time to find her house, as none of the houses have actual numbers, and their name is quite discreet, since they are renting. Lunch - made by her husband AN-D - was mainly quiches, with the correct ratio of vegetables to pastry/filling, i.e. about three times the amount of vegetables you find in commercial quiches! We had a good time catching up, although as usual - NN is so polite and I'm not - we talked more about what we were doing than what they were doing, before moving onto politics and academics, and ending up playing a new-to-us board game, called Dixit, in which the three C family teams took the first three places. At least I was able to compliment AN-D on the new machzor (prayer book for the High Holydays) for Yom Kippur, as he was on the committee that compiled it, and to tell NN that my father missed her Torah reading. 

As soon as we got back to our igloo, we began preparing supper - this year, the vegetarian meal was on the middle night, since guests had been invited for the third night, which also happened to be the first night of the Sukkoth festival, the week-long festival ending the series of New Year festivities in which observant Jews spend as much time as possible in transient structures, whose sorts are covered with plant material through which one can see the stars. (A funny story about the rabbi of ADC's parents' shul in the Negev desert: when he made aliyah to Israel from Minnesota, he included his sukka in his lift. As the sukka was meant for mid-September/early October in Minnesota, he has never used it since, the temperatures in Israel at that time of year being far too high for it. I digress ...) This year's theme for our meal was Persian food, including spinach cooked in pomegranate juice until it was completely reduced (very yummy and worth doing again). The only leftovers was the plain rice we'd made for the younger members of the party who reject any kind of sauce as the devil's work. 

On Sunday there was no fishing, as my father had to make the trip back to Kfar Saba and open his pharmacy for several hours. We spent the morning at the beach (at the next lagoon over, where there are fewer people and more waves than at the main beach, and some people did not apply sufficient sunscreen; fortunately, all my nuclear family were sensible) and then played Kingmaker in the afternoon until the guests arrived and a fish barbecue was prepared. A and S had a major epiphany: they do like fish! (Or at least, they like fresh sea bream cooked over coals). Everyone was very excited and my mother immediately began planning to serve fish next time we come for supper. 

On Monday, S and I once again got up early for fishing. It was less successful this time, but still enjoyable. We left Dor shortly after lunch, as we had another exciting day ahead us on Tuesday, and got home in time to complete unpacking, apart for the children's books. I even had ADC set up the converter for my sewing machine. Happily, he found an unused electric point next to the dining room table, so I will be sewing there - with much more space - rather than at my desk. 

Yesterday was something completely different: we went to the major Israeli sci-fi and fantasy con, called iCon. This was only our second time, and once again I was struck by how exhaustingly hot it is in Tel Aviv. The cosplayers all seemed a little miserable after a while, and the people wearing t-shirts proclaiming "Winter is Coming" are clearly delusional, at least for the next few months. I spent most of my time at lectures, two of which were very good and one of which was terrible. We also all went to a game show on logical fallacies, which was very amusing. The two good lectures were a panel on translating books featuring time travel, which quickly became - at the audience's urging - a discussion of the difficulties of literary translation generally, and of translation of speculative fiction in particular; and a really excellent talk on dragons and their natural/cultural history, given by an arachnologist who is a technician in the collection ADC curates and hopes to become one of his doctoral students (as soon as there is funding). The bad lecture was quite appalling: purporting to discuss "the Odyssey: from Homer to Tolkien," the unfortunate lecturer quickly proved to know very little about either Homer or Tolkien. This did not prevent her from retelling the stories before getting to the point that Bilbo = Odysseus and the trolls = the Cyclop. If there are parallels to Homer, could it be that this is because Tolkien had read him?! I don't expect an academic lecture; I do expect to be treated like an intelligent person. I expatiated on this to eumelia , who met us for ice-cream after her work and before we went to the dragon lecture, and she suggested that I give a talk myself next year, on Snape and Richard III. Definitely food for thought ... ADC (who was only persuaded to stay in the Odyssey talk because there was air conditioning) is also thinking of giving a talk. Happily, A and S only had positive experiences: they heard a different lecture, comparing the cultures of Marvel and DC comics (one is a workplace and the other is a family, in a nutshell), which provided them with a prism they hadn't thought of before. S also blew about 500 shekels (about $130) on comics and action figures - but this was his birthday money and savings for him to spend, so I can't really complain. We returned home tired but happy.

Twice a week updating did not happen

The past ten days have been incredibly full. It was ADC's birthday, I got a lot of work (and paperwork) done, I visited the Old City in a dust storm, we have refurbished the kitchen somewhat, and preparations for Rosh Hashana are underway. 

ADC's birthday was last Thursday. Like last year, I bought him a cake, as he does not believe I can make fancy birthday cakes. I totally agree! At the same time as buying the cake, I also bought a salad spinner. Since A and S have decided that they do eat lettuce, we have been eating salads rather than cut up vegetables, and ADC has been complaining for a while that we need to buy a salad spinner. My first stop was at a branch of a fairly fancy houseware store, where the salesgirl really didn't want to sell me anything. I remembered seeing a new kitchenware store just by the Machane Yehuda market, and continued there. Happily, although it was mostly accessories for baking, they did have a salad spinner - nicer and cheaper than the one I'd seen before. The salesperson took me around the corner to their other shop in order to wrap the box - and the other shop sells Arcosteel pots and pans, has a knife sharpening service; in short, it is the kind of shop that ADC loves. Telling him about it was an extra present, and he has been using the salad spinner almost daily, too. 

This week's work: reviewing an article (that required checking translations of a text, and I had suggestions for improvement, so it was worth it), submitting the final version of an article of my own  (and being invited to give a talk on the same topic to a general audience - that will no doubt be a post of its own), paperwork for the Israeli income tax authorities for 2014, paperwork for getting our lift released from customs (hopefully next week, immediately after Rosh Hashana), and editing a first draft of a grant proposal. I also officially finished working as a research assistent for one of my PhD supervisors, as his grant ended, and began negotiations to begin working for another professor who has just received a grant. 

For the past few days, since the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israel has been suffering from an unusually violent dust storm, coming from the north (Syria), rather than the south (Jordan/Saudi Arabia) or west (Egypt) as they usually do. Jerusalem was particularly hard hit, as it is on the edge of the desert, and on Tuesday there was almost no visibility, with outside games cancelled at schools and dozens of people with asthma etc. needing medical treatment. Unfortunately for them, that was the day M and her good friend V came to see Jerusalem. M said she hadn't been to the Old City since high school, and this was V's first visit; I am so sorry it was in such poor conditions!! We climbed up the bell tower of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Christian Quarter, one of the highest points in the city. On a good day, you can see to the Dead Sea; on a normal day, you can see to Mt Scopus; that day we could barely see the city walls. The nice guard refused to take our money, and we continued to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was surprisingly not busy. I guess anyone who could was staying indoors. We then continued to a viewpoint of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. I have never seen the Dome so un-shiny, and it was quite eerie to see it against a flat white background, instead of seeing the Mount of Olives behind it.

The house was quite dusty, as we had left the windows open when we went to bed on Monday, so it was a good thing that the carpenter was due to arrive on Wednesday. I have not provided a photojournal, so you will just have to take my word for it that my kitchen is now much more spacious and organized. Admittedly, I can't reach the top shelf of the new pantry, but that is why I have a very tall husband and two sons who are on their way to being as tall. I have found myself just standing and staring at the pans that now hang from hooks and are easily accessible, instead of being stacked and hidden away in a drawer. 

Finally, Rosh Hashana is on its way, starting tomorrow at sundown. ADC has been trying to make profiteroles for years, and as a trial run, we invited my sister J and her family for brunch today and fed them highly successful ones (finally!). We are going to ADC's family for Rosh Hashana, and I hope the batches he makes for them are as good. 

May all my f-list have a happy and healthy New Year! שנה טובה ומתוקה!

The return

We've been back in Israel for a week now - and despite promises, we still don't have internet at home, so I am writing this from my parents-in-laws', where we are spending the weekend. 

The flight home was not an easy experience. It began shortly after my previous post, when A burst into the bathroom just as I was undressing for a shower, and threw up all over the floor. Luckily, he managed to miss the wall-to-wall carpeting on the rest of the upper floor, but it took me over an hour to clean up. He was still not himself when we left in the morning, had no breakfast, and almost passed out in the line for security, as it was very hot and crowded there. The TSA people were very nice and let him take his half-full water bottle through. By the time we reached JFK, A was fine. All was well until after supper was served, at which point S turned to me and said: "I don't feel so well." He spent the reset of the flight shaking and retching over a big plastic bag. The cabin attendants were very nice - they brought him lemon to chew on and a hot towel - butthat didn't help after a while. He slept very fitfully, and I slept even less, feeling as if I was once more travelling with a baby. 

When we arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, late on Saturday afternoon, a new wrinkle emerged, in that one of the suitcases did not arrive. Fortunately, it was not the carry-on trolley that ADC had checked at the gate at JFK (thus sneaking in an extra suitcase without being fined), which contained clean pajamas and a change of clothing for the next day; unfortunately, it was the suitcase containing all my clothes plus stuff for my siblings. (It eventually reached us in Jerusalem at 9 p.m. on Monday, so it could have been much worse.) After that delay, we continued to my parents' house, where we were reunited with my side of the family, plus with my phone - which my mother found on Friday, less than 24 hours before we arrived. 

We spent Sunday resting and recuperating (Y and N came over in the evening), then on Monday ADC rented a car and the two of us went up to Jerusalem, leaving A and S with their grandparents. They stayed in Kfar Saba until Wednesday, then took the train down to Omer, where we are now, while we cleaned and unpacked the apartment. We had rented our apartment with one room - the children's - closed off, where we stored most of our stuff. After arrival on Moday afternoon, ADC and spent nearly two hours walking around the flat and planning changes, which will be the subject of a separate post, as they come to pass. Apparently our tenant had left the house quite filthy, so R, our regular cleaning lady, who had cleaned for him for a while until his sexual harassment(!) became too much, had already cleaned most of it. We still had a few surprises: a connection for cable TV through one wall, a bidet attachment to the toilet pipe in our en suite (both without even asking for our permission), and condom wrappers - though thankfully no used ones - in a drawer in the bedroom. As soon as I could, I began doing laundry ...

On Tuesday R arrived, and finished cleaning the house. I cleaned alongside her, and we made good progress on unpacking, as well. She had some hair-raising tales about the tenant, whose ex-wife (he got a divorce over the course of the year, and apparently the reason he rented the flat was because he needed a place to live quite urgently) was someone she had been to school with. He will definitely not be seeing all of his security deposit from us ...

By Thursday we finished all the unpacking except for things that either belong to the boys, who asked us not to unpack their things yet, or require the proposed changes to occur before we can find space for them. That being said, with a bit of rearrangement and willingness to discard things, we have managed to find space for almost everything that was on top of the kitchen cupboards. We don't want to have anything out there anymore, as they get full of dust and grease, and it makes the kitchen feel more cramped than it actually is. It is such a relief to be back in our own kitchen, though. Not only is there so much more space than we had in Takoma Park, everything is the right height, we have all our tools AND there is a dishwasher again!! It's been working overtime, as I wanted to wash all the utensils before using them again ...

On Wednesday evening we went to the Machane Yehuda market, where we met many of our shopkeeper friends, who were all amazed that the year had gone by so quickly. We ate at a very nice Lebanese restaurant called Manou Bashouk ("Someone in the Market"), run by a couple from France - he's originally from Beirut and cooks like his mother did, and she's of North African origin, so that there is excellent couscous on the menu, too. Interestingly, there are vegetarian options for almost all the meat main dishes, which is great for me. We didn't do much shopping, just a bag of figs and a new draining board. We returned for a proper shop on Thursday morning, and when I finished decanting the different kinds of rice and lentils into glass jars, the kitchen started really looking like home again. 

On Friday we set off first thing to buy furniture at Ikea in Rishon Letzion. ADC was very loath to go there, but his sister E persuaded him that for a storage solution on the closed-off balcony, it made sense to go there. We ended up getting two metre's worth of three-drawer Nordli units, a Ställ unit for shoes, and a few other odds and ends, in about two hours - but I am never going there again, and certainly not with ADC. I hate being rushed when shopping, and while Ikea is not my favourite, they do have some very practical and functional ideas, that I would have liked to have had time to look at and think about, but couldn't, because ADC was determined to spend as little time as possible there. Anyway, the main thing is that on Sunday we will be able to finalise the arrangement of the living room, as the balcony extension will be organised. 

After Ikea we continued to Omer, where we have been relaxing ever since, despite the blips of the coninuing phone saga. That, too, is worthy of a post of its own ... Despite the irritations and inconveniences, we are very close to being organised and it is so good to come home, to be back somewhere where you know and understand how things function. 

Last post from America

I can't believe that my last post was only a week ago - we have covered so much distance since then! When ADC returned the car this morning, he had driven it for about 2500 miles. 

On July 29, the first day of our road trip proper, we set off quite early, heading for the Columbia River Gorge. Our first stop was at Vista House, built in the 1920s specifically for viewing the gorge at its finest. The very enthusiastic docent there gave us maps and lists of waterfalls to visit as we made our way along historic Route 30, one of the first roads ever built expressly to encourage motoring to natural beauty spots. ADC, who spent a year in Eugene when he was in fourth grade, remembered many of the names, and the description of the Bonneville fish hatchery, where the fish jump up a ladder ... the and his family then probably made many short trips along the route we covered in a single day. We stopped at Bridal Veils to admire the waterfall, but were unable to stop anywhere else along Route 30 due to the lack of parking. And this was in the middle of the week! As we drove along, we stopped at random places to look at the gorge and/or Mt Hood and for ADC to take pictures. Today was the beginning of a heatwave supposed to continue to the weekend, and we definitely felt temperatures we had not experienced since leaving the DC area. On the other hand, there was very little humidity, so we were able to spend nearly an hour walking in 36C heat. For the first time, it felt like summer should: neither the humidity of DC nor the chilliness of Washington. That was after we had crossed the Cascades into the rain shadow desert of central Oregon. The landscape changed dramatically almost immediately: from green to yellow, looking more and more like the Golan Heights with the basalt rocks and grazing beef cattle. As the temperatures rose, visibility improved, and when we came across a mountain identification plate at the crest of Mt Criterion, we were able to see, in addition to the easily identifiable Mt Hood, also Mt Adams - far away in Washington, Mt Jefferson and the Three Sisters. 

We spent a lot of time in the car that day and heard a great deal of music, the "West Coast Playlist" that ADC had prepared in advance (including, as well as musicians from California and Seattle, anyone else who seemed to have been influenced/was mocking them). We spent the night just beyond Bend in the kind of place that ADC has been looking for since our first trip in the USA: a small motel called Rodeway, cheap but clean, with very few frills, but with a room large enough for each boy to have his own bed. It is part of a chain, but not one we had come across before.

Next day we set off  for Crater Lake, hoping to escape the forecast heat. In fact, ADC was very worried that we might not be warmly enough dressed and told the children to expect to see snow on the ground (which they interpreted as "it might/will snow", it seems). In the event, there was no snow whatsoever - to the extent that the illustrated signs were false - and the weather was a pleasant low 20s Celsius. Once again, we were in a new plant zone, and on one walk Ariel became quite frustrated by the number of birds he could hear, but not see, and was unable to identify. All the same, I filled over a page in my little notebook with flowers, birds, a rodent (golden-mantled squirrel) and a butterfly (variegated fritillary). Crater Lake itself was an amazing sight - such deep blue water! It seems that even the geology in the New World is younger than what I am used to from Israel, measured in thousands rather than millions of years, but I know that that is an artefact of the volcanic Cascades range. We went on two shortish hikes - we are impossibly thorough in our nature observing, especially me when I'm not familiar with the flowers, so we didn't have time for more than that. 

Once we left the park, we were in the middle of nowhere. We passed through a couple of motels at the side of the road just after 5 p.m., but it was two early to stop, and once we entered the Rogue River Gorge, there was nothing for more than an hour. We were just starting to get a bit concerned when we reached Shady Cove, where we found the Platonic ideal of an old-fashioned motel with a diner alongside it. The rooms were cheap enough that Amos and Shaul could have a room to themselves (which turned out to have ants, so they were upgraded to s suite, thus they each have a room of their own), and at supper I had a butterscotch milkshake, which more than made up for the only vegetarian option being a mediocre garden burger. 

We reached California just before noon on July 31st, and also reached yet another climate/vegetation zone - to the extent that ADC bought me a new plants and animals pamphlet, specifically for the redwood forests national and state parks. The size of the redwoods is truly amazing. Together with the enormous sword ferns growing on the forest floor, I felt as if I were Alice after drinking the "Drink Me" flask, as we walked along the Stout Grove loop (the grove was established as part of an effort prevent further logging of the redwoods in the 1920s and was named by Mrs Clara Stout in honour of her husband, a lumber baron). We left Shady Coves that morning still in the throes of a heatwave, with added forest fires (the car was lightly coated with flakes of ash). When we reached Crescent City and the Pacific coast in the late afternoon, the temperature was 40 degrees Fahrenheit lower than they had been 24 hours earlier! No wonder there is constant fog flowing from the Pacific. To top the natural wonders of the day, we saw a small herd of elk - females and juvenile males - browsing at the side of the road just before leaving one of the sections of the state park. Our original plan had been to stay at a motel in Eureka along US 101, but when we arrived, they were all very sleazy-looking, so we found a place a few blocks into town, where we got a suite, so we have our own room, and each boy has his own bed. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, the first good South American food we've had (the mediocre Salvadoran meal we had as our first lunch clearly had an long-term effect, albeit an unconscious one).

August 1 was a long day, which can be summed up in two words: driving and eating. As our motel did not include breakfast, we decided to eat a few remaining things that we had bought for hikes, and to stop after the Avenue of the Giants for brunch. We set off just before 9 a.m., stopped for brunch two and a half hours' later, and at 3 p.m. really needed another break. We stopped at the closest place Google Maps suggested, Frozen Art in Santa Rosa, where we had some of the best ice-cream I've ever had. The owners are Mexican, and there were some very interesting and unusual flavours - I had a scoop of honey and lavender ice-cream, and another of rose petal. ADC had corn ice-cream! They also had paletas, or home-made popsicles, and there the flavours were even more interesting: cucumber and melon, pico de gallo, and pine-nut were just a few. 

At 5 we finally reached our Airbnb in Oakland. This was our first time doing Airbnb, and we didn't really know what to expect - we were not expecting to get the run of an empty family home, including a hot tub! There are also two cats, that come with the house. The only downside is that there is almost no closet space: the family that lives here has gone on holiday for three weeks, and decided that this was better than getting a house sitter. Finally, we went over to ADC's cousins  J&L  for dinner. It was possibly the best Chinese takeout I've ever eaten - if all Chinese restaurants served food like Shan Dong does, I would have a better opinion of Chinese food for vegetarians.

Much of Sunday and Monday were spent with cousins. We essentially spent all of Sunday with J&L - as BART was not working, we stayed in Oakland. We walked around Lake Merritt, ate pizza from Arizmendi (the original of the pizza place that serves only one flavour in Inside Out), and visited the Oakland Museum of California, which is free on the first Sunday of the month. We spent nearly two hours there, only in the History hall. I had known very little of the history of California previously, and it was good to get the Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans sorted out. It was also very useful to know a bit about the development of San Francisco before going there the next day. At the very end of the hall was a small historiographical exhibition, explaining how curators worked and derived history from material objects. Monday was our first day in San Francisco itself. We used three kinds of transport: BART, the cable car and a historic street car (made in 1948 and originally from Cincinnati, according to the posters inside it). Our first stop was in the Mission district, where we met my father's first cousin W and her family for brunch at their home. I last saw W when I was about seven, and didn't remember her at all. I am not sure we would have met so easily at the BART station if I had not said in advance that I would be wearing my purple skirt! W and her husband T were very welcoming. We talked about all kinds of things, and met their daughter M and her boyfriend J. M is about to begin medical school and J is a chef; I think we persuaded him to seriously consider visiting Israel (he isn't Jewish) by telling him about the goat cheeses made in the desert just beyond Omer. When we left, S asked them to come for his bar mitzvah in two years' time. After over two hours' having brunch, T was very happy to walk us around the upper Mission district, taking us to see Dolores Park and Mark Zuckerberg's house, and pointing out particular architectural features. I must say that the so-called Victorian style in San Francisco is lovely. After we said goodbye to T, we continued down Valencia St, looking at all the weird and wonderful shops, of which the weirdest was surely the steampunk emporium of Paxton Gate. The boys really wanted to buy things there, but we restrained them by pointing out the restrictions on importing animal parts from one country to another. After moving from Valencia to Mission St., we caught another BART to Powell St., where we wanted to get the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. The line there was incredibly long, but we noticed that the cars were not full when they left - indicating that there were additional stations along the way. We walked just a short way up Powell to the next station, and were able to catch the next but one car, instead of the fifth or sixth car. It's very interesting how people see a line and join it, and very few think of ways to shorten their wait time. We saw a similar phenomenon at Ghirardelli Square, where you could get sundaes either at the Ghirardelli Marketplace (half empty and no queue when you approached the counter after walking past the displays of chocolate bars) or at the Ghirardelli Fountain (queue coming out of the store and around the block, for the same over-priced sundaes). Fisherman's Wharf itself was pleasant to walk along. The boys went down to the beach and paddled for a bit - I also saw small children in puffy coats! We were a bit tired by the time we finished wandering around that area, and took a street car back to Market St., where we wandered more in search of supper. It turned out that Market Street is very like Soho in London, in that the restaurants and the sleazy places are very close to each other. After half an hour, I forced ADC to book a table in an Indian restaurant, just to be sure that we ate somewhere with decent food at reasonable prices. On the way there, we found a jazz bistro called Les Joulins, which is where we ended up eating supper: very good food and even better music. It later turned out that this is one of the premier spots for live jazz in the city; as we had missed hearing a jazz quartet that IB and E like very much in Seattle, this more than made up for it.

Wednesday was a relatively restful day, in that we did not spend all of it on our feet. Instead, we went for a scenic drive (there's something we hadn't done in a while :-)) through Golden Gate Park, over the Golden Gate bridge and along route 1 to Stinson Beach. We had a bit of a late start, and saw the toll change from $6 to $4 while in line at the Bay Bridge at 10 a.m. On the way to the Golden Gate Park we saw some very different SF neighbourhoods from the ones we had seen by foot, like the millionaires' haven of Sea Cliff, where we saw the kind of crescent that in Bath has 18th-century row houses adorned here with mansions, and Richmond, which looked rather like a place we would enjoy living in. The day was chilly and overcast, so we didn't spend too long in the park, as A and S wanted to cross the bridge as soon as possible. We overheard an Irish guide giving instructions to a group of cyclists who were going to cycle over the bridge and A really regretted having to be stuck inside a car! The view from the bridge was as spectacular as promised, and so was the view from the vista point on route 1. I had a bad attack of car-sickness going around all the twists and turns, both coming and going, to the extent that I believe that I made the right decision to skip soft-serve ice-cream at Stinson Beach. Everyone was very sorry for me, and I'm not sure why I was so badly affected while the boys - who also tend to car sickness - seemed perfectly fine. Part of it, I think, was that somehow I was never at the right angle for the win to blow in my face. That aside, Stinson Beach was a lovely day out: we paddled a bit, despite the cold and even drizzle, but were amazed at the people actually swimming! The Pacific is so much colder than the Med, and the posters warning of rip tides and sharks were quite alarming. We found a nice little book shop, and more importantly at the moment, I found a post office, where I picked up boxes so we can send at least some of our books home via media mail and hopefully avoid paying overweight on our flight. The day ended with more ice-cream, this time at Fenton's Creamery, and the welcome news that our flight time had been changed: instead of leaving SFO at 8:30 with a 6 hour layover at JFK before taking off for Tel Aviv, we are now leaving at 13:20 and have only 2 hours' layover, arriving in Tel Aviv at the same time, but hopefully less complete wrecks.

Yesterday we went back into the city, entering and leaving from the Montgomery Street BART station. We began by visiting a tea and chocolate shop we had seen from the cable car, called Spicely. We spent much longer than expected there, and did not walk out empty handed (despite our luggage concerns). If Spicely opened a cafe in Powell's bookstore in Portland, I think we would move in permanently. After that, we resumed walking up Montgomery Street to the Coit Tower. We didn't go up it, but looked at the view. We then took all the steps down through Grace Marchand Garden to Battery Street and began looking for lunch. That took longer than expected, and we ended up at The Planet, an organic cafe where the men each had a different kind of sandwich and I had an interesting tomato and watermelon salad. ADC and I had juices (and I remembered why I actually prefer them without food), and Amos expanded his horizons and had a smoothie. We then went to the Ferry Building marketplace, and bought artisanal bread, cheese and salami for an early supper - ADC and the boys went with Jeremy to see Ant-Man. A and S enjoyed themselves greatly, especially S; ADC, as usual, was distracted by the bad science involved and its inner inconsistencies. I stayed home, began packing, and tried to get T-Mobile to unlock our phones so we can use them in Israel but was defeated due to not being ADC (in whose names all the lines are). This was after we'd made a special detour to a T-Mobile shop in town, having understood that the unlocking could be done there on the spot. I did make some progress, though, and as I used the chat, the agent assured me that we wouldn't need to give all the information again. I think chat helplines are brilliant: I'd tried calling, first, and ended up unsure if the agent had understood me properly, or I him. With chat, everything is much clearer and you can go back and check what you said much more easily.

I'm writing this after getting back from supper with J&L, with whom we spent much of the day today. We got a relatively late start, as there were several errands that had to be done before we could go into San Francisco one last time - mailing books (it turns out that media rate does not apply to boxes, so that was $87 - but paying for overweight luggage and having to check both trolley suitcases would probably have come to more), finally getting the unlock codes from t-Mobile, and returning the car to the rental agency. We eventually met J&L at noon, and went for a walk through Chinatown. L didn't grow up there, but her parents still have close connections and apparently her father takes two buses to go shopping there almost every day. She attempted to haggle with the seller at a jade shop where A bought a small elephant to add to his collection, but he was too quick and paid without question. We had lunch at a place whose name I didn't catch, and whose clientele seemly evenly divided between Chinese and non-Chinese. It was very good. especially the deep-fried salt and pepper eggplant we had as a starter and the garlicky pea shoots. After that, L had to go back to work, and J took us to City Lights, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookstore, still a mainstay of radical San Francisco. There were some interesting titles there, but this time we weren't buying ... Everyone humoured me and went into Britex Fabrics, an entire building that is one of the West Coast's meccas for anyone who sews. There is a floor of silks and woollens, another of cotton, linen and more, an entire floor devoted to buttons and trimmings of all kinds, and the fourth floor (which we didn't reach) is remnants and novelty fabrics. I was overwhelmed - I don't know how you can go into a shop like that with the intent to buy without a sewing plan. There is so much choice ... A picked out a couple of silks that he would like me to make into shorts for him; I said I would aim at making him a cotton shirt by S's bar mitzvah (giving me two years to improve my sewing), and see how we went from there. 

At 3:30 we went back to our Airbnb, finished packing except for what we still needed to use before packing up, and went to Dr Comics & Mr Games, the local comics shop, so that S could get one last fix before going home. At 7:00 Jeremy came to fetch us for supper. During supper, L asked what the highlights of the year had been. It was a surprisingly difficult question to answer, but in no particular order, my top five were meeting Patricia Crone, learning to sew, visiting Savannah, cultivated flowers (the Hoyt Arboretum, the bonsais at the National Arboretum, Portland Rose Garden and the cherry blossoms in Washington), and the Tenement Museum in New York. The list could continue, but I need more time to reflect. I'll revisit the question in a month's time, everything is too close now. 

In less than eleven hours a taxi will come to take us to the airport ... next post will be from Israel.

Washington to Oregon

This is a bit later than I expected my update to be, a combination of long and tiring days, and the fact that despite staying in the home of a senior Microsoft executive, we did not have access to wi-fi over the weekend in Seattle. 

The first part of our second week in Friday Harbor was uneventful. Both ADC and I worked hard so that - Woohoo! I finished uploading edited versions of the nine articles I had to read while at FHL, and send a summary of my comments to my co-editors. That was a marathon ten days, during which I edited another article (I'll be paid for that one, though), but now I'm done! ADC also finished writing his article, up to and including figure legends an acknowledgements, so on last Thursday our holiday really started. 

Not that this hasn't been a partial holiday, anyway, of course. Last Saturday we took the bus to Limekiln Park, aka Whale Watch Park, where we had a very enjoyable time hiking. We almost missed seeing orcas, as they were not in the vicinity most of the time, and in fact we only saw a few in the distance just before we had to leave the lighthouse viewing spot in order to catch the last bus. ADC was rather disappointed, as the potential was much greater than the actuality turned out, but the rest of us were thrilled anyway. We also saw a golden eagle while we were hiking, which was almost as impressive. 

We followed up the whale theme by going to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor on Tuesday. It was almost as much of a trek to get there as it was to the park, on the other side of the island, because we made the bad mistake of ordering sandwiches to go from a coffee shop, rather than the deli, in town. I've never had to wait 50 minutes for sandwiches before, and not been offered any kind of recompense or apology, not even a glass of water while we waited. The staff was overwhelmed by the lunch crowd (which struck us as being probably normal for the height of tourist season), and the single woman making the sandwiches was clearly not a professional: not only did she mix up orders (part of the reason for the delay), but she was incredibly slow and inefficient. I think that even S, who spends part of his time on another planet, could have worked faster. Adding insult to injury, when we mentioned how long we had been waiting to the staff, one of the women said "We're not a restaurant" - well, if you can't cope with a "to go" option, why offer it? And in the end, neither the sandwiches nor the cookies we bought were very good.

The Whale Museum was not what I expected. It was smaller than I thought it would be, a bit over-didactic and had almost nothing on the relations between humans and whales throughout history. I was expecting a museum with much more about whaling, but apparently that was never a major industry here, only further north, in Canada and Alaska. The in-depth studies and genealogical charts of the pods of the southern resident orcas were interesting, though, even though I felt that the anthropomorphism was a bit much: yes, whales are clearly intelligent, but they are not human. 

After the museum, ADC went back to work, while the boys and I wandered around window shopping. We went into a place called Island Studios, selling arts and crafts made by locals. I was shocked to see ruffle scarves, the kind that I matched the hand-dyed wool to the previous week and whose yarn costs about $6 per ball, for sale for over $40!!

The boys have taken up geocaching with a vengeance: on Wednesday they spent all afternoon wandering round town by themselves, looking for caches. They had a false start, as after they got to town A discovered his batteries had run out. When they arrived home, S discovered that his hat (which he had been wearing) was missing. He borrowed A's spare and they set off again, and found two caches and S's hat (it was next to the hutch where you could buy eggs on the honour system). Lucky boy! On Wednesday night, once it became fully dark we went down to the docks. ADC and the boys went rowing, in the hopes of seeing bioluminescence, while I stayed on the docks and joined a group of students who were "night lighting": sending down an electric light into the water to see what might be attracted. I think that we were very lucky: a huge nereus worm swam around and around, there was a salmon migration and one swam into the net held by one of the students - I don't know who was more surprised, him or the salmon, and best of all, a harbor seal swam by really close: you could count each of his whiskers! 

Our last full day on San Juan Island was spent at the north end, thanks to a kind neighbour who lent us her car. We started at English Camp, where the British garrison lived during the joint Anglo-American occupation of the island from 1849-1871 until the Kaiser's arbitration awarded the San Juan Island s to the United States rather than to Canada, then walked up Young Hill for a fantastic view of Haro Strait across to British Columbia, and finally visited the resort of Roche Harbor, clearly where you go if you have a yacht. We found three geocaches, which pleased A greatly.  

We left Friday Harbor in the rain, similar to what we had woken up to on our first morning there. The trip back to the mainland was uneventful, although this time we knew to choose seats around a table with a jigsaw puzzle. I knitted and occasionally helped the others, and we completed the puzzle as the ferry drew in to port at Anacortes. Once we debarked, we quickly found the rental car agent, who took us in a pick-up truck into the actual town of Anacortes ("salmon canning capital of the world"), where we spent much longer than anticipated actually getting the rental car. Part of that was despite ADC having called to confirm, they didn't have a full-sized sedan that could take five suitcases, so we had to take a midi-SUV, which needed its oil changed before being driven to California. We went to have lunch - which was very nice - but took about twice as long as we thought it would. Clearly the Pacific North West lives at a different tempo than the East Coast. As a result, we only made a brief stop at Deception Bridge, instead of a proper hike, on our way to IB and E's place in Bellevue. 

It was lovely to see them again, after such a long time. IB was in ADC's class in high school, and he has known E since the army, before they became a couple. Their eldest daughter Y  is eight months older than A, and their second daughter, AM, is the same age as S. They also have a much younger daughter, N. The five children got on amazingly well together, considering that they hadn't seen each other in about five years. Some of the time they split into a pair and a trio, other times they were all together, but they all played nicely. 

Saturday in Seattle began with pouring rain, so we got up slowly, had pancakes for breakfast and only left for Pike Place Market aound 11:00. As well as having a late lunch there, we bought provisions for a picnic supper, while watching a Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing by GreenStage. That was the highlight of the day - despite a light drizzle falling intermittently, it was not too cold, and the production was very good. There was great chemistry between Beatrice and Benedick (who was fantastic, I had him autograph my programme), and as usual, I failed to understand the possibility of Hero and Claudius having a happy ever after. Next day, while discussing the play, S said - on hearing that Kenneth Branagh had also played Benedick - that of course he had, since Hamlet and Benedick were really very similar. I think that there is definitely a seminar paper there, since I think that their main similarity was being written by a man who gave the main characters the best lines (except for Romeo and Juliet, there Mercurio has the best lines).

Next day was much better weather, cloudy and cool but not raining (at least once we had crossed the Cascades to the east). We set off on a hike to Gold Creek Pond, where Y and I took the wrong turning and walked the loop in the other direction from everyone else. Quite frankly, I wasn't bothered, as Y knows a great deal about the local native flowers - her school has a module on them during sixth grade and she remembered a lot. I really enjoyed spotting flowers with someone who was also enthusiastic (rather than mainly humouring me and much more interested in birds). There were far more flowers around the lake than there had been on San Juan Island, and Yael also identified various ferns and flowers that are not in my mini guide, so that was also very useful for the future, too. Once we were done at Gold Creek Pond, we continued to Snoqualmie Falls, a waterfall and the oldest underground hydro-electric plant in the world. The falls were quite small, since we are in the driest time of year and the past winter was very mild, but still impressive enough. After that, our hosts went to an art fair, and we went shopping, to stock up for our road trip south.

Monday was devoted to Mt St Helens. The forecast being for warmer weather now that the weekend was over, we all wore shorts, forgetting that we would be significantly higher than in Seattle - and we weren't dressed warmly enough. That is my only complaint, though - the views of the mountain were incredible, and visibility improved as the day went on and as we went higher. We went to three visitor centres, one telling the story of the 1980 volcanic eruption, one about the return of the forest (much more quickly than expected), and one about the current monitoring and observation of the mountain and its volcano. Each one was at a different altitude with different flowers. I found the human stories of the people who survived very moving, and the differences between the treatment of public and private land in the aftermath was very interesting. Public land became the Mt St Helens National Volcanic Monument, and was left to recover with almost no human intervention, while on private land, which was largely owned by logging companies, the first order of the day was to salvage as much of the lumber from the trees blown down by the lateral blast of the mountainside as possible. 

We were tired and hungry by the time we reached our final destination of the day, Vancouver WA. After checking in, we went in search of a restaurant, and found a very pleasant Hawaiian place called Tommy O's. Everyone was very happy with their choice, and especially with their desserts. 

We had very high expectations of Portland, where we spent the day today, and it mostly lived up to them. Our vague plan back in DC was to go to Powell's bookshop, SockDreams' brick and mortar store and the Rose Garden. We managed to do two out of three, and several other things, too. We started by parking at Washington Park, which is the cheapest place to park, and on the way to the Rose Garden we walked through the Hoyt Arboretum. The Arboretum has thousands of fully-grown trees, and walking through it is almost like walking through a natural forest. in fact, it is what I had expected the National Arboretum to be like - a green piece of nature in the middle of the town. The Japanese Garden, across the road from the Rose Garden, had been recommended to us, but we decided (mostly at my urging, I must admit) to skip it in favour of the roses. I love rose gardens, and this is really an impressive one. We spent over an hour wandering through bed after bed of roses of every colour, smelling them. Our favourites were Young Lycidas, which smelt just like Turkish delight; Elle, which had a more citrusy rose scent; and Barbra Streisand, which was a combination of the three. If I ever grow roses (Jerusalem is not the ideal climate, I fear, and our window boxes get very little sun), I would pay more attention to their scent than to their appearance, and I'd like one of those. 

By this time it was nearly noon, and we took the park shuttle to the MAX station, and then took the train to Pioneer Square, where we had lunch (Chinese steamed dumplings and Voodoo doughnuts) from food trucks and listened to live music, before setting off to Powell's bookshop, rightly called a city of books. We decided to limit ourselves to two books each, and urged the children to buy second-hand, as those books tended to be both cheaper and lighter. We reluctantly dragged ourselves away after just over two hours (ADC said to me: Can't me move in to this shop, to live?), feeling that we had only scratched the surface. I would have happily bought more - we are now considering sending all our books, except those we plan to read on the flight, home by mail so as to free up space and weight in our suitcases - and I am very glad that we went there. It makes me happy to know that such place still exists, despite Amazon and Kindle. 

After the bookshop, we experienced the least satisfying part of the day, walking down to the Willamette River and generally wandering around. Maybe we were not in the right places, but it was much less exciting than we expected. Did all the Portlanders go inside to escape the heat (it became significantly hotter as the day went on, hitting 30 around four o'clock)? What we did see was lots and lots of homeless people, far more than anywhere I've ever seen, either in the US or in Europe. I wonder if homeless people, who can easily die of exposure in East Coast winters, move to Portland to find a place with both a mild climate and a tradition of liberalism. Maybe there is more help for them there? It was unnerving going into parks, as almost all the benches were occupied by people and what were clearly all their worldly goods. Homelessness seems such a structural problem that I don't know that small amounts of cash (and who do you choose to give it to?) is of any help.  

I will now sound very heartless and shallow, I'm sure, by saying that my mood improved by finding a cupcake bakery and a games shop, and buying their respective wares. Certainly the people who told us we would like Portland were thinking of the shops - although we didn't get to SockDreams, as it is in a relatively outlying neighbourhood, not served by the trams. We ended the day at the Davis Street Tavern, where I had a more interesting meal than the previous day (kale and mushroom risotto beats stir-fry any day), and ADC enjoyed the charcuterie board very much. 

Tomorrow will be along day, as we set off to see the Columbia Gorge ... I will probably write again just before we leave San Francisco and the US. 

First week at Friday Harbor + special: A on geocaching!

This is a bit earlier than than my updates have been recently, but I think I will probably be writing weekly from now until we return home. We've done so much this week - ADC even finished the first draft of his article, and only has the figures and drawings to do, so this has been very worthwhile, and I have gone through half of the articles for the special issue on medicine that I am co-editing. While the two of us have been at work, the boys have done a lot of exploring and holiday homework: A has made a lot of progress catching up on geometry, while S has listened to an audiobook of White Fang (an abridged version, by OxfordOwl) and written a new ending of over 600 words. This was his dovrei anglit summer homework, which will go towards his mark at school in kita vav.

What else have we been up to? Last Sunday we walked back into town and explored what was there apart form the market and supermarket. We went down to the harbor itself and watched people setting off on a whale watch ($70-100 a person, I think we'll begin by seeing what we can see from land. Tomorrow we are going to a park semi-officially known as Whale Watch Park), before locating the San Juan Transit station, from which we would take the bus that goes to that park (the blue route) or to the alpaca farm (the green route), where I had been planning to buy yarn for myself and M, until we walked out of an ice cream shop and I saw a sign out of the corner of my eye: Island Wools. As you can imagine, as soon as I finished my ice-cream I went inside, and immediately became overwhelmed. The young woman behind the counter was very welcoming, and showed me the alpaca yarn she had: not from the farm on San Juan Island, but from the next one. The yarn was a bit disappointing to me, as it was much thicker than I really wanted - alpaca is really warm, so not that useful in Israel, and I was planning to use it together with another yarn, a ribbon yarn in a wine colour. As soon as she said that there was a range of yarns that were hand-dyed in the shop, I knew that that was what I wanted. I must say that everyone else was very understanding of me - not to say enabling; S found a pattern for a Robin Hoodie, and tried to convince me to knit his next Purim costume. However, the lack of space in our suitcases (to say nothing of the prices; that alpaca yarn was $34 for 100 gm) forced me to decide that I could only buy one skein. The colours available were all so gorgeous that it was clear that I would have to come back with a ball of the ribbon yarn in order to match the colours. 

Monday was a quiet day, as we were a bit exhausted from walking back and forth twice in two days, but on Tuesday the boys and I had a lot of fun: first of all, after a safety review on the docks, we were allowed to look at plankton that ADC had helped collect with the invertebrate embryology course. It was really fascinating, seeing all the tiny shiny balls that are actually real animals. After lunch, we walked into town, and while I went back to the yarn shop with the ball I wanted to match, the boys went geocaching. I will let A tell you all about that, and just say that buying yarn was even more fun than just looking. M also decided that she preferred colourful fingering-weight yarn to thicker alpaca, and I bought six mini-balls for her, and one large hank for myself, in a colour called Black Cherry. With excellent timing, the boys arrived just as I had decided what I wanted, and they were able to watch the hank being wound into a centre-pull ball. Not only did they enjoy watching that, they were relieved to hear that now they would not have to help me do the winding by hand :-) On the way home, we went past a second-hand bookshop that claimed to have 50,000 books and a computerised catalogue. Interestingly, the boys were not that keen - they preferred the new book shop we had gone to on Sunday. I think they lack the formative experience of second-hand bookshops being the only way to get books in English at a reasonable price. We are planning to visit what is supposed to be the biggest second-hand bookshop in North America, Powell's in Portland, on our road trip, so maybe that will help change their minds. 

On Wednesday, the highlight of the day was the ice cream social at the dining hall, where you could have all the ice-cream you wanted, with all kinds of toppings, while on Thursday, the highlight was the farewell party for the invertebrate embryology course where ADC had given two talks. A helped grill (on a gas grill), and a good time was had by all. On Friday, we finally got on the water, and when for a brief practise row in the immediate vicinity of the labs, which are across the bay from the town of Friday Harbor. It was a bit nerve-racking at first, and S in the bow and me at the stern was the wrong way around for balance (and I got very wet from the rowers), but all in all, ADC and A gained enough confidence to row all the way across this morning. It is indeed quicker than walking, just under half an hour rather than slightly over 45 minutes.

We started a bit later than we had intended, so instead of beginning at the Whale Museum and continuing to the farmers' market, we started at the farmers' market, went to the San Juan Cheese Shop and ended up at the San Juan Island Museum of Art - the Whale Museum will have to wait for another day. I had wanted to go to the SJIMA from the moment I saw an advertisement for one of the exhibitions there: a photographer at the Whiteley Centre (where ADC has his fellowship now) had taken pictures of the invertebrates studied at FHL and printed them on blank backgrounds - they looked absolutely gorgeous. My favourite was the stalk jelly, which looked like something from a kaleidoscope. A liked the curly-headed spaghetti worm, which he believes proves the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. S's favourite was two starfishes touching each other, which he thought reminiscent of the Creation of Man from the Sistine Chapel. ADC refused to say which picture he liked best, claiming to be used to the animals. 

After getting home, we went out again in the late afternoon, very kindly being lent a car by one of our neighbours, who is teaching at the marine invertebrates course, and drove off to explore some of the south coast of the island, via geocaching. We also took the time to watch the tide coming in, as high tide was at 5:45. I will now quote A on geocaching: 

"Geocaches are small caches hidden on trails in various places. The person hiding the cache opens a cache page on a geocaching website with the coordinates for the cache and a brief description of the cache and hints how to find it. If you want to go geocaching somewhere you search the websites for caches in that place and choose caches that look interesting and send their coordinates to your GPS. When you make sure the coordinates are on your GPS you can go to the place you are going geocaching and start looking for the cache. The caches are usually small boxes hidden somewhere not obvious but findable after a search. Once you find the cache you open it and see what’s inside. Common things found in caches are marbles, stickers and travel bugs*. In every cache there are a few pieces of paper for writing your name and the date you found the cache. Once you sign the cache you leave something in the cache and take one of the things in side of the cache. When you get back home you log your visit and write you found the cache (or didn’t).

*Travel bugs are small discs with a code you move from place to place and write on the website where it was moved and then you can track its trip.

My personal experience of geocaching is very fun and extremely fulfilling. it’s a very enjoyable extra to add to every hike. It was very exciting to find my first geocache with S. While Mummy was in her knitting shop S and I went to look for an interesting geocache called “Quick Trail!”. We followed the directions in the description and what the GPS said was the right direction (it’s not a GPS like waze but a GPS for geocaching and tracking where you went and it has a compass and stuff) until we reached the middle of a short trail between two streets. After about 20 minutes of searching and S trying to persuade me the cache wasn’t there we found it between the bushes next to a broken cinder block (like the description said). When we opened the cache we signed our names, took a marble and put in a travel bug from a previous cache we didn’t actually find but just asked the people at the reception counter after looking for it outside and they pulled it out from under the table, so that’s not a real find after looking. S and I were very happy after finding “Quick Trail!” and kept talking about it until the end of the day."

I expect I will write again when we are back in Seattle, next weekend.