Bordeaux

 Saying goodbye to Micah and Jonah was definitely not a highlight. It was so wonderful to be able to travel with them, spend time with them, and be together. I hope we get more opportunities to do this throughout our lives. I especially enjoyed when they played Space Team. It brought back such pleasant memories.

Getting from Paris to Bordeaux involved the regular metro to the big train station, taking the train, and then wandering around near the Bordeaux train station figuring out whether and what to eat and how we wanted to get to our hotel that was the most Bed and Breakfast place in which we stayed. There were many stairs and three different Parisians helped me lug my large suitcase either up or down those stairs. People are good!

We took a taxi to our hotel where we stored our bags behind the breakfast area and went out for a walk. After grabbing a healthy snack of soup, I felt a little ill so I returned to the hotel and sat comfortably in the breakfast area to wait for check in while Mark kept walking around the town. I checked in without Mark and was able to rest there instead. And the room was fantastic! It was large and even had a second room with two beds where Micah and Jonah could have slept had they still been with us for this portion of the trip. Plus the breakfast was extensive and generous and delicious: there were two types of cereal available with milk, hot or cold coffee, tea, croissants and bread with jam and caramel (yum!) and butter, fruit plate over ham and cheese (yes, we skipped the ham), and a house made yogurt. I put the raspberry jam into the yogurt with some honey to make it work for me! Very satisfying.

On our first full day in Bordeaux, Mark went to the morning minyan at the synagogue. Unfortunately, he arrived too late to pray and only saw their after minyan breakfast. I tried to join him but it took me too long to get there so we went back at 7 pm for the evening minyan. The service was very short and the members were super friendly! They let us see the sanctuary and inside was the largest menorah I have even seen in my life. Yes, even bigger than those Chabad menorahs displayed outdoors in the US. We ended our day with a Middle Eastern street food restaurant called Rimon where I had hummus and mushrooms with pita and Mark had Israeli salad, lemonade, and an orange chocolate mousse.

That scrumptious meal at the chateau

In between those two meals just described, we had an absolutely wonderful day with Bertran, Mark's friend from Crocker Middle School. He lives in France and had some work to do in Bordeaux and we were lucky that he could have the day off to show us around. He picked us up at the hotel, gifting us with the famous Bordeaux canneles. We drove to a chateau for some beautiful scenery, interesting architecture, and an absolutely amazing lunch at the fancy restaurant. After the lunch, we drove to a family owned winery at another chateau where he had arranged for us a wine tasting and tour. Again, fantastic! Bertran was a gracious and loquacious host who showed his knowledge of food and wine! It was a definite highlight of our trip. and would have been much more difficult for us to accomplish without his assistance.

A beautiful view in Bordeaux

Stones resembling the wine grapes ready for crushing

At the wine tasting

 

First stop, London with Micah and Jonah!

The travel from Oakland to London was uneventful. We left on March 7th and arrived to Heathrow on March 8th. We took the train to Kings Cross/Pancras Station, walked 3 blocks to our hotel, Angus Hotel, and Mark lugged our huge suitcases up the two flights of stairs to our room. I found it to be a bit larger than the last time we were in London, but Mark claimed it was the same tiny size. We went out walking to find some food and ended up eating dinner at The Market Stalls right outside the train station. They are only open Wednesdays through Sundays. I had a delicious oat milk chai, an amazing caramel vanilla dessert, and dinner was a veggie tart for Mark accompanied by a loaf of seeded sourdough bread while I enjoyed a Moroccan wrap. We ate on a bench in the shopping area of the train station. It was a bit cold and rainy but we managed.

Photo of illustrated train map

What looks to me like a bird cage but is actually an art element near Kings Cross:

On Thursday, we walked to the Jewish Museum which was quite small but enjoyable. We shared the space with a couple of uniformed school groups who were quite boisterous, so much so that their teacher apologized for them. Favorite learning: Licoricia of Winchester of the early 12th century. Coincidentally, our friend Deb Hoffman Wade dressed up as her for Purim this year right after we learned about her! Another favorite moment: a wine/grape juice tasting! Fun fact: the Touro synagogue in Rhode Island is older than the UK's oldest synagogue in London. Though there was an even earlier one called The Great Synagogue that is no longer standing.

We visited the 9 3/4 platform at the Kings Cross station but didn't want to wait in line to take a photo.

For dinner we went to a Monopoly themed restaurant (which also features a bar and an escape room) which was better in theory than in practice. I did enjoy my fish 'n' chips with the malt vinegar though! I imagine the theming of the escape room is stronger than this:

Here are the photos we took on the Escape Room side:

On Friday, Micah and Jonah arrived! Hooray! I was so excited to get to spend this time with them in London and Paris. The three men walked around Kings Cross, had coffee, and a bad breakfast at an Italian place near our hotel. The four of us then walked a whole hour to the Tower of London and saw the Tower Bridge. There were many interesting parts of the Tower of London; it is a large museum now and there were LOTS of stairs and a lot of walking. We enjoyed a very English lunch at Byward Restaurant and Bar that Micah found for us. Because we had done so much walking already, we Ubered back to the hotel and everyone took a nap. 

    

For Shabbat services, Mark, Micah, and I (Jonah stayed back to rest) went to the oldest Sephardic synagogue in London called Bevis Marks. The men leading the service still wear top hats! A woman who sat next to me named Anna was attending her second service of her life. I tried to help her feel welcome and comfortable. And Laura Jones met us there! We tried to go out to dinner afterward near the synagogue but it didn't work out so just Laura and I ended up eating out together near our hotel. It was wonderful to reconnect but we forgot to take a picture except for this one of her with Micah and Mark that I grabbed while walking. :-( It was great to hear about her studies in theatre: stage management specifically, her boyfriend Nathan who is in the same program, and how much she loves living in London.

On Saturday, we enjoyed attending the Tottenham Hotspurs game. They won 3-1, Micah and Jonah both purchased scarves, and good time was had by all. Special moment: we were standing at a second floor window looking out and saw the opposing team getting dropped off and walking into the stadium. Then we saw the home team (Come On You Spurs!) bus pulling in and we thought we would see them too. Alas, the bus drove into the building so we didn't get to see our players before the game. 

Final Score!

 

Saturday night we met Liam Gordon at Kings Cross station! The 4 men went to a bar for pints, but I went home to bed. It was wonderful to see Liam, and Mark has the photos on his Facebook page. 

Sunday we went to Buckingham Palace for the pre-purchased tour. I highly recommend this! It was really interesting, and there were so many beautiful things to see and so much history to learn. Non-highlight: we didn't get to see the ballroom because it is being used as a practice coronation site. It is the largest indoor room in all of Europe! Before the tour, we scheduled our meeting with Betsy Weingarten, my college friend, and her friend Ingrid to watch the changing of the guard. But the changing of the guard ceremonies were canceled all day. It was wonderful to reconnect in person with Betsy. I had not seen her since the last Goucher reunion I attended a few years ago. Her friend Ingrid's son Markus goes to Northeastern University and is doing Tamid this summer in Tel Aviv! We took friend photos for Facebook; here are some outside of Buckingham Palace photos.

    

After the tour, we decided to go see Harrods. Just wow. Huge and not at all like a department store in the US. Long waits for the restrooms; that part was not too fun.

We got to see Justin Siberell and his son Ben at their apartment and they took us to the kosher restaurant Rubens. It was really delicious. It's always great to have good kosher meat out.

Monday we had an experience at SoHo house where we were hosted for lunch by congregant Andrew Gordon. It was amazing! That night, I went with Jonah to see the Back the the Future musical and Mark and Micah saw the Lehman Brothers play. We all enjoyed our shows and were happy with our choices! Seeing this musical made me want to watch all the Back to the Future movies again. Micah and Mark kept quoting the show for the rest of our trip.

Tuesday was our last day in London.  We jam packed it with two tours and a show. We took the Beatles tour (good, but not as good as the one Mark and I took last time we were in London), then we took a Jewish tour (excellent and some things we had already seen and learned), and then we saw Six! It was fantastic. Everyone liked it but some of us enjoyed it more than others of us.

There's so much more we wanted to do in London, we look forward to traveling there again sometime.

                

Settled in Jerusalem, Israel for our 4 month stay

 A special message to my dear family, friends, colleagues, and anyone else reading this:

We are happily ensconced in our rental apartment on HaRav Berlin Street in Jerusalem. It is officially in a neighborhood called Kiryat Shmuel, but it is also sometimes considered part of Rechavia or Katamon (which are more familiar to people than Kiryat Shmuel).

It is a large two bedroom apartment, and we are feeling comfortable here. It is very peaceful. Especially since we have already enjoyed two Shabbats and a Chag in between. On these days, everything stops for a breath. Just like the great pause that happened at the beginning of Covid. We get to enjoy that every Friday sundown through Saturday sundown.

We are safe here. Jerusalem has been spared rocket attacks and successful terrorist attacks. We are not afraid and life seems pretty normal. We are taking any precautions necessary in order to come home safely at the end of July.

But I promised you the stories of our travels so I'm going to go back to early March and share with you how we spent our time for the past month.

I'll publish each day, sharing a week or so's worth of travel reflections and of course keep you updated on how we are currently doing.

Until then, enjoy these photos of the view off our balcony. See if you can spot the Knesset.

                                                   

It's 2023. But this story is from 2022. Enjoy!

There is so much to tell since September of 2020 when I made my last blog post. Pandemic wise, Mark and I have still never tested positive for Covid. (Update: Mark has had Covid but I have not yet.) We didn't get the Delta variant, we didn't get the Omicron variant (or haven't gotten it yet).

In February 2021, I returned in person to school in a hybrid model (worst of both worlds, will post about that separately). Half of the students at home, half at school to maintain social distancing. No vaccines yet. Double masking, plastic shields separating us. It was extremely challenging.

Then the vaccines came and things began to open up in the summer of 2021. We were able to take a short driving vacation to Portland, Ashland, and Crater Lake. We were able to host a dinner with congregants at our house. Then more Covid.

The 2021-2022 school year started with fully in person classes, with masks, without social distance, but with virtually all of the adults vaccinated and then our students even were able to get vaccinated. Now, in February of 2022, mask mandates are being removed and prevention of infection seems to have gone away. The unvaccinated are the ones who are dying of Covid and the immunocompromised are going to be in danger when we let the virus run through us.

But my reason for this post was not to talk about the pandemic. I wanted to share some thoughts about being a pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, Zionist warrior for racial justice. I'm on the regional board for Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America AND I'm a member of the Youth and Families Committee of East Bay SURJ (Standing Up For Racial Justice). (Update: I was a member but resigned last month after our East Bay Chapter passed a resolution on Palestine, details to come in another post.) I believe in and fight for human rights AND I believe in the fact and fight for the idea that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. There is so much to discuss here. I will be sharing my story in future posts. For today, I want to tell you the story about my Lyft driver to the SF airport.

Yaser picked me at my doorstep at 6 am on Saturday morning. He was chatty right away. We made the chit-chat small talk about our lives, our families. He has 5 kids; three are grown ups in their 20s working and getting educated, and two are younger, one in high school and one in 4th grade. He works for the city of Oakland in the kitchen at a Head Start program during the week and drives for Lyft on the weekends. He lives in El Cerrito with his wife. I dove in by asking him what other languages he speaks. He told me Arabic. I asked where he was from and he said Palestine. When I asked for more details he told me the name of his village near Hebron. I'm sorry I didn't catch the specific village name. We began talking about his family there and how he enjoys vacationing in Israel. We did not talk about the settlers who make life difficult for the Palestinian residents of Hebron. By the end of our ride together, he was inviting me to his village near Hebron and offering to come visit me in Israel. He also stated his fervent desire for a one state solution for all the people of the region. I didn't respond to that except to share my hope for true and lasting peace. I don't know if he knows that a one state solution means that Israel is no longer a Jewish state. My dream is two states side by side where anyone who wants to can live in either state. Right now, Jews are not welcome to live in Gaza, nor many areas of the Palestinian Authority. Until we can live together without hatred and violence, there can be no peace. I was so grateful to make a new friend on this car ride. I look forward to many more conversations with Israelis and Palestinians.

Update from today March 6, 2023

We leave tomorrow for the start of our 5 month sabbatical. We start with three weeks in Europe followed by 4 months in Jerusalem, Israel. I look forward to sharing photos, video clips, and stories with you along the way. Now, back to work preparing the house for our renters!

My mid-winter break trip to Columbus, OH, February 2022

I am sitting in the Red Roof Inn PLUS + in Columbus, Ohio, five minutes from THE Ohio State University campus. It's my last day here and I am feeling so many mixed emotions. I have absolutely loved being with Micah and his girlfriend, Alyssa, and his friends, some of whom are roommates too, Will and Drew and others. It's so cold here in the winter. When I arrived on Saturday, the high was in the 20s. Today, Wednesday, it is cold again, in the 30s. But on Sunday, Monday, and yesterday while we had some rain throughout Tuesday, the temperatures were warm, all the way in the 50s. Students were wearing their shorts and t-shirts! I really enjoyed the sunny days on Sunday and Monday. 

One of the ice piles in Columbus:

When I arrived on Saturday evening, Micah picked me up at the airport and we drove directly to Bibibop, the first of the "fast casual" type restaurants we visited, where you walk down the line at the counter telling the worker what you want in your bowl, wrap, or salad. This one was Korean based, though I skipped the kimchi, I loved the purple rice and the sweet potato noodles as my base with toppings that I enjoy and nothing that I don't like.

Sunday was the day Micah and I spent the whole day together. We went shopping at Nordstrom Rack, Ross, TJ Maxx, DSW, Lululemon, and more. I got a new winter coat. (I can no longer zip the one that is a size small so I bought one that is a size medium and replaced it. Bye, bye purple coat.)  We ate lunch together at Brassica, our second fast casual restaurant. This one is Mediterranean/Middle Eastern, and I got the falafel with exactly the toppings that I love to eat and none that I don't. We also completed his grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. Then on Tuesday, we also made a Target run for more household necessities. In the afternoon on Sunday, I got to have a nice nap at my motel. Then Alyssa and Micah picked me up for dinner at Dewey's. The pizza which was so delicious, was build your own, so once again, I got the things I like on pizza (red sauce, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, artichokes, and ricotta cheese) and nothing that I don't. This was a sit down restaurant where a server took our order so it wasn't fast casual the way the others were. After dinner, we went to Graeter's for dessert. So many choices that I love, but I went with the Buckeye Blitz Chip since I'm here in Columbus with Brutus Buckeye statues all over the place and since when I was pregnant with Micah, I craved Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Did you know I didn't like peanut butter? As a kid I didn't like PB and J sandwiches, I just had jelly on bread and called it a sandwich. But if you put enough sugar and some milk chocolate with the peanut butter, than I'm all over it. I'm sorry we didn't get a picture together, Alyssa.

Monday was my stay at the hotel and do my own spa day. I took a bath using the bath bomb I bought on Sunday, and did a face mask from my friend Megan of Y&F Comm of SURJ Bay Area. The face mask was from Halloween and I was a bat. 

Me glowing after the face mask:

I tried to go to Cane's next door for breakfast but it is a drive through only. So I went next door to that to McDonald's instead. I got an egg and cheese biscuit and a hashbrown with my caramel hot chocolate. It was a lovely day listening to podcasts, going through emails, and listening to two webinars. Micah picked me up for dinner and we chose Piada, the fast casual Italian place where he got his spaghetti and toppings in a wrap and I got mine in a bowl. We saw a lot of alumni and students and fans there because it is close to the basketball stadium and Ohio State was hosting a home game that night. One woman had big red O dangling earrings. :) Before dinner, we went next door to check out the Ohio State swag. I ended up getting a red Columbia zipper sweat jacket with the O on the breast pocket area to match my blue Columbia Goucher zipper sweat jacket. I also got an Ohio State MOM sticker for my computer.

Tuesday was my "run around with Micah" day. He picked me up before his first class. I dropped him off there and drove to the Columbus Metropolitan library. It was perfect for me. I read two books, then picked Micah up from class. We went immediately to his gym for a workout while I shopped nextdoor at the Volunteers for America thrift shop in Clintonville. Micah loves thrift shopping, but he was doing his workout. I had a mission prescribed by Micah: to look for and find special clothes for him to wear to Mardis Gras where he was headed after my visit. Amazingly, I found the perfect shirt in his size with the Sugar Daddy logo and candies all over it. He loved it! And it cost me only $3.75. We then went to lunch at the Asian/Japanese fast casual called Fusion. Micah and I loved our rice bowls. Plus, after each meal there were leftovers for me to have another time in my motel room - breakfast, lunch, or even midnight snack. We returned to Micah's house so he could shower, then I took him to class again and found a visitor's parking spot on campus in a garage. It was raining so instead of walking around campus, I read my book in the car. I was reading Hella Town by Mitchell Schwarzer about the history of the city of Oakland. Every chapter is about development which happened too quickly and without proper planning, and the racism involved every step along the way. After class, we returned to Micah's place to hang out before his next class. I drove him to his final class a bit early so I could get back to his place and connect with my Spanish class online. That went well and then we went out to dinner with his best friend, Drew (from Cherry Hill, NJ), and future roommate Will (from Cleveland, OH where they will live together next year). 

The three men I took out to dinner...

We went to Northstar and while it was really tasty, I found the dressing on my Buddha bowl a little spicy and had to take the scallions off. So my meal at the sit down restaurant turned out to be not as perfect as all of the fast casual meals I had in Columbus! After dinner we walked to Jeni's for dessert. So many interesting flavors, it was hard to decide! I ended up with Skillet Cinnamon Roll and Gooey Butter Cake which were both fantastic! I'll always prefer Graeter's but this was pretty amazing too. After we dropped off Drew and Will, Micah drove me back to the motel for the last time. It was hard to say goodbye, but we will see each other again in May for graduation.

Sadly, I realized when I was packing that I left my computer charger at Micah's house. So he dropped it off to me at the motel in the morning before he went to work. I got one last hug and one last moment to say goodbye. I promise I did not leave it there on purpose, but I was really glad for that hug in the morning. My mid-day flight out of Columbus resulted in extra time in my motel room in the morning so I did my second face mask, this time I was a shark. :-) 

I also needed to take an Uber or Lyft to the airport. When I got there, there were literally zero people in the security line. It was kind of eerie. I had plenty of time to relax at the gate before the flight. 

I could have had Jeni's at the airport:

I had flown through Charlotte, NC on American to get there and had a long walk between terminal B and terminal E between flights during the 1 hour layover. Flying home, I was on Delta and flew through Atlanta. I also had to switch terminals there, but the train makes that quick and easy. The flight to San Francisco was on a very large plane with 2,3,2 seating. I haven't been on one of those in a while, probably not since I was travelling internationally in 2011. I got home, took an Uber to my house, and tried very hard to stay awake until I fell asleep around 8:30. Luckily I was able to sleep through the night until 6 am so I'm hopefully already adjusted to the Pacific time zone.

My time with Micah was wonderful, the trip went very smoothly, and I'm glad I was able to go. I'm told I have to try Whit's Frozen Custard next trip and that is one of the things I am looking forward to doing in May.

Another puzzle done, School update

 I finally finished my next quarantine puzzle. It was harder than I wanted it to be and new out of the box it was missing two pieces. User error, I'm sure they fell on the floor and got swept or thrown away somehow.

School started August 11th. I am impressed with how wonderful the students are. They really are doing a great job at attending classes on Google Meet and completing the work I am assigning. We are getting to know each other and starting to be able to talk about math. The amount of planning and time spent preparing for the synchronous and asynchronous learning is unreal. It takes so much longer to prepare lessons to be delivered online. And when doing them, it also takes longer so we have to figure out which items are most important to increase student understanding. The job has become so much harder than it was in person, and as one of my predecessors at PMS used to say, "Teaching is a hard job." It was already hard! Now it often seems impossible. I'm doing the best I can and it is going to have to be enough. I created my very first Desmos activity for my students and here is my very first stop motion video showing equalities changing to inequalities and back again. The plus signs each have a value of 1, the lines in the middle are the equal sign and inequality sign.

Here in California, on top of the pandemic and a recent heat wave, we are dealing with fires and dangerous air quality due to smoke. We can't be inside together because of Covid, now we can't be outside either. It's pretty awful. Climate change is truly affecting our lives here. We can smell the smoke even with our windows closed. Air quality is actually dangerous here right now. One day this week our sky changed to deep orange and it is has been dark and grey every since. The wind is supposed to change and clear out the smoke soon. It will be nice to take a deep breath of fresh air once that happens. Here's a picture of the ash on our mailbox and a very gray sky during the day.

Hard to believe, but my baby, the youngest, Jonah is turning 18 tomorrow. We are getting Tony's pizza and Swenson's ice cream today to celebrate. He is handling distance learning very well as a 12th grader. It's not ideal, but he is learning and working hard. His teachers are doing a great job and clearly are working very hard to make it work for their students.

Next week starts the high holidays. It's always a stressful time in the rabbi's household around the holidays. This year, no hosting, so that takes some pressure off. Rabbi has memorized his first 3 sermons and just practices them every day now. They were written over a month ago. This year's theme is Covid of course. He always ties all 5 sermons together in a theme. I like to be surprised when he delivers them so I don't know anything else about them.

My niece in Manhattan, Adalia, turned 5. We had a super fun Zoom birthday party with an art project (I painted a Rainbow Dash!), dancing, and watching her blow out her candles and eat cake. :-) My brother and sister-in-law put a lot of effort into making it special for their special girl. They continue to host Friday afternoon (here, evenings there) Shabbat celebrations for the family which are a highlight of my week. I get to see them, my sister, my mom, and sometimes, Uncle Bhavvy and recently, cousin Erik which was a special treat.

My sister performed in an online play about virtual therapy. I loved it and she did a great job! Now she is performing in an outdoor set of one-acts. It's great that she gets to do theatre which brings her such joy.

Micah is doing well in Ohio. While members of his fraternity have contracted Covid, no one in his house of 10 brothers has gotten it yet. I maintain that it is a "when" not an "if," but I am happy that he has stayed healthy for a month. Yesterday he went to the zoo and realized how unfair to animals living in a zoo is. He felt that many of the enclosures were just way too small.

Procrastination of my school preparation must end now. I am going to figure out how to get my puzzle photos into this and write again another day. May all be safe, well, and healthy.

Most recent puzzle completed

This one didn't take long. I just didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. I will be trying to work on these puzzles more during Shabbat to stay off screens and relax.