The good news is, after almost of week of sick Bochner Boys, I think we can safely say that both Shuie and Yonah are on the mend. The bad news is, whatever they had they’ve given to me. It was only a matter of time, really, before I got sick. If it wasn’t from my boys I probably would have picked something up from the girls at school or from whatever is floating around in the air these days now that the weather is getting colder.

Oh, yes. Israeli weather is now sweater-worthy and the rainy season has begun. This is actually good news because Israel is in the middle of a severe water shortage, so much so that if a household uses more than their quota, they get slapped with a hefty fine. This is why everyone in Israel was required, by today, to declare the number of people living in their household, because otherwise the government assumes there’s only one and charges accordingly. Our landlord Yossi hounded us all week for the required paperwork (passports, letters from our school stating that we’re here as students) so he could let the powers-that-be know that he and Carmela are not using six-people’s worth of water. This water-conservation culture was hard to get used to at first, particularly coming from a wasteful society like the U.S. (sorry, guys, you know it’s true), but it’s not such a big thing now. One trick I picked up was for doing the dishes: You wet the sponge with suds and scrub everything down and then turn on the water just to rinse them off. It works, and afterwards you feel like a good person.

Shabbat was relatively quiet. Seth came to stay but he was sick with a cold (see a trend here?) and we all ended up going to bed at 8 p.m. Today’s lunch was a full house but came and went quickly. Yonah, however, decided that today was going to be one long party and proceeded to stay up from 5:45 this morning until 3 o’clock this afternoon when we practically had to force him to take a nap. He woke up two hours later VERY cranky and was back in bed for the night by 6:30. Wait, scratch that. It’s 8 p.m. and we hear Yonah talking to himself. Could he be up for another round…?

We have a full week coming up. This Monday my school is planning a trip to the Begin cultural center, which is an Israeli political history museum. While I do find Israeli history very interesting, I may skip the trip so I can do some learning somewhere else. Tuesday is Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s yartzeit (the anniversary of his death), which is being commemorated with a day of learning at Simchat Shlomo followed by music and stories at Red Shlomo’s kever (grave) at Har HaMenuchos (The Hill of the Resting Ones), not far from Nachlaot. We are definitely planning on attending. Tuesday night is my first evening women’s seminar, “Going Deep”, which a discussion forum to develop leadership in the women of the group. It’s actually being held at Shuie’s school. I’m sure other little adventures will pop up in the interim, but in the meantime we’ve got much to look forward to.