a balloontwister’s aliya saga

Finally a moment to blog.
Its been an exciting chag so far…
Estie Buchsbaum and her 2 friends.
Avi Waldman
Aunt Ruthie and Aliza.
Snorkeling.
Chaim Dovid
Reishit.
Where to begin….hmmm..
Its been exciting having our first succos here.
First night at Dovid.
day at home.
Its a great feeling to host our first yom tov meal.
Dovid was zoche to put up 4 succas…his own.
Sruli, took down supporting posts and crashed the succa over.. and over… cute.
The interesting thing was having guests over who kept the second day.
We served them Pizza for the seudah. They also polished off ice cream cake.
THe next day, our 1st day chol hamoed we didn’t do much due to the RAIN Dovid had to stay home for the plumber. HE had some…. “smells” and some “stuff” come up from the drain. Not a good thing.
And wouldn’t you know it….we finally had rain and it HAD to be Yom Tov…
Oh well. I almost forgot what rain was like.
It wasn’t a total loss and I had a balloontwisting class in Ranana so I shlepped the boys to it.
That night the beis shemesh music festival was cancelled due to the rain.
Yesterday we had a GREAT tiyul.
Snorkeling for the Chilazon.
We drove an hour and a half to NAchsholin where the techellit institue is and had a video about the halachik background of the chilazon. And the Purple to Blue finding that confirmed that the chilazon was actually found.
Then we went snorkeling to find it. Kids Loved it. So did we.
Then we went to mix the dyes to produce blue dye.
an AMAZING trip.
Educational.
Torah.
Snorkeling.
Can’t beat that.
Last night was the annual beit shemesh festival. We saw Jeffrey Goldgrab and ELi Shmuckler over the chag as well. I met them at their rabbi’s house 2nd night of the chag… after I told them we had Esti B. and 2 other girls over… they were a cloud of dust… and they came back a few more time over the next day. Playing ping pong and shmoozing.
At the Festival there were approx 10 acts playing in front of a few thousand people.
I was on my stilts and sold some balloons for 2 hours until I went to the Reishit Succa Party.
I was invited by Rabbi Marcus to twist balloons for the people there. One thing about Rabbi J.
He can REALLY work a crowd.
He knows how to talk to everybody.. and make them feel choshuv and important.
Rabbi Chaim soloveichik spoke for a few minutes, as it was His fathers’ yahrzeit.
I hope I didnt upset him as I was twisting balloons during his speech.
This morning I decorated and twisted balloons in Har Nof for a new store that is opening.
DOvid Newman is opening a new store that sells take out food, and is only open fridays.
It was a total balagon!
After 10 minutes I had 100 kids all pushing and clamoring for balloons.
I almost fell off my stilts a few times as I was getting jostled and pushed around.
It was my first time in har nof.. not a great experience…
It was probably my worst balloon experience as the kids were just trampling over each other.
The interesting thing was trying to seperate the boys and girls.
Men were upset about the pritzos… Im like… these are 5 and 6 year old kids mostly…
oh well.
After the ballooning I took the kids to a farm nearby.
Its a pleasure to have the little things taken care of.
A kosher succa.
Kosher cotton candy.
All frum people.
I can really get used to this.
Its nice just striking up a conversation with anybody…
People are very nice here.
well, I really hate to cut it short… BUT..
Shabbos is in an hour and Estie buchsbaum is back…with another friend… so I hope to get some hot water if I make it quick.
U.D.