It's been a long while since the last time I wrote. At least I have kind-of an excuse... :-) Big portions of this period were filled with health problems, visits (e.g. Anat recently came back from 10 days in Israel) and a new job for me. Health-wise, I was unfortunate to have a hernia ("ki`le" in Hebrew slang), and underwent minor surgery. Indeed this is a simple and almost risk-free operation, but still it was performed with full anesthesia, and recovery took a while; as a matter of fact to this moment I'm not yet fully recovered, and I'm still holding back on returning to physical exercise. Along with quite a few illnesses of all family members, these past two months weren't the healthiest for us, but we hope this is behind us now. And for what it's worth, this was another reminder that we ought to cherish our usual good health...
Winter has arrived in full force, and we've already experienced several full-fledged snow blizzards. Shoveling the stairs and the pathway in front of our home and sprinkling salt to melt the ice have become frequent and necessary activities. Driving is often tricky, and in certain conditions the icy roads are really dangerous and call for driving really slowly and carefully. Luckily, the minivan we purchased as a second vehicle when I started my new job is pretty massive and hence is much more stable in winter road conditions. Typical temperatures are between -10 to 0 degrees (Celsius), and going out every morning is a lengthy ordeal that involves bundling up with scarves, gloves, heavy coats, hats and boots. Not to mention scrapping the ice from the windshield, or shoveling the snow from the car after a snowy night. The resulting daily routine is very different from the winter routine we were used to in Israel, but I must say that one gets used to it fairly quickly. It simply becomes an inherent part of life, and it comes with several advantages as well: beautiful white landscape around and the peaceful atmosphere when it's snowing to name a couple. Most of the optional activities during the coming months are indoors, such as museums, library etc., but there are some opportunities thanks to the weather, such as skiing, ice-skating and snow-sledding. We have all of them around here, and are cheerfully enjoying them.
As I mentioned above, I started a new job with a company called Vocollect less than two months ago, and so far it's everything I could have hoped for. The actual work I'm doing (as a software development engineer) is very interesting, surely comparing to other alternatives here in Pittsburgh, the people with whom I work are both very nice and very professional and the company culture is commensurate with what I was looking for. Even my daily commute is reasonably short: 15-20 minutes in each direction. Vocollect (http://www.vocollect.com/) is one of the few "real" high- tech companies in the area. It manufactures a voice-based product which is used by employees in large warehouses. To make a long story short, the product consists of a wearable computer on the user's belt, and a headset. The system instructs the user where to go next, how many boxes to pick etc., and then uses speech recognition to make sure that the instructions were followed accurately. Users interact with the device using speech only, leaving both their hands free. The company was founded almost 20 years ago, it has almost 300 employees and tens of thousands of its products are installed and being used daily all around the world.
Getting back to my perspective, the fact that this is not a young and small start-up is a key advantage. A typical work day is of 8 hours, and not 9, 10 or even 11 as is the case in many high-tech companies, here and in Israel. One is almost never expected to work on weekends, and for the most part deadlines are reasonable, making crunch times sufficiently rare and short. Most of the people around me have kids, which has a lot to do with a culture of working sanely and leaving enough time for family life. In short, my new job allows me to lead my life the way I want to, with Hadas, Noga and Anat being my highest priority. It wasn't clear to me that I would be able to find a position that would work out so well, and our general feeling in the past month is that we are very lucky to be able to maintain two full-time jobs with this level of leisure time and attention to the girls.
Speaking about the girls, they are AMAZING!!! I just had 10 days with them while Anat was away, and they were simply fabulous! They are so mature, so understanding and helpful, that at times I was wondering whether they were as young as they really are. They are both almost constantly happy and cheerful and the range of activities with which they can be entertained is ever expanding. Hadas suddenly became so big and so verbal, that it's sometimes hard for us to believe it is actually her speaking to us in these full and complex sentences. She had a brief period of tantrums a while ago, but it has almost completely vanished by now. Noga is a school girl in all respects, and is very happy with studying. She's reading and writing (in English) more and more, and has started speaking some Spanish as well, as her school teaches the language. The best part, however, without a doubt, are the relations between them. For extended stretches of time they play with each other, and they each other's best friends. For example, when Noga is visiting a friend, and Hadas wakes up from her nap, the first thing asked is usually "Where's Noga?". As a parent, this is the thing which I enjoy more than anything.
Finally, this time of the year is the "holidays" time here in the states. In the office, we had a week full of parties of all sorts, there are several formal vacation days and even work-days will probably see a half-empty company. Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year and school winter-break are all combined, reminding us of the Israeli atmosphere between Rosh-Hashana and the end of Sukkoth… We have many plans for Hanukkah, almost every day hosting or visiting friends to light candles and celebrate the holiday of lights.
We wish you all a happy and joyful Hanukkah, full of light, candles and happiness.
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
PS: Following multiple individual inquiries, I'll point again the link to our updated family web site (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/aprior/personal/index.html). It contains numerous photos, some of which are fairly recent.
Monday, December 26
Friday, October 7
Shana Tova!!!!
Dear family and friends, First and foremost, we wanted to wish you all Shana Tova!!! Better late than never... We hope you will all enjoy every single day and find yourselves surrounded by love and happiness!
This post will be dedicated to a bunch of observations I have collected about living in the US from my point of view, interleaved with some background about the place we live in (if this is of no interest to you - feel free to stop reading. Really!). Before getting there, however, I wanted to tell you all that I've finally found a new job, as a software engineer in a company named Vocollect. This company has been my first preference for a long time, and it seems like my persistence and patience paid off. Indeed, it's an industry job, with all the implications, both good and bad, but all in all I believe it will be an improvement, and I'm very happy about this new development. I will start there in a few weeks, at the end of the current month full of holidays-and-no-daycare... A new year and a new beginning!
A note in place: all the observations below reflect my opinion, and are by no means absolute truth. I'll start by elaborating a bit about the place we live in. Pennsylvania lies on the east coast of the United States, and is one of the first states in the US - the second when considering statehood dates, and one of the only 3 which were established by the end of 1787. Its population is about twice that of Israel (circa 12 millions) and its area is almost 6 times larger than Israel. And still, in US terms Pennsylvania is a rather densely populated state (more than 3 times the average population density in the US), which reflects the inconceivable size of this nation.
Politically speaking, it's interesting to note that Pennsylvania for the most part is blue (democrat) on its west and east sides (namely in its two big cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), with a big red (republican) area in the middle, composed mainly of smaller villages and towns. This dichotomy is fairly prominent, and is also reflected by the big number of hate groups in the state (see http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp, where PA is ranked pretty high). In a sense, this is a smaller-scale phenomenon similar to the big picture in the US - blue on the coasts, red in the mid-west and south.
Pittsburgh, located in the south-west part of Pennsylvania and reputed to be a steel-industry city with a heavy mid-western feel, is indeed not as east-coasty as Philadelphia, but nowadays it's certainly a liberal and modern city. The steel industry has practically vanished, and the city boasts a huge medical center serving people from many states in the north-east, several good universities (Carnegie Mellon University being the most famous) and a high quality of life. As I've written previously, it is a wonderful city to live in, at least for families with kids.
For us, Israelis who are used to living in practical isolation from neighboring countries, the reality here is very different: within about 2 hours driving we can be in Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia or even New-York. Sure enough, there is no border to cross and the only indication that you drove into a different state is a road sign, and this is exactly my point - despite some differences between the states, this is one HUGE country. I am amazed every time I examine a map.
It's obvious, though, that it is not mere physical size which lends the US its astonishing power. I should emphasize that with "power" I'm not referring only to military power, but to a much broader definition. Examining areas like science, technology, economy, innovation and many others shows that America is an exceptionally strong nation! Furthermore, my belief is that if faced by an external challenge or threat, the ability of the American people to unite and deal with such a challenge is far better than any other nation, including the European Union altogether. Don't get me wrong - this is not to say that American society has no flaws and weaknesses, on the contrary! I wonder how, despite all these weaknesses (I'll mention some of them below), this society is so strong.
What is it, then, that makes the United States so powerful? To me, I must say, this fascinating question is only partially-solved. Before speculating, though, I'll raise another question: who's an American?
There are people from all over the world here - India, far-east, middle east, Europe, south-America… you name it. On the bus ride from Carnegie Mellon University to our home, one can hears numerous languages on a daily basis - Spanish, Chinese, French, Hebrew, Russian, Japanese, German, Portuguese, Hindi and many others. True, this isn't the case everywhere in the states, but it is the case in many cities. While this is also the case in London or Berlin, I doubt if it is in Liverpool or Hamburg, which are comparable to Pittsburgh in this sense. Furthermore, I'm still surprised sometimes, when a totally Chinese-looking person opens their mouth and the English, intonation, accent and everything, is so very American.
I'm saying nothing new when emphasizing the role of immigration in American history, but it is my opinion that this country's main source of strength lies in its immigrants. This country has been attracting immigrants from all over the world for many decades. For the most part, by natural selection, only the more creative, determined and ambitious managed to make it, bringing with them new ambitions, entrepreneurship and eagerness to this society. There surely are additional possible explanations, and I would love to hear about them if you'd like to share your ideas.
The most prominent weakness of the American society, in my opinion, lies in the unbelievable gaps between the wealthier Americans and the poor ones, incredible wealth side by side with extreme poverty. None of you could miss the sights from New Orleans, and it was no coincidence that most of the victims were exceptionally poor. We all know that pure capitalism is inherent to the American way of life, but only when I started living here did I fully grasp its implications, with some help from a book called "Nickel and Dimed" I recently read (highly recommended, by the way, see http://www.nickelanddimed.net/). You hear many (justified!) complaints about the deteriorating situation in this sense in Israel, but in this aspect the US is far worse. Poor people here are truly miserable, with almost no social services, very little welfare support and practically no affordable health services. Furthermore, a basic conception in the American society is that if you're poor it is your fault - you didn't succeed in "making it", implying that you did something wrong along the way.
Another aspect is the speculative nature of pensions here - big portions of pension money are invested in speculative avenues such as stock markets. This has a lot to do with the fact that so many retired people can barely support their basic needs. What's more, many inherent things in the structure of society work towards sustaining the socioeconomic stratification. Take, for example, the cost of high-education here, averaging $30,000 per year in a top private university, usually to be funded by the students or their family. It's no wonder that poor people have little chance being admitted into such institutions, and their career path, future earnings and standard of living are often determined early in their lives. Sure enough, there are exceptions, and the social mobility in America is relatively high, but these factors cannot be ignored.
In general, my very strong impression is that in the United States, the dollar is king: if you have the money you'll have access to everything you want, and accordingly if you don't have the money you're screwed. And you're on your own! It touches many other characteristics of the society here - the extreme materialism, blatant consumerism and the culture of admiring the rich. However, I already mentioned these aspects in previous postings, so I'll skip them here.
America is full of contradictions: as opposed to abandoning the poor people, the American society treats people with special needs truly admirably (e.g. kids and adults with down-syndrome). Unlike in Israel, where such people are virtually hidden as much as possible, the approach here is that they should be equal participants in the society. I was thrilled to see kids with down-syndrome participate in a summer camp with all the other kids, as well as group of special-needs teenagers having all sorts of activities adjacent to the JCC daycare classes. Interestingly, the kids usually don't notice the difference, and without an adult to indicate, they learn that this is a natural part of life. I think this is definitely a tribute to the American society.
Almost last but definitely not least, I'd refer to the culinary issue. You all heard of the obesity problem in the states, but when living here one sees on the streets people of inconceivable sizes!!! The sad part is that it's fairly clear why this is happening - fruit and vegetables are so very expensive, while junk food is relatively cheap and amazingly accessible, virtually present everywhere. Add the enormous size of portions in restaurants (did I mention extravagance?) and the culture of eating out instead of cooking at home, and you'll have the full picture. A couple of specific examples: in Noga's summer camp, the daily lunch menu included potato chips, usually without any fresh fruit or vegetables. In her public school, lunch is based on a *federal* menu, and you'll find mainly greasy junk food (French fries, pizza and the like). Need I say more?!
I've already mentioned fundamental materialism, and it relates to the American tendency to make things BIG. The cars here are humongous, real monsters, with SUVs all over the place. Even in models that can be found in Israel and Europe, the engine volumes are consistently larger. The size of houses here is astonishing - I frequently wonder why a family with 2 kids (at least with Caucasian families here, you rarely see more than 2 kids) would want to live in a 5-bedroom home, plus basement. In many suburbs in the US, local zoning laws prohibit residential land allocations below a fixed size, typically 2 acres or more. To give you an idea - 2 acres are more than 8000 square meter! The relation between these aspects (huge houses to heat or cool, stretching into endless suburbia, fuel- consuming vehicles) and ecological issues is obvious, but as I previously wrote this is another weak aspect in America - the environment isn't a particularly high priority here. For example, an interesting fact: in the past two decades or so, the average size of new residential homes built in the US increased by about 30%! We can only hope that recent spikes in gasoline prices will encourage a more responsible energy policy in the US, though I wouldn't hold my breath...
Shana Tova again to everybody, Giora
PS: We decided to renew the family web site we once had (indeed, it needs some update, which I hope to complete soon). Check it in http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/aprior/index.html.
This post will be dedicated to a bunch of observations I have collected about living in the US from my point of view, interleaved with some background about the place we live in (if this is of no interest to you - feel free to stop reading. Really!). Before getting there, however, I wanted to tell you all that I've finally found a new job, as a software engineer in a company named Vocollect. This company has been my first preference for a long time, and it seems like my persistence and patience paid off. Indeed, it's an industry job, with all the implications, both good and bad, but all in all I believe it will be an improvement, and I'm very happy about this new development. I will start there in a few weeks, at the end of the current month full of holidays-and-no-daycare... A new year and a new beginning!
A note in place: all the observations below reflect my opinion, and are by no means absolute truth. I'll start by elaborating a bit about the place we live in. Pennsylvania lies on the east coast of the United States, and is one of the first states in the US - the second when considering statehood dates, and one of the only 3 which were established by the end of 1787. Its population is about twice that of Israel (circa 12 millions) and its area is almost 6 times larger than Israel. And still, in US terms Pennsylvania is a rather densely populated state (more than 3 times the average population density in the US), which reflects the inconceivable size of this nation.
Politically speaking, it's interesting to note that Pennsylvania for the most part is blue (democrat) on its west and east sides (namely in its two big cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), with a big red (republican) area in the middle, composed mainly of smaller villages and towns. This dichotomy is fairly prominent, and is also reflected by the big number of hate groups in the state (see http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp, where PA is ranked pretty high). In a sense, this is a smaller-scale phenomenon similar to the big picture in the US - blue on the coasts, red in the mid-west and south.
Pittsburgh, located in the south-west part of Pennsylvania and reputed to be a steel-industry city with a heavy mid-western feel, is indeed not as east-coasty as Philadelphia, but nowadays it's certainly a liberal and modern city. The steel industry has practically vanished, and the city boasts a huge medical center serving people from many states in the north-east, several good universities (Carnegie Mellon University being the most famous) and a high quality of life. As I've written previously, it is a wonderful city to live in, at least for families with kids.
For us, Israelis who are used to living in practical isolation from neighboring countries, the reality here is very different: within about 2 hours driving we can be in Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia or even New-York. Sure enough, there is no border to cross and the only indication that you drove into a different state is a road sign, and this is exactly my point - despite some differences between the states, this is one HUGE country. I am amazed every time I examine a map.
It's obvious, though, that it is not mere physical size which lends the US its astonishing power. I should emphasize that with "power" I'm not referring only to military power, but to a much broader definition. Examining areas like science, technology, economy, innovation and many others shows that America is an exceptionally strong nation! Furthermore, my belief is that if faced by an external challenge or threat, the ability of the American people to unite and deal with such a challenge is far better than any other nation, including the European Union altogether. Don't get me wrong - this is not to say that American society has no flaws and weaknesses, on the contrary! I wonder how, despite all these weaknesses (I'll mention some of them below), this society is so strong.
What is it, then, that makes the United States so powerful? To me, I must say, this fascinating question is only partially-solved. Before speculating, though, I'll raise another question: who's an American?
There are people from all over the world here - India, far-east, middle east, Europe, south-America… you name it. On the bus ride from Carnegie Mellon University to our home, one can hears numerous languages on a daily basis - Spanish, Chinese, French, Hebrew, Russian, Japanese, German, Portuguese, Hindi and many others. True, this isn't the case everywhere in the states, but it is the case in many cities. While this is also the case in London or Berlin, I doubt if it is in Liverpool or Hamburg, which are comparable to Pittsburgh in this sense. Furthermore, I'm still surprised sometimes, when a totally Chinese-looking person opens their mouth and the English, intonation, accent and everything, is so very American.
I'm saying nothing new when emphasizing the role of immigration in American history, but it is my opinion that this country's main source of strength lies in its immigrants. This country has been attracting immigrants from all over the world for many decades. For the most part, by natural selection, only the more creative, determined and ambitious managed to make it, bringing with them new ambitions, entrepreneurship and eagerness to this society. There surely are additional possible explanations, and I would love to hear about them if you'd like to share your ideas.
The most prominent weakness of the American society, in my opinion, lies in the unbelievable gaps between the wealthier Americans and the poor ones, incredible wealth side by side with extreme poverty. None of you could miss the sights from New Orleans, and it was no coincidence that most of the victims were exceptionally poor. We all know that pure capitalism is inherent to the American way of life, but only when I started living here did I fully grasp its implications, with some help from a book called "Nickel and Dimed" I recently read (highly recommended, by the way, see http://www.nickelanddimed.net/). You hear many (justified!) complaints about the deteriorating situation in this sense in Israel, but in this aspect the US is far worse. Poor people here are truly miserable, with almost no social services, very little welfare support and practically no affordable health services. Furthermore, a basic conception in the American society is that if you're poor it is your fault - you didn't succeed in "making it", implying that you did something wrong along the way.
Another aspect is the speculative nature of pensions here - big portions of pension money are invested in speculative avenues such as stock markets. This has a lot to do with the fact that so many retired people can barely support their basic needs. What's more, many inherent things in the structure of society work towards sustaining the socioeconomic stratification. Take, for example, the cost of high-education here, averaging $30,000 per year in a top private university, usually to be funded by the students or their family. It's no wonder that poor people have little chance being admitted into such institutions, and their career path, future earnings and standard of living are often determined early in their lives. Sure enough, there are exceptions, and the social mobility in America is relatively high, but these factors cannot be ignored.
In general, my very strong impression is that in the United States, the dollar is king: if you have the money you'll have access to everything you want, and accordingly if you don't have the money you're screwed. And you're on your own! It touches many other characteristics of the society here - the extreme materialism, blatant consumerism and the culture of admiring the rich. However, I already mentioned these aspects in previous postings, so I'll skip them here.
America is full of contradictions: as opposed to abandoning the poor people, the American society treats people with special needs truly admirably (e.g. kids and adults with down-syndrome). Unlike in Israel, where such people are virtually hidden as much as possible, the approach here is that they should be equal participants in the society. I was thrilled to see kids with down-syndrome participate in a summer camp with all the other kids, as well as group of special-needs teenagers having all sorts of activities adjacent to the JCC daycare classes. Interestingly, the kids usually don't notice the difference, and without an adult to indicate, they learn that this is a natural part of life. I think this is definitely a tribute to the American society.
Almost last but definitely not least, I'd refer to the culinary issue. You all heard of the obesity problem in the states, but when living here one sees on the streets people of inconceivable sizes!!! The sad part is that it's fairly clear why this is happening - fruit and vegetables are so very expensive, while junk food is relatively cheap and amazingly accessible, virtually present everywhere. Add the enormous size of portions in restaurants (did I mention extravagance?) and the culture of eating out instead of cooking at home, and you'll have the full picture. A couple of specific examples: in Noga's summer camp, the daily lunch menu included potato chips, usually without any fresh fruit or vegetables. In her public school, lunch is based on a *federal* menu, and you'll find mainly greasy junk food (French fries, pizza and the like). Need I say more?!
I've already mentioned fundamental materialism, and it relates to the American tendency to make things BIG. The cars here are humongous, real monsters, with SUVs all over the place. Even in models that can be found in Israel and Europe, the engine volumes are consistently larger. The size of houses here is astonishing - I frequently wonder why a family with 2 kids (at least with Caucasian families here, you rarely see more than 2 kids) would want to live in a 5-bedroom home, plus basement. In many suburbs in the US, local zoning laws prohibit residential land allocations below a fixed size, typically 2 acres or more. To give you an idea - 2 acres are more than 8000 square meter! The relation between these aspects (huge houses to heat or cool, stretching into endless suburbia, fuel- consuming vehicles) and ecological issues is obvious, but as I previously wrote this is another weak aspect in America - the environment isn't a particularly high priority here. For example, an interesting fact: in the past two decades or so, the average size of new residential homes built in the US increased by about 30%! We can only hope that recent spikes in gasoline prices will encourage a more responsible energy policy in the US, though I wouldn't hold my breath...
Shana Tova again to everybody, Giora
PS: We decided to renew the family web site we once had (indeed, it needs some update, which I hope to complete soon). Check it in http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/aprior/index.html.
Wednesday, September 7
Towards end of summer in Pittsburgh
It's been way too long since the last time I (Giora) provided you with an update about what's going on with the Prior-Unger family here in Pittsburgh. Some of the things I intended to write about seem by now to have become ancient history, and there's simply too much to tell... So let's start. Well, an additional note beforehand–I'm intentionally not referring to major current events, such as the disengagement from Gaza or the terrible "Katrina" hurricane. I believe all of you have sufficient sources of information and opinions about these.
Shortly after sending the previous post, we came to Israel for a (much too) short visit. The main reason was celebrating Anat's (my sister) wedding but obviously, as most of you witnessed personally, the 10 day visit was packed with tons of other things. Though not restful, the visit was terrific, and we'd like to take this opportunity and thank you all for taking the time and helping us enjoy it so very much. The first few days back in Pittsburgh weren't easy, a feeling that was intensified by the terrible heat which welcomed us. There's a lot to say about the feelings involved in such a visit, but in order to keep this message not-too-long I'll skip it here. At any rate, after a few more days, we merged again into our relaxed and pleasant Pittsburgh daily life.
As I've written previously, the summer here is extremely active, in the sense of outdoors activities and the like. There is no question that this summer was the busiest we have ever had, surely as a family. Long weekends, along with generous vacations we took were combined with the wealth of possibilities and festivities, so that we were basically jaunting around most of the time. Still in the New Zealand travel spirit, we did a LOT of hiking and camping, and were very pleased to see that the girls enjoy it as much as we do – for them sleeping in our cute tent is a real treat! In Israel, after 20 years of hiking and explorations, we got to the point of mostly hiking in familiar trails. And here, naturally, there is a whole new world to discover.
I might provide some more information about Pennsylvania in a future post, but for now it's worth mentioning that there is a huge number of very well maintained state parks and beautiful nature spots in this state and in bordering states, many of which are easily accessible from Pittsburgh. Even more so as, when living here, 2 hours of driving no longer seem like too big an ordeal. Our most recent journey deserves several additional lines. Faced with a week-off in Hadas' daycare, we decided to take one more long vacation this summer and set off for a 10-day trip to Boston. We broke the very long drive (more than 12 hours) into 3 days in each direction, and used these days to hike in two gorgeous areas –the Poconos in north-eastern Pennsylvania and the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. The Boston part of our trip was particularly pleasant, mostly thanks to our dear relatives there - Sheila, Bill, Stacy, Art & sweet little Dahlia - and their marvelous hospitality. Obviously, we didn't skip some site-seeing in the city, including the famous duck-tour, and also got to meet Israeli friends who livein Boston. All in all, we had a perfect mix of nature, city, family, friends and some rest. Even the weather smiled on us, with 6-7 beautiful sunny days – definitely not something to take forgranted in this part of the world. Oh, and most importantly – shortlyafter departing, we were thrilled to be told about our first niece!!! Hilla (Anat's sister) gave birth to Shira, a lovely baby girl, andwe're sooooooooooooo happy for Benny & Hilla.
Another aspect of our lives here, which I'm not sure I've elaborated about previously, is our pleasant social environment. One of the main barriers when moving to a new place, especially with no family nearby, is lack of friends. As things turned out, we were lucky to acquire many friends here, some of which live within a short walking distance from our apartment. Naturally, many of the families we're friendly with are Israeli; however, as time passes relationships with American families are being formed as well, many times through Noga's play-dates.Talking about the girls and their extreme friendliness with the surrounding, I'll try and limit myself to a couple of paragraphs in a grandparent-oriented style :-)
Hadas is speaking fluently, all of a sudden, articulating Hebrew as if she always knew the language, and she's pretty fluent in English as well. We speak almost only Hebrew at home, so we don't get to hear much of her English, but we're told she has no language difficulties whatsoever. She is really a big girl by now, fully potty-trained and without a diaper for quite some time now, even during night time (before the age of 2.5!). She is extremely charming and regularly conquers the hearts of those she interacts with. I guess it sounds like the usual "parent writing about his child", but I really am under the impression that she's exceptionally cute. And (well, this is an aspect hidden from most of the world), stubborn. Additionally, following some carelessness on our part, she recently started saying "shit" whenever something happens not to her liking. Not educational as it is, it's still hilarious hearing her curse... Other than that, the beginning of her new daycare last week was almost insulting: despite being moved to a new room, with new teachers, Hadas hardly bothers to give us a second look in the mornings and is usually very upset when we come to pick her up by the end of the day, practically telling us to go away. Yes, yes, I know it's better than the opposite alternative.
Noga had an exceptionally busy summer, with two types of day camps ("kaytana", that is). She was swimming in the pool at least twice a day, and developed a gorgeous tan. With so many different "frameworks" in which she has been spending time, so many different counselors and teachers, we started wondering whether there is anything in the world which might jeopardize her constant happiness. So far, we're pleased to say, it seems that there isn't–she's simply happy and shining most of the time. I don't think I fully understand it to date, but within a few days she'll be starting school!!!! Indeed, they call it kindergarten here, but for all practical purposes this is what an Israeli kid undergoes when entering first grade ("Kita Aleph"). They're physically in school (Colfax, the neighborhood public school in our case), studying and not playing for the most part. Kindergarten kids here are being taught how to read and have a specific syllabus and requirements to meet in math and science. The excitement around this transition, both for us the parents and for Noga, is huge. This is, without a doubt, a major milestone and I must say it has arrived much faster than I expected. I kind of keep asking myself - do I really have a daughter who already goes to school?!?!
Both girls are extremely confident, and trust people very easily.They instantly form connections with other kids or adults, and seeing their interactions with the world is a source of great pride for me. At the risk of being too corny, I'll say (again) that they are both girls who make parenthood a pure pleasure. Both Anat and I have numerous magical moments of many sorts with the girls, one-on-one or the whole family together. And these moments simply make life good. My current way of life explicitly puts family in the topmost priority, and as far as this aspect goes, I couldn't ask for more. Well, enough with blabbing ;-)
About my job - I still have the same non-ideal job, and will probably stick to it. Recent developments in my job-hunt left me with only options which are marginally more interesting, however extensively more demanding, leaving far less time for family life.These options were also financially superior, but oddly enough (or possibly naively?!) this is not my emphasis. At the same time my current job became less boring. Considering all the tradeoffs I decided to practically stop searching for an alternative, though if an attractive new option will pop up, things might change. Anat is working full steam on her research, working on multiple projects concurrently, studying Spanish furiously. I started taking a class at the university - auditing a course out of mere interest, though the reading tasks consume lots of time. We're both reading a lot, and are proud to say that the TV is almost never on in our home. Combine the above with regular exercising - Yoga for Anat, basketball twice a week for me, as well as the mundane unavoidable house chores (you know – cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry etc.),and you'll see why I'm saying that our lives are pretty busy and full of activities. But, as I said, they're very good and enjoyable.
Hope you're all doing fine, Love and kisses,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
PS:I'll conclude with introducing a new thing – recommendations about useful web sites. Most of you use the web regularly, and it might beof help. Featuring this time:1. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) – an excellent service, significantly better than MapQuest. Try the "Satellite" option which shows you a photo of whatever you're after. Additionally, when viewing instructions about directions between places, you have a sleek drag-and-drop capability, as well as zoom-in on every step ofthe explanation, when you click on it. Admittedly, though, it's useful mainly for maps and directions in the US and not in Israel.
2. BugMeNot (http://www.bugmenot.com/) – are you familiar with the case where all you need from some web site is a tiny thing, and still that site requires a tiring and awkward registration? I bet you are. Well, in such a case go to http://www.bugmenot.com/, feed the URL of the site you want to login to and poof, you have a login and a password. Very convenient!
Hope these tips are useful – I'll appreciate any feedback.
Shortly after sending the previous post, we came to Israel for a (much too) short visit. The main reason was celebrating Anat's (my sister) wedding but obviously, as most of you witnessed personally, the 10 day visit was packed with tons of other things. Though not restful, the visit was terrific, and we'd like to take this opportunity and thank you all for taking the time and helping us enjoy it so very much. The first few days back in Pittsburgh weren't easy, a feeling that was intensified by the terrible heat which welcomed us. There's a lot to say about the feelings involved in such a visit, but in order to keep this message not-too-long I'll skip it here. At any rate, after a few more days, we merged again into our relaxed and pleasant Pittsburgh daily life.
As I've written previously, the summer here is extremely active, in the sense of outdoors activities and the like. There is no question that this summer was the busiest we have ever had, surely as a family. Long weekends, along with generous vacations we took were combined with the wealth of possibilities and festivities, so that we were basically jaunting around most of the time. Still in the New Zealand travel spirit, we did a LOT of hiking and camping, and were very pleased to see that the girls enjoy it as much as we do – for them sleeping in our cute tent is a real treat! In Israel, after 20 years of hiking and explorations, we got to the point of mostly hiking in familiar trails. And here, naturally, there is a whole new world to discover.
I might provide some more information about Pennsylvania in a future post, but for now it's worth mentioning that there is a huge number of very well maintained state parks and beautiful nature spots in this state and in bordering states, many of which are easily accessible from Pittsburgh. Even more so as, when living here, 2 hours of driving no longer seem like too big an ordeal. Our most recent journey deserves several additional lines. Faced with a week-off in Hadas' daycare, we decided to take one more long vacation this summer and set off for a 10-day trip to Boston. We broke the very long drive (more than 12 hours) into 3 days in each direction, and used these days to hike in two gorgeous areas –the Poconos in north-eastern Pennsylvania and the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. The Boston part of our trip was particularly pleasant, mostly thanks to our dear relatives there - Sheila, Bill, Stacy, Art & sweet little Dahlia - and their marvelous hospitality. Obviously, we didn't skip some site-seeing in the city, including the famous duck-tour, and also got to meet Israeli friends who livein Boston. All in all, we had a perfect mix of nature, city, family, friends and some rest. Even the weather smiled on us, with 6-7 beautiful sunny days – definitely not something to take forgranted in this part of the world. Oh, and most importantly – shortlyafter departing, we were thrilled to be told about our first niece!!! Hilla (Anat's sister) gave birth to Shira, a lovely baby girl, andwe're sooooooooooooo happy for Benny & Hilla.
Another aspect of our lives here, which I'm not sure I've elaborated about previously, is our pleasant social environment. One of the main barriers when moving to a new place, especially with no family nearby, is lack of friends. As things turned out, we were lucky to acquire many friends here, some of which live within a short walking distance from our apartment. Naturally, many of the families we're friendly with are Israeli; however, as time passes relationships with American families are being formed as well, many times through Noga's play-dates.Talking about the girls and their extreme friendliness with the surrounding, I'll try and limit myself to a couple of paragraphs in a grandparent-oriented style :-)
Hadas is speaking fluently, all of a sudden, articulating Hebrew as if she always knew the language, and she's pretty fluent in English as well. We speak almost only Hebrew at home, so we don't get to hear much of her English, but we're told she has no language difficulties whatsoever. She is really a big girl by now, fully potty-trained and without a diaper for quite some time now, even during night time (before the age of 2.5!). She is extremely charming and regularly conquers the hearts of those she interacts with. I guess it sounds like the usual "parent writing about his child", but I really am under the impression that she's exceptionally cute. And (well, this is an aspect hidden from most of the world), stubborn. Additionally, following some carelessness on our part, she recently started saying "shit" whenever something happens not to her liking. Not educational as it is, it's still hilarious hearing her curse... Other than that, the beginning of her new daycare last week was almost insulting: despite being moved to a new room, with new teachers, Hadas hardly bothers to give us a second look in the mornings and is usually very upset when we come to pick her up by the end of the day, practically telling us to go away. Yes, yes, I know it's better than the opposite alternative.
Noga had an exceptionally busy summer, with two types of day camps ("kaytana", that is). She was swimming in the pool at least twice a day, and developed a gorgeous tan. With so many different "frameworks" in which she has been spending time, so many different counselors and teachers, we started wondering whether there is anything in the world which might jeopardize her constant happiness. So far, we're pleased to say, it seems that there isn't–she's simply happy and shining most of the time. I don't think I fully understand it to date, but within a few days she'll be starting school!!!! Indeed, they call it kindergarten here, but for all practical purposes this is what an Israeli kid undergoes when entering first grade ("Kita Aleph"). They're physically in school (Colfax, the neighborhood public school in our case), studying and not playing for the most part. Kindergarten kids here are being taught how to read and have a specific syllabus and requirements to meet in math and science. The excitement around this transition, both for us the parents and for Noga, is huge. This is, without a doubt, a major milestone and I must say it has arrived much faster than I expected. I kind of keep asking myself - do I really have a daughter who already goes to school?!?!
Both girls are extremely confident, and trust people very easily.They instantly form connections with other kids or adults, and seeing their interactions with the world is a source of great pride for me. At the risk of being too corny, I'll say (again) that they are both girls who make parenthood a pure pleasure. Both Anat and I have numerous magical moments of many sorts with the girls, one-on-one or the whole family together. And these moments simply make life good. My current way of life explicitly puts family in the topmost priority, and as far as this aspect goes, I couldn't ask for more. Well, enough with blabbing ;-)
About my job - I still have the same non-ideal job, and will probably stick to it. Recent developments in my job-hunt left me with only options which are marginally more interesting, however extensively more demanding, leaving far less time for family life.These options were also financially superior, but oddly enough (or possibly naively?!) this is not my emphasis. At the same time my current job became less boring. Considering all the tradeoffs I decided to practically stop searching for an alternative, though if an attractive new option will pop up, things might change. Anat is working full steam on her research, working on multiple projects concurrently, studying Spanish furiously. I started taking a class at the university - auditing a course out of mere interest, though the reading tasks consume lots of time. We're both reading a lot, and are proud to say that the TV is almost never on in our home. Combine the above with regular exercising - Yoga for Anat, basketball twice a week for me, as well as the mundane unavoidable house chores (you know – cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry etc.),and you'll see why I'm saying that our lives are pretty busy and full of activities. But, as I said, they're very good and enjoyable.
Hope you're all doing fine, Love and kisses,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
PS:I'll conclude with introducing a new thing – recommendations about useful web sites. Most of you use the web regularly, and it might beof help. Featuring this time:1. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) – an excellent service, significantly better than MapQuest. Try the "Satellite" option which shows you a photo of whatever you're after. Additionally, when viewing instructions about directions between places, you have a sleek drag-and-drop capability, as well as zoom-in on every step ofthe explanation, when you click on it. Admittedly, though, it's useful mainly for maps and directions in the US and not in Israel.
2. BugMeNot (http://www.bugmenot.com/) – are you familiar with the case where all you need from some web site is a tiny thing, and still that site requires a tiring and awkward registration? I bet you are. Well, in such a case go to http://www.bugmenot.com/, feed the URL of the site you want to login to and poof, you have a login and a password. Very convenient!
Hope these tips are useful – I'll appreciate any feedback.
Tuesday, June 14
Summer Festivities
This postg is written several hours before we set out on our more-than-20-hours-long journey to Israel, for our first visit since we left on our way to New Zealand seven months ago. We will soon meet many of our readers, however due to our expected hectic schedule there is no chance for us to orally communicate most of what we're going through. Hence, I (Giora, who has become the official bulletin-writer of the family...) decided that another monthly update is in place.
Summer has recently hit Pittsburgh full-force. The past two weeks were disastrous, with about 30 degrees (Celsius) and awful humidity. Additionally, unlike in Israel, rain, thunderstorms and grey skies are almost the daily standard. Pittsburgh, probably as well as most of north-eastern US, is most definitely not blessed with pleasant weather. However, hot and humid as it is, the atmosphere in the city is of a continuous festival. Or at least this is the way we've been experiencing the past two weeks. Festivals, carnivals, parties and other types of outdoors events take place, seemingly every day and everywhere. It sometimes looks as if the city's inhabitants are trying to compensate themselves for all those freezing indoor months, and for us this is great fun.
To mention a few of our recent activities, we attended a circus, a Chick Corea concert, an Israeli Shavuot celebration and more. Interestingly, we took the bus to some of these attractions, which at times seemed to be of greater excitement for the girls than the event itself :-) I wish I had a camera with me, to document their ear-to-ear smiles that lasted during the whole ride. Prior to the heat wave and the festival attack, our weekends were filled with hiking in some of the fine nature spots around Pittsburgh. We are still, in a sense, holding on to the spirit developed and maintained during our fabulous trip in New Zealand, including camping in a tent (to the great delight of the girls) and spending a lot of time amidst forests and lakes. Fortunately, Pennsylvania turns out to have an impressive number of state parks,with numerous hiking trails and campgrounds, some of which are really beautiful, even with our newly created New Zealand standards…
The girls are terrific, and are both now fully acclimatized to their new environment. Noga completed her pre-school daycare, and when we'll get back from Israel she'll spend her days in a summer day-camp. This is essentially daycare for the summer, though with activities that make it sort of "kaytana". She is chatting fluently (in English that is) with the other kids, and is definitely over her tough start. As we previously wrote, she indeed had language-related difficulties through the first 3 months or so. As much as it was tough to see her then (I think there is nothing as frustrating as seeing your child experiencing social difficulties), it is pleasant to see her now, loved by her class mates and tightly connected to them.
Hadas, who didn't have any rough start, is as comfortable in daycare as she was before, and is extremely cute (yeah, I'm repeating myself, I know...). She recently started her potty-training, so far with impressive success, in which she (justifiably) takes great pride. Language-wise, she is becoming more fluent, in two languages–a real miracle. Hilariously, due to a Russian-American teacher, her English is at times colored with a Russian accent. A few examples: van-two-three, or vait, or vatch ;-) Furthermore, she is fully absorbing the patriotic American education aimed at her at daycare: in front of my astonished eyes, in their end of year party, she cheerfully sang with all the other kids the American national anthem, as well as other patriotic songs. Here are a few lines forexample:"...For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain!America! America!God shed his grace on thee..." Need I say more?!
Best of all, though, is seeing Hadas and Noga's relationship. They have become truly good friends and really love each other. Sure enough, there are still those typical sisters' small fights now and then, but for extended stretches of time one can find them playing together in their room, building trains, setting a make-believe table, dressing dolls etc. It's a real delight for us to see them so close and loving. I'll conclude with a few words about us, the parents. Anat's research is definitely progressing – she started running a big experiment, and is very busy with it. Additionally, she's studying Spanish furiously: 4 times a week she has to hurry in the morning for class, she has homework, quizzes etc. A real student…My long, slow job-hunt so far bears no significant news, and the bottom line is that I still haven't found the job I'm after. There are spikes of frustration from time to time, but in general it doesn't affect my daily mood. This is so both because I believe I will eventually find something that will be satisfying (or, alternatively my current job will improve in this sense) and because I explicitly don't regard it as the most important thing. Familylife and leisure time are definitely of higher priority for me nowadays, and as I tried to communicate in the above paragraphs, these are truly wonderful.
This is it. We have some packing to do, during which we might at last realize that we'll be going to Israel shortly. As I said, we have a hectic schedule in the coming 10 days, but nevertheless planto have LOTS of fun. We sure will !!!
See you all shortly,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Summer has recently hit Pittsburgh full-force. The past two weeks were disastrous, with about 30 degrees (Celsius) and awful humidity. Additionally, unlike in Israel, rain, thunderstorms and grey skies are almost the daily standard. Pittsburgh, probably as well as most of north-eastern US, is most definitely not blessed with pleasant weather. However, hot and humid as it is, the atmosphere in the city is of a continuous festival. Or at least this is the way we've been experiencing the past two weeks. Festivals, carnivals, parties and other types of outdoors events take place, seemingly every day and everywhere. It sometimes looks as if the city's inhabitants are trying to compensate themselves for all those freezing indoor months, and for us this is great fun.
To mention a few of our recent activities, we attended a circus, a Chick Corea concert, an Israeli Shavuot celebration and more. Interestingly, we took the bus to some of these attractions, which at times seemed to be of greater excitement for the girls than the event itself :-) I wish I had a camera with me, to document their ear-to-ear smiles that lasted during the whole ride. Prior to the heat wave and the festival attack, our weekends were filled with hiking in some of the fine nature spots around Pittsburgh. We are still, in a sense, holding on to the spirit developed and maintained during our fabulous trip in New Zealand, including camping in a tent (to the great delight of the girls) and spending a lot of time amidst forests and lakes. Fortunately, Pennsylvania turns out to have an impressive number of state parks,with numerous hiking trails and campgrounds, some of which are really beautiful, even with our newly created New Zealand standards…
The girls are terrific, and are both now fully acclimatized to their new environment. Noga completed her pre-school daycare, and when we'll get back from Israel she'll spend her days in a summer day-camp. This is essentially daycare for the summer, though with activities that make it sort of "kaytana". She is chatting fluently (in English that is) with the other kids, and is definitely over her tough start. As we previously wrote, she indeed had language-related difficulties through the first 3 months or so. As much as it was tough to see her then (I think there is nothing as frustrating as seeing your child experiencing social difficulties), it is pleasant to see her now, loved by her class mates and tightly connected to them.
Hadas, who didn't have any rough start, is as comfortable in daycare as she was before, and is extremely cute (yeah, I'm repeating myself, I know...). She recently started her potty-training, so far with impressive success, in which she (justifiably) takes great pride. Language-wise, she is becoming more fluent, in two languages–a real miracle. Hilariously, due to a Russian-American teacher, her English is at times colored with a Russian accent. A few examples: van-two-three, or vait, or vatch ;-) Furthermore, she is fully absorbing the patriotic American education aimed at her at daycare: in front of my astonished eyes, in their end of year party, she cheerfully sang with all the other kids the American national anthem, as well as other patriotic songs. Here are a few lines forexample:"...For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain!America! America!God shed his grace on thee..." Need I say more?!
Best of all, though, is seeing Hadas and Noga's relationship. They have become truly good friends and really love each other. Sure enough, there are still those typical sisters' small fights now and then, but for extended stretches of time one can find them playing together in their room, building trains, setting a make-believe table, dressing dolls etc. It's a real delight for us to see them so close and loving. I'll conclude with a few words about us, the parents. Anat's research is definitely progressing – she started running a big experiment, and is very busy with it. Additionally, she's studying Spanish furiously: 4 times a week she has to hurry in the morning for class, she has homework, quizzes etc. A real student…My long, slow job-hunt so far bears no significant news, and the bottom line is that I still haven't found the job I'm after. There are spikes of frustration from time to time, but in general it doesn't affect my daily mood. This is so both because I believe I will eventually find something that will be satisfying (or, alternatively my current job will improve in this sense) and because I explicitly don't regard it as the most important thing. Familylife and leisure time are definitely of higher priority for me nowadays, and as I tried to communicate in the above paragraphs, these are truly wonderful.
This is it. We have some packing to do, during which we might at last realize that we'll be going to Israel shortly. As I said, we have a hectic schedule in the coming 10 days, but nevertheless planto have LOTS of fun. We sure will !!!
See you all shortly,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Tuesday, May 17
Ruminations from Pittsburgh
Here I am (Giora), attempting to cope with the writing-once-a-month-or-so target. We have gone through several fun weeks since our last post, including a trip to the marvelous Niagara Falls, 10 fabulous days with aunt Hilla & uncle Benny and a lot more. However, I will neither concentrate on the joy and happiness we get from Hadas and Noga, nor will I elaborate about the Pittsburgh shaky spring weather. This post will be different, dedicated to thoughts that have been crossing my mind: about some aspects of the reality in Pittsburgh as I experience it, and about the American society and culture in general. Before even starting, I'd like to emphasize that these are merely my subjective observations, and should be read as such.
As I've written previously, I am still performing the mundane tasks required by my current unsatisfactory job, though I'm almost totally absorbed by an intensive job-hunt. While highly time-consuming and often tedious, this process is also fascinating and provides many interesting insights into the society I live in, as well as into specific companies and technologies. This job-hunt-while-you-work may seem foreign to some of you, but I gather it is a fairly common situation in the States, certainly more than in Israel. The fundamental reason, in my opinion, is health coverage. If you have never lived in America you might not realize how central an issue it is here. Health care is inconceivably expensive in the US, and one's health coverage essentially depends on and is funded by one's employer. Hence, both financially and psychologically, quitting your job is not an appealing option. In order to avoid too lengthy a message, I will skip my detailed opinions about the American capitalism and its healthcare system.
Another reason is that seeking better opportunities is so very inherently natural here. From the MBA information session I attended, through numerous email correspondences to several half-day interviews with prospective employers, I can hardly count the numberof times the word "opportunity" was uttered. Indeed, the land of unlimited opportunities... An aspect which I was astonished at was the extent to which personal "connections" are central in searching for a job here. The conventional wisdom is that sending your resume to the Human Resources of a company is equivalent to sending it directly to the paper shredder. Regretfully, I can confirm this belief - only in very few cases someone called me back without my resume being personally handled by a contact within the relevant company. As aresult, I'm investing huge amounts of energy in establishing such personal connections, utilizing every possible direction - from parents of kids in Noga's daycare, to every person I happen to meet almost in every social setting.
As part of this effort, I found myself in a for-me-surreal situation - participating in a "Networking Event". And no, for thetechies among you, networking here is not transferring data over computer networks, but the actual creation of a human network. That is - meeting people from similar professional fields, with the sole purpose of establishing personal connections with them. Don't get mewrong - it was NOT a job fair, and I was almost the only participant who attended with the main purpose of finding a job. I was also the only one without a suit (which eventually I'll have to buy despite my hesitation of becoming a suit myself), but this is another story:-). Most of the people there were entrepreneurs, executives, investment bankers etc., in the height of a successful career. Such networking events, which are very common here (as I came to discover), are simply the way people do business. In the specific event I attended, there wasn't even a keynote speaker or any other "formal" reason - it was straightforwardly organized so that people would mingle and get to know each other, promoting whatever business goals they have.
Indeed, in Israel we also have similar networks, in a sense automatically created by the military service and greatly accelerated by the small size of society and the aggressive Israeli mentality. However, the blatant manner in which these connections are established in the business world here was new to me. Just so you're not worried about my fate, I somehow managed to overcome the embarrassment, as well as the language barriers, and indeed several personal connections were established that evening...
Further around job seeking, a notable characteristic of the job openings in Pittsburgh (and to my understanding in the US high-techindustry in general) is the strict requirement for very specific specialization. At first I thought this is only the overly pompous way employers word their ads, much like the intolerable way resumesare written here - even if you did almost nothing in your career, you ought to write that you did everything, and that you're no doubt the best. This imposes another difficulty for me - even after feeling sick when reading my Americanized resume, I'm not sure it's distinguishable from a resume belonging to someone with lesser qualifications and experience. You gotta see the resumes here tobelieve -V the best marketing minds in action. Anyway, back to specialization, my inquiries indicate that certainly the market here is much more specialized than in Israel. Despite my belief that being a good software engineer with fine learning abilities are the most important requirements for my target jobs, employers here are often after someone who already did, preferably for many years,things almost identical to what they need. This, obviously, drastically narrows the range of potential jobs for any specific candidate.To a large extent, American high-tech professionals are indeed more specialized and less versatile.
At a first glance you might tend to state that this seems commensurate with the natural tendency to "work by the book". In a sense this is true, and so very different from the Israeli mentality. However, there is another interesting insight here (have I mentioned that job-seeking was interesting?!): the American market sees a significant and important trend in the past few years, a trend called "off-shoring". Simply put, this means that every business task that can be performed as efficiently and for much less money, is transferred (or outsourced or off-shored) abroad, predominantlyto India. For example, many of the huge call-centers operated by American corporations are nowadays physically located in India. Similarly, numerous large software development projects are moving abroad to India, utilizing its extremely-cheap and highly-talented workforce. In this reality, there is little wonder that American professionals needs to be specialized - if you're not, an Indian professional can perform your job, and for less money.
So, as this message has already become too long, I will stop here. I suppose these ruminations of mine are not necessarily of interest for all of you. I'd love to hear any feedback, so that I'll know if similar future messages are of interest to the potential readers.
Love and kisses from Pittsburgh,
Giora
As I've written previously, I am still performing the mundane tasks required by my current unsatisfactory job, though I'm almost totally absorbed by an intensive job-hunt. While highly time-consuming and often tedious, this process is also fascinating and provides many interesting insights into the society I live in, as well as into specific companies and technologies. This job-hunt-while-you-work may seem foreign to some of you, but I gather it is a fairly common situation in the States, certainly more than in Israel. The fundamental reason, in my opinion, is health coverage. If you have never lived in America you might not realize how central an issue it is here. Health care is inconceivably expensive in the US, and one's health coverage essentially depends on and is funded by one's employer. Hence, both financially and psychologically, quitting your job is not an appealing option. In order to avoid too lengthy a message, I will skip my detailed opinions about the American capitalism and its healthcare system.
Another reason is that seeking better opportunities is so very inherently natural here. From the MBA information session I attended, through numerous email correspondences to several half-day interviews with prospective employers, I can hardly count the numberof times the word "opportunity" was uttered. Indeed, the land of unlimited opportunities... An aspect which I was astonished at was the extent to which personal "connections" are central in searching for a job here. The conventional wisdom is that sending your resume to the Human Resources of a company is equivalent to sending it directly to the paper shredder. Regretfully, I can confirm this belief - only in very few cases someone called me back without my resume being personally handled by a contact within the relevant company. As aresult, I'm investing huge amounts of energy in establishing such personal connections, utilizing every possible direction - from parents of kids in Noga's daycare, to every person I happen to meet almost in every social setting.
As part of this effort, I found myself in a for-me-surreal situation - participating in a "Networking Event". And no, for thetechies among you, networking here is not transferring data over computer networks, but the actual creation of a human network. That is - meeting people from similar professional fields, with the sole purpose of establishing personal connections with them. Don't get mewrong - it was NOT a job fair, and I was almost the only participant who attended with the main purpose of finding a job. I was also the only one without a suit (which eventually I'll have to buy despite my hesitation of becoming a suit myself), but this is another story:-). Most of the people there were entrepreneurs, executives, investment bankers etc., in the height of a successful career. Such networking events, which are very common here (as I came to discover), are simply the way people do business. In the specific event I attended, there wasn't even a keynote speaker or any other "formal" reason - it was straightforwardly organized so that people would mingle and get to know each other, promoting whatever business goals they have.
Indeed, in Israel we also have similar networks, in a sense automatically created by the military service and greatly accelerated by the small size of society and the aggressive Israeli mentality. However, the blatant manner in which these connections are established in the business world here was new to me. Just so you're not worried about my fate, I somehow managed to overcome the embarrassment, as well as the language barriers, and indeed several personal connections were established that evening...
Further around job seeking, a notable characteristic of the job openings in Pittsburgh (and to my understanding in the US high-techindustry in general) is the strict requirement for very specific specialization. At first I thought this is only the overly pompous way employers word their ads, much like the intolerable way resumesare written here - even if you did almost nothing in your career, you ought to write that you did everything, and that you're no doubt the best. This imposes another difficulty for me - even after feeling sick when reading my Americanized resume, I'm not sure it's distinguishable from a resume belonging to someone with lesser qualifications and experience. You gotta see the resumes here tobelieve -V the best marketing minds in action. Anyway, back to specialization, my inquiries indicate that certainly the market here is much more specialized than in Israel. Despite my belief that being a good software engineer with fine learning abilities are the most important requirements for my target jobs, employers here are often after someone who already did, preferably for many years,things almost identical to what they need. This, obviously, drastically narrows the range of potential jobs for any specific candidate.To a large extent, American high-tech professionals are indeed more specialized and less versatile.
At a first glance you might tend to state that this seems commensurate with the natural tendency to "work by the book". In a sense this is true, and so very different from the Israeli mentality. However, there is another interesting insight here (have I mentioned that job-seeking was interesting?!): the American market sees a significant and important trend in the past few years, a trend called "off-shoring". Simply put, this means that every business task that can be performed as efficiently and for much less money, is transferred (or outsourced or off-shored) abroad, predominantlyto India. For example, many of the huge call-centers operated by American corporations are nowadays physically located in India. Similarly, numerous large software development projects are moving abroad to India, utilizing its extremely-cheap and highly-talented workforce. In this reality, there is little wonder that American professionals needs to be specialized - if you're not, an Indian professional can perform your job, and for less money.
So, as this message has already become too long, I will stop here. I suppose these ruminations of mine are not necessarily of interest for all of you. I'd love to hear any feedback, so that I'll know if similar future messages are of interest to the potential readers.
Love and kisses from Pittsburgh,
Giora
Saturday, April 16
Delightful spring in Pittsburgh
Following complaints that the previous bulletin had a multiple-personality feel, this one will be written and spoken from my (Giora's) perspective. It's been more than a month since our last bulletin and committed to about-month intervals, here is another post. As we already said we'll do our best to keep these updates, telling how we're doing here in Pittsburgh, at least as long as we can find the free time. We will shortly get to the free time issue…
The bottom line is that our life is great here. The girls are marvelous, very joyful, and we are definitely a happy family. Our current jobs are indeed full-time, but are very flexible, and we get to spend lots and lots of quality family time together. It's almost never the case that either of us gets home after 17:30, we put the girls to bed together (each of them gets her own bed-time story) and we always have the full weekend, which here in the states is composed of two full days, to enjoy family activities. We also developed several routine family ceremonies, such as Kabalat-Shabat every Friday evening, with candles and a constant ritual of hugs and kisses.
Life is calm and not at all stressed for us here in Pittsburgh (frinstance, we have no cell phone and are very satisfiedwith it), and the city is as lovely as we previously said. What's more, the spring has arrived, and for two weeks now we have mostly sunny days with blue sky. Even the so-they-say-traditional April showers (rains) haven't appeared yet. We go out to playgrounds almost daily, spend the afternoons outdoors and enjoy it very much. Funny how much one misses it after only a couple of months of snowy freezing winter.
Last weekend we went hiking in a lovely state park (called Ohiopyle) an hour and half from Pittsburgh. We rented bikes, with a cool buggy for the girls to sit in, connected to my bike, and were delighted with sun, blue sky and a comfortable ride along a powerful river. Eating ice cream on the grass later, we all had adeja-vu from New Zealand… It was fabulous going out, feeling nature once again, and realizing how many nature attractions there are around Pittsburgh for us to explore. Tomorrow we plan on a 2-days trip to the Niagara Falls (with Hilla & Benny), and I cannot wait.
Hadas, in the past month or so, is going through one of the best (if not THE best) "periods" in her life. She is simply astonishing, so cute that it's hard to describe. I know you'll doubt my objectiveness, but I tell you that even strangers that see her, for example in playgrounds, cannot resist her. She simply "has it", not to mention her teachers at the daycare who adore her. Really!Noga is going through a bit tougher time, the language being much more central for her. It seems like she's reluctant to speak English as long as it's not perfect (somewhat like her Mom with French :-),and she sticks mainly to an Israeli classmate, further delaying her acquisition of English. However, surprisingly, she's not upset as one could expect. She is very happy and seems to enjoy the kindergarten very much. She's especially keen on her swimming lessons – Wednesdays and Thursdays are joyful mornings, when her swimming suit is packed for her. An interesting phenomenon – she's started making mistakes in Hebrew here and there, and sometimes funnily inventing non-existent Hebrew words, such as "Sidaron"and "Talbush". Pretty complex this bilingualism thing is…
My job, however, is VERY boring. It's highly convenient and flexible, and enables me to pick the girls almost daily from school at 16:00. But it's not interesting for me. I never had the experience of working full-time in a boring job, and am not sure I'll stick to this job very long – I've already started looking sideways for an alternative. However, there is this strict tradeoff between convenience and interest. See the above descriptions of my availability and family quality time – there's no doubt that in a more challenging and interesting job the situation won't be exactly the same. Let alone when most of the better jobs here require extensive traveling, being away from Pittsburgh frequently. Anyway, unfortunately the Pittsburgh high-tech market is very tough, so it's not that I have a wide selection of offers to choose from.
On another, though related, note I seriously considered studying for an MBA (studying part-time and working full-time concurrently) at either Carnegie Mellon University or University of Pittsburgh. I made some thorough inquiries about it, consulted many people etc., however the bottom line is that I decided not to. All these things are parts of a wider question – what I want to do in my future life, career-wise. The short answer is that I don't really know, and the full answer woud be way too long for this already-long post...
Anat is working hard, trying to gain the required knowledge in her new research area (bilingualism), to study Spanish and to setup some first experiments. Entering a new field is certainly not easy, but to the best of my judgment she's doing fine. Next time, she'll have to write the post, so that she'll be able to tell more :-)
A few more bits and bites from our life here: we are proud to say, that though living in the states for almost 3 months, we haven't visited any of the many fast food locations even once. The girls are not at all aware of the existence of McDonald, Burger King and the like.We try (and so far succeed) to cook a lot and eat mainly home-made food. Along these lines, we were surprised to discover how environmentally unfriendly the American culture is, ecologically speaking. We do our best to recycle as much as we can in our household, though it sometimes seems futile in light of the almost-no-recycling-whatsoever around. As a small example, all the meals in the JCC daycare are served with disposable dishes, cutlery etc. Dunno why, but I had that image of American people caring about ecology and recycling, at least on the coasts. Guess it was simplywrong.
Socially, we have quite a few friends we met here in Pittsburgh. Most of them are Israeli, but gradually we are getting to know Americans as well, mainly through the girls. For example, there is a playgroup for kids of Noga's age, who are supposed to go to the sameschool (Colfax) next year. It's a privately organized group of parents, who want to give the kids a chance to get to know each other in advance, to ease to transition. For us it serves another goal – getting to know also non-Israeli people, which we definitely want to.
That's it for now. We now have to go to the airport to pick Hilla &Benny (oh, Hilla is Anat's sister, for those who aren't familiar with the family), and are very excited about it!!! They're going to spend a week and a half with us, including the Passover Seder, and it's going to be amazing! Niagara Falls, did I already say?!
Love and miss you all, have a happy Passover,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
The bottom line is that our life is great here. The girls are marvelous, very joyful, and we are definitely a happy family. Our current jobs are indeed full-time, but are very flexible, and we get to spend lots and lots of quality family time together. It's almost never the case that either of us gets home after 17:30, we put the girls to bed together (each of them gets her own bed-time story) and we always have the full weekend, which here in the states is composed of two full days, to enjoy family activities. We also developed several routine family ceremonies, such as Kabalat-Shabat every Friday evening, with candles and a constant ritual of hugs and kisses.
Life is calm and not at all stressed for us here in Pittsburgh (frinstance, we have no cell phone and are very satisfiedwith it), and the city is as lovely as we previously said. What's more, the spring has arrived, and for two weeks now we have mostly sunny days with blue sky. Even the so-they-say-traditional April showers (rains) haven't appeared yet. We go out to playgrounds almost daily, spend the afternoons outdoors and enjoy it very much. Funny how much one misses it after only a couple of months of snowy freezing winter.
Last weekend we went hiking in a lovely state park (called Ohiopyle) an hour and half from Pittsburgh. We rented bikes, with a cool buggy for the girls to sit in, connected to my bike, and were delighted with sun, blue sky and a comfortable ride along a powerful river. Eating ice cream on the grass later, we all had adeja-vu from New Zealand… It was fabulous going out, feeling nature once again, and realizing how many nature attractions there are around Pittsburgh for us to explore. Tomorrow we plan on a 2-days trip to the Niagara Falls (with Hilla & Benny), and I cannot wait.
Hadas, in the past month or so, is going through one of the best (if not THE best) "periods" in her life. She is simply astonishing, so cute that it's hard to describe. I know you'll doubt my objectiveness, but I tell you that even strangers that see her, for example in playgrounds, cannot resist her. She simply "has it", not to mention her teachers at the daycare who adore her. Really!Noga is going through a bit tougher time, the language being much more central for her. It seems like she's reluctant to speak English as long as it's not perfect (somewhat like her Mom with French :-),and she sticks mainly to an Israeli classmate, further delaying her acquisition of English. However, surprisingly, she's not upset as one could expect. She is very happy and seems to enjoy the kindergarten very much. She's especially keen on her swimming lessons – Wednesdays and Thursdays are joyful mornings, when her swimming suit is packed for her. An interesting phenomenon – she's started making mistakes in Hebrew here and there, and sometimes funnily inventing non-existent Hebrew words, such as "Sidaron"and "Talbush". Pretty complex this bilingualism thing is…
My job, however, is VERY boring. It's highly convenient and flexible, and enables me to pick the girls almost daily from school at 16:00. But it's not interesting for me. I never had the experience of working full-time in a boring job, and am not sure I'll stick to this job very long – I've already started looking sideways for an alternative. However, there is this strict tradeoff between convenience and interest. See the above descriptions of my availability and family quality time – there's no doubt that in a more challenging and interesting job the situation won't be exactly the same. Let alone when most of the better jobs here require extensive traveling, being away from Pittsburgh frequently. Anyway, unfortunately the Pittsburgh high-tech market is very tough, so it's not that I have a wide selection of offers to choose from.
On another, though related, note I seriously considered studying for an MBA (studying part-time and working full-time concurrently) at either Carnegie Mellon University or University of Pittsburgh. I made some thorough inquiries about it, consulted many people etc., however the bottom line is that I decided not to. All these things are parts of a wider question – what I want to do in my future life, career-wise. The short answer is that I don't really know, and the full answer woud be way too long for this already-long post...
Anat is working hard, trying to gain the required knowledge in her new research area (bilingualism), to study Spanish and to setup some first experiments. Entering a new field is certainly not easy, but to the best of my judgment she's doing fine. Next time, she'll have to write the post, so that she'll be able to tell more :-)
A few more bits and bites from our life here: we are proud to say, that though living in the states for almost 3 months, we haven't visited any of the many fast food locations even once. The girls are not at all aware of the existence of McDonald, Burger King and the like.We try (and so far succeed) to cook a lot and eat mainly home-made food. Along these lines, we were surprised to discover how environmentally unfriendly the American culture is, ecologically speaking. We do our best to recycle as much as we can in our household, though it sometimes seems futile in light of the almost-no-recycling-whatsoever around. As a small example, all the meals in the JCC daycare are served with disposable dishes, cutlery etc. Dunno why, but I had that image of American people caring about ecology and recycling, at least on the coasts. Guess it was simplywrong.
Socially, we have quite a few friends we met here in Pittsburgh. Most of them are Israeli, but gradually we are getting to know Americans as well, mainly through the girls. For example, there is a playgroup for kids of Noga's age, who are supposed to go to the sameschool (Colfax) next year. It's a privately organized group of parents, who want to give the kids a chance to get to know each other in advance, to ease to transition. For us it serves another goal – getting to know also non-Israeli people, which we definitely want to.
That's it for now. We now have to go to the airport to pick Hilla &Benny (oh, Hilla is Anat's sister, for those who aren't familiar with the family), and are very excited about it!!! They're going to spend a week and a half with us, including the Passover Seder, and it's going to be amazing! Niagara Falls, did I already say?!
Love and miss you all, have a happy Passover,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Monday, March 7
The good life in Pittsburgh
As promised, we are continuing to write about our life here in Pittsburgh. We got here a month and a half ago, but in some senses it feels like much longer. Our apartment is fully furnished, including lots of pictures on the walls and knick-knacks on the mantel - it feels as homey as can be. The girls are fully accustomed to their new day-care: Hadas arrives in the morning and immediately sets out to hug as many children as will allow it. And with her teachers - it is true love! From what we see, and the reports we get, she is cheerful and happy all day long. Her English vocabulary now includes Mommy, Daddy, Oh-oh! and an irresistible high-pitched ookay, which she claims as her very own and doesn't even allow us to imitate.
Noga is gradually starting to play with English speaking kids, understands quite a lot of what is said and is even starting tos peak some English herself. One morning this week on the way to the JCC she surprisingly started counting in English, and by the time we got there she was at 120 and going strong! She can also recognize about half of the letters of the alphabet, enjoys writing down the names of her peers, and is even starting to grasp some of the letter-sound correspondences in English.
Giora recently started working, as a programmer in a computers cience research project at Carnegie Mellon University, physicallyin a building next to Anat's :-) The position is supposed to be very flexible, and will allow Giora to pick up the girls from daycare most days, and occasionally work from home. We feel very lucky about this position because it wasn't obvious that he would be able to find something that flexible. Anat's PhD dissertation was finally(!) approved, and she is now officially a postdoc. She's started working very hard on her research, is finding wonderful collaborations and getting a lot of help from her advisors. She's also looking forward to starting to learn Spanish in May, which is really important because the research program involves English-Spanish bilinguals.
Life in Pittsburgh is very comfortable. Our apartment is in a great location - close to the CMU campus (30 minutes walking, 5 minutes on the bus), very close to the JCC daycare (10 minute walk), and in a very good neighborhood with a lovely main street and two huge parks on either side. Public transportation is excellent, and both of us will be commuting to work on the bus. Although we have only been here such a short time, we have already become friends with many young Israeli families as well as several American friends. As a result of this, we have a very active social life, especially on weekends. Since weekends here are two full days, we manage to pack lots of activity into each and every one of them: visiting museums (Pittsburgh has a wide variety of them, most of them catering to kids), skiing (with friends), visiting the magnificent and free public library. The both of us even had the chance to see a performance of the inspiring Alvin Ailey dance company, which took place in the downtown cultural district. We were quite surprised to discover a thriving cultural scene with theater, dance, music and opera.
We have also been busy making decisions regarding Noga's education for next year. As some of you might know, kindergarten in the US is almost equivalent to first grade in Israel. It is physically part of elementary school, and they have a real academic curriculum: reading, math and even science. We weren't aware that this was the case, and were quite surprised to find out that school here starts at age 5. This all means that we have to make a decision whichs chool to send Noga to - and there were two main alternatives. The first is a private Jewish school (100% of the kids are Jewish), and the other is the public school our neighborhood belongs to, which obviously has much more diversity. There are of course pluses and minuses to each, and after visiting both schools, meeting with the principles and talking with parents and teachers, we've made a decision to send Noga to Colfax, the public school. Granted, the facilities of the private school are somewhat better (you do get your money's worth) but even the public school is far beyond anything you can imagine in an Israeli elementary school. For example, from kindergarten the kids have 2 music lessons a week in a specially equipped room including electronic pianos for each student, they visit the library once a week (and what a library!), they have access to the computer lab (a station for each student), and most of the time there are about 2 full time teachers for a class of at most 26 children. The things we liked best about the public school include the high parental involvement which is encouraged by the principle, the fact that Spanish is taught in all grades, and the feeling that the staff is very dedicated and caring, many of the teachers being there for 10 or more years.
Hope this message finds each of you in good spirits, and we've been happy to hear that those of you in Israel have started enjoying thes pring (we'll have to wait a while longer, as our front lawn is still covered with snow...).
Love,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Noga is gradually starting to play with English speaking kids, understands quite a lot of what is said and is even starting tos peak some English herself. One morning this week on the way to the JCC she surprisingly started counting in English, and by the time we got there she was at 120 and going strong! She can also recognize about half of the letters of the alphabet, enjoys writing down the names of her peers, and is even starting to grasp some of the letter-sound correspondences in English.
Giora recently started working, as a programmer in a computers cience research project at Carnegie Mellon University, physicallyin a building next to Anat's :-) The position is supposed to be very flexible, and will allow Giora to pick up the girls from daycare most days, and occasionally work from home. We feel very lucky about this position because it wasn't obvious that he would be able to find something that flexible. Anat's PhD dissertation was finally(!) approved, and she is now officially a postdoc. She's started working very hard on her research, is finding wonderful collaborations and getting a lot of help from her advisors. She's also looking forward to starting to learn Spanish in May, which is really important because the research program involves English-Spanish bilinguals.
Life in Pittsburgh is very comfortable. Our apartment is in a great location - close to the CMU campus (30 minutes walking, 5 minutes on the bus), very close to the JCC daycare (10 minute walk), and in a very good neighborhood with a lovely main street and two huge parks on either side. Public transportation is excellent, and both of us will be commuting to work on the bus. Although we have only been here such a short time, we have already become friends with many young Israeli families as well as several American friends. As a result of this, we have a very active social life, especially on weekends. Since weekends here are two full days, we manage to pack lots of activity into each and every one of them: visiting museums (Pittsburgh has a wide variety of them, most of them catering to kids), skiing (with friends), visiting the magnificent and free public library. The both of us even had the chance to see a performance of the inspiring Alvin Ailey dance company, which took place in the downtown cultural district. We were quite surprised to discover a thriving cultural scene with theater, dance, music and opera.
We have also been busy making decisions regarding Noga's education for next year. As some of you might know, kindergarten in the US is almost equivalent to first grade in Israel. It is physically part of elementary school, and they have a real academic curriculum: reading, math and even science. We weren't aware that this was the case, and were quite surprised to find out that school here starts at age 5. This all means that we have to make a decision whichs chool to send Noga to - and there were two main alternatives. The first is a private Jewish school (100% of the kids are Jewish), and the other is the public school our neighborhood belongs to, which obviously has much more diversity. There are of course pluses and minuses to each, and after visiting both schools, meeting with the principles and talking with parents and teachers, we've made a decision to send Noga to Colfax, the public school. Granted, the facilities of the private school are somewhat better (you do get your money's worth) but even the public school is far beyond anything you can imagine in an Israeli elementary school. For example, from kindergarten the kids have 2 music lessons a week in a specially equipped room including electronic pianos for each student, they visit the library once a week (and what a library!), they have access to the computer lab (a station for each student), and most of the time there are about 2 full time teachers for a class of at most 26 children. The things we liked best about the public school include the high parental involvement which is encouraged by the principle, the fact that Spanish is taught in all grades, and the feeling that the staff is very dedicated and caring, many of the teachers being there for 10 or more years.
Hope this message finds each of you in good spirits, and we've been happy to hear that those of you in Israel have started enjoying thes pring (we'll have to wait a while longer, as our front lawn is still covered with snow...).
Love,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Sunday, February 6
First post from Pittsburgh
Last time we wrote we were still travelers in Auckland, New Zealand. Although only three weeks have passed, our situation has changed dramatically and we are now writing from our new home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On the way here, we stopped for a magical week in Berkeley, California, where we stayed with our good friends Ayelet and Amir and were thrilled to have a delightful reunion with Shlomo (Anat's PhD advisor) and Miri.
We arrived in Pittsburgh exactly two weeks ago. And boy did we NOT get a warm welcome (!)weather wise. The temperatures were far below zero Celsius, and in the "single digits" Fahrenheit. To emphasize, on our very first weekend here we got more than 6 inches (15 cm) of snow, and we woke up in the mornings to a temperature of 8 Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius)! At least we were assured by the locals that this is as cold as it gets, and actually most of the winter is not as bad. We are already adept at shoveling snow from our outside stairs, scraping ice from the car every morning and taking the necessary 10 minutes to deal with the ordeal of getting everybody bundled up before leaving the house.
To make the best of thesituation, we immediately went skiing the very next weekend and had a marvelous time! Noga took a private ski lesson and was thrilled, while Hadas sat in her plastic red snow sled, and was content to be dragged around the bottom of the slope. Our settling down and adaptation were surprisingly fast and smooth. Within a week we managed to unpack our shipment from Israel in our lovely new apartment, buy a car, enroll the girls in daycare, open a bank account, do WAY too much shopping, complete our business with social security, utilities, phone, internet etc. Additionally, Giora has already found a group to join for a weekly game of soccer and Anat has joined a Yoga class.
Anat also started working at CMU this week and Giora is busy sending his resume all over Pittsburgh to whoever might be interested - the selection is not very big, but we trust that something will come up eventually. Our apartment is truly wonderful! We were very lucky to have found it ahead of time, before even leaving Israel. It is situated on a not-too-noisy street, an easy 10 minute walk from the Jewish Community Center, where the girls' daycare is. Further, once the weather improves some, Anat will be able to walk to her office at CMU, a nice 25 minute stroll through one of the many parks of Pittsburgh. We are also just down the road from the neighborhood "business district", which is a couple of streets with small shops, a few bakeries and cafes, lots of restaurants and an energetic urban feel. We are enjoying the experience of living in a city again, after almost 5 years on the Moshav. And Pittsburgh is turning out to be very nice indeed - the public transportation is surprisingly good, there are many museums and art galleries, large parks, a zoo, a great children's museum, libraries and an interesting skyline dissected by 3 rivers and numerous largebridges.
One of the pleasant things in moving to a totally new place is discovering all the little details of how things are done here. From the fact that all alcohol in Pennsylvania is sold only by state-owned franchises, through the central role played by the car in the American lifestyle: we knew there was drive-thru fast-food, but have now seen a drive-thru window at the bank and even a drive-thru pharmacy. One of the most striking, and less pleasant, aspects we've been exposed to is the blatant consumerism: huge shopping malls, HUMANGOUS mega-stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. At some point we got the feeling that everywhere you look you bump into a huge shopping center. On some level we knew that this is the situation, but still once you see it in person the impact is much stronger.
A little more about the JCC daycare: The facility is simply amazing. There are 15 different groups/classes/rooms of children from infants to 5 year olds. The ratio of teachers (as they are called) to children is unheard of in Israel. Just for example, in Hadas' classthere are 13 children and 3 full time teachers! There is a lot of first rate equipment and a great variety of activities during the day including gym, swimming, art, Hebrew, music and more. Hadas had a hard time saying goodbye to us in the morning in the first few days, breaking our hearts with her sorrowful crying. But we're happyto report that she is completely transformed this week. She barely bothers to wave bye bye to us when we drop her off in the morning, and is now using the exact same sorrowful crying to protest when we come to pick her up in the afternoon and separate her from her beloved teacher Leah.
Noga's beginning was easier, however it seems that the burden of not being able to understand what is being said around her all day long is starting to get to her. She is so curious and inquisitive, and used to being on top of things and all of a sudden she is unable to participate in the conversations around her. We expected something along these lines, and believe that once she starts picking up some English things will improve greatly. Amazingly, despite all this, she is quite happy most of the time, and all-in-all enjoys her time at pre-school.
Tomorrow Anat's parents are arriving for our very first family visit. Everybody is excited, especially the girls, after almost 3 months separation. We're looking forward to showing them some of the things we already know, and discovering others in their company.
Love and kisses to you all,
Giora, Anat, Noga & Hadas
We arrived in Pittsburgh exactly two weeks ago. And boy did we NOT get a warm welcome (!)weather wise. The temperatures were far below zero Celsius, and in the "single digits" Fahrenheit. To emphasize, on our very first weekend here we got more than 6 inches (15 cm) of snow, and we woke up in the mornings to a temperature of 8 Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius)! At least we were assured by the locals that this is as cold as it gets, and actually most of the winter is not as bad. We are already adept at shoveling snow from our outside stairs, scraping ice from the car every morning and taking the necessary 10 minutes to deal with the ordeal of getting everybody bundled up before leaving the house.
To make the best of thesituation, we immediately went skiing the very next weekend and had a marvelous time! Noga took a private ski lesson and was thrilled, while Hadas sat in her plastic red snow sled, and was content to be dragged around the bottom of the slope. Our settling down and adaptation were surprisingly fast and smooth. Within a week we managed to unpack our shipment from Israel in our lovely new apartment, buy a car, enroll the girls in daycare, open a bank account, do WAY too much shopping, complete our business with social security, utilities, phone, internet etc. Additionally, Giora has already found a group to join for a weekly game of soccer and Anat has joined a Yoga class.
Anat also started working at CMU this week and Giora is busy sending his resume all over Pittsburgh to whoever might be interested - the selection is not very big, but we trust that something will come up eventually. Our apartment is truly wonderful! We were very lucky to have found it ahead of time, before even leaving Israel. It is situated on a not-too-noisy street, an easy 10 minute walk from the Jewish Community Center, where the girls' daycare is. Further, once the weather improves some, Anat will be able to walk to her office at CMU, a nice 25 minute stroll through one of the many parks of Pittsburgh. We are also just down the road from the neighborhood "business district", which is a couple of streets with small shops, a few bakeries and cafes, lots of restaurants and an energetic urban feel. We are enjoying the experience of living in a city again, after almost 5 years on the Moshav. And Pittsburgh is turning out to be very nice indeed - the public transportation is surprisingly good, there are many museums and art galleries, large parks, a zoo, a great children's museum, libraries and an interesting skyline dissected by 3 rivers and numerous largebridges.
One of the pleasant things in moving to a totally new place is discovering all the little details of how things are done here. From the fact that all alcohol in Pennsylvania is sold only by state-owned franchises, through the central role played by the car in the American lifestyle: we knew there was drive-thru fast-food, but have now seen a drive-thru window at the bank and even a drive-thru pharmacy. One of the most striking, and less pleasant, aspects we've been exposed to is the blatant consumerism: huge shopping malls, HUMANGOUS mega-stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. At some point we got the feeling that everywhere you look you bump into a huge shopping center. On some level we knew that this is the situation, but still once you see it in person the impact is much stronger.
A little more about the JCC daycare: The facility is simply amazing. There are 15 different groups/classes/rooms of children from infants to 5 year olds. The ratio of teachers (as they are called) to children is unheard of in Israel. Just for example, in Hadas' classthere are 13 children and 3 full time teachers! There is a lot of first rate equipment and a great variety of activities during the day including gym, swimming, art, Hebrew, music and more. Hadas had a hard time saying goodbye to us in the morning in the first few days, breaking our hearts with her sorrowful crying. But we're happyto report that she is completely transformed this week. She barely bothers to wave bye bye to us when we drop her off in the morning, and is now using the exact same sorrowful crying to protest when we come to pick her up in the afternoon and separate her from her beloved teacher Leah.
Noga's beginning was easier, however it seems that the burden of not being able to understand what is being said around her all day long is starting to get to her. She is so curious and inquisitive, and used to being on top of things and all of a sudden she is unable to participate in the conversations around her. We expected something along these lines, and believe that once she starts picking up some English things will improve greatly. Amazingly, despite all this, she is quite happy most of the time, and all-in-all enjoys her time at pre-school.
Tomorrow Anat's parents are arriving for our very first family visit. Everybody is excited, especially the girls, after almost 3 months separation. We're looking forward to showing them some of the things we already know, and discovering others in their company.
Love and kisses to you all,
Giora, Anat, Noga & Hadas
Thursday, January 13
Farewell, New Zealand
The time has come, and we're about to summarize our two months in New Zealand: about 9 amazing weeks, over 6000 km of astonishing views and scenery, and a few hundreds of thousands of sheep have passed before our eyes. However, before delving into general summaries, we'll briefly tell you about our last week, which was as great as a finale should be.
After a few days in New Plymouth, including a lovely light festival and nice black-sand beaches, we headed north to Waitomo, in the heart of a dramatic limestone/karst area. We must say that despite the fact that we are nearing the end of our journey, we have not let fatigue set in. In the last two days we were very active, and were aided by clear sunny skies! We joined a guided tour of two caves –the whole area is riddled with sinkholes and caves (more than 50 have been discovered to date). We visited a stalactite cave, which was pretty enough, though it is not nearly as beautiful as the one we know from Israel. But the absolute highlight of the tour was a glow-worm cave. We entered the cave and floated on an underground river on a small raft. All the lights were then turned off, and the ceiling of the cave came to life with literally tens of thousands of tiny lights, winking like stars at night. The effect is simply breathtaking, and when our eyes got used to the dark, we realized there was a fair amount of light generated by these amazing creatures. Indeed, there was light enough for us to see that Hadas had taken the lights-out seriously, and promptly fell asleep – raft, worms and all.
Aside from this tour we hiked a few additional walks and saw rivers disappearing underground and then resurfacing; huge natural limestone "bridges" carved over millions of years; deep impressive gorges and the immense Marokopa waterfall – plunging over a 30m cliff face. The short walks we went on in this area (each about an hour long or less) were amongst the best and most rewarding we have seen in NZ. We'll be spending the final couple of days in Auckland and on Friday evening (14/1) we'll be flying out to San Francisco.
On to summaries, then… New Zealand is a wonderful country! At times, it seemed almost too good to be true. The diversity of attractions is remarkable – nature lovers can find awe inspiring natural features, adrenaline buzz-seekers face a fantastic selection of adventures, and ocean buffs can find an extraordinary choice of beaches and coastal scenery. New Zealand is also exceptionally clean – the cities and towns as well as nature trails. Even in routes visited by thousands of people every day the dictum "Take nothing but photographs and memories, leave nothing but footsteps" is followed scrupulously. We know that New Zealand is geographically very distant from most of you, but since its wealth of attractions is spread over a reasonable small area, we warmly recommend a visit here! As we've tried to communicate in our letters, there is something here for everyone, and even 2-3 weeks can be sufficient to see many awesome places.
From a family perspective, it has been a truly unforgettable experience! We have discovered how easily our daughters adjust to a nomadic lifestyle, and in fact thrive on the exciting daily adventures. They were both marvellous and joyful, and we were delighted to spend this special time with them. Getting back into a normal daily routine will probably be very hard for us… More than just enjoying the time spent together, we both feel that we have grown closer to both Noga and Hadas, and this is a terrific feeling!!!
Goodbye New Zealand – we had a superb time, and plan to return for more some day.
Love, Giora, Anat, Noga & Hadas
After a few days in New Plymouth, including a lovely light festival and nice black-sand beaches, we headed north to Waitomo, in the heart of a dramatic limestone/karst area. We must say that despite the fact that we are nearing the end of our journey, we have not let fatigue set in. In the last two days we were very active, and were aided by clear sunny skies! We joined a guided tour of two caves –the whole area is riddled with sinkholes and caves (more than 50 have been discovered to date). We visited a stalactite cave, which was pretty enough, though it is not nearly as beautiful as the one we know from Israel. But the absolute highlight of the tour was a glow-worm cave. We entered the cave and floated on an underground river on a small raft. All the lights were then turned off, and the ceiling of the cave came to life with literally tens of thousands of tiny lights, winking like stars at night. The effect is simply breathtaking, and when our eyes got used to the dark, we realized there was a fair amount of light generated by these amazing creatures. Indeed, there was light enough for us to see that Hadas had taken the lights-out seriously, and promptly fell asleep – raft, worms and all.
Aside from this tour we hiked a few additional walks and saw rivers disappearing underground and then resurfacing; huge natural limestone "bridges" carved over millions of years; deep impressive gorges and the immense Marokopa waterfall – plunging over a 30m cliff face. The short walks we went on in this area (each about an hour long or less) were amongst the best and most rewarding we have seen in NZ. We'll be spending the final couple of days in Auckland and on Friday evening (14/1) we'll be flying out to San Francisco.
On to summaries, then… New Zealand is a wonderful country! At times, it seemed almost too good to be true. The diversity of attractions is remarkable – nature lovers can find awe inspiring natural features, adrenaline buzz-seekers face a fantastic selection of adventures, and ocean buffs can find an extraordinary choice of beaches and coastal scenery. New Zealand is also exceptionally clean – the cities and towns as well as nature trails. Even in routes visited by thousands of people every day the dictum "Take nothing but photographs and memories, leave nothing but footsteps" is followed scrupulously. We know that New Zealand is geographically very distant from most of you, but since its wealth of attractions is spread over a reasonable small area, we warmly recommend a visit here! As we've tried to communicate in our letters, there is something here for everyone, and even 2-3 weeks can be sufficient to see many awesome places.
From a family perspective, it has been a truly unforgettable experience! We have discovered how easily our daughters adjust to a nomadic lifestyle, and in fact thrive on the exciting daily adventures. They were both marvellous and joyful, and we were delighted to spend this special time with them. Getting back into a normal daily routine will probably be very hard for us… More than just enjoying the time spent together, we both feel that we have grown closer to both Noga and Hadas, and this is a terrific feeling!!!
Goodbye New Zealand – we had a superb time, and plan to return for more some day.
Love, Giora, Anat, Noga & Hadas
Sunday, January 9
Another fabulous week in New Zealand
We are nearing the end of our wonderful trip, and next Friday (less than a week from now!) we'll be flying out from Auckland to the US. However, we'd like to give you another bulletin before summarizing etc.
Since our previous report, from Christchurch, we spent a few more lovely days in the south island, and then crossed back tothe north island. We are now making our way north along its western coast. We are currently staying for a few days in a city called New Plymouth, located in the Taranaki peninsula. Most importantly, our collective mood in the last week and a half has been exceptionally jolly! Both girls are even more amazing than usual, and are almost constantly smiling and happy. Hadas is quickly developing her verbal skills, and has started putting together two-word sentences, or more frequently, orders and commands :-) Noga has perfected her social skills, and has become impressively adept at striking up a conversation and charming everyone around, naturally mainly any Hebrew speakers we meet.
Unfortunately, the weather has not improved much, but on most days we've been lucky enough to have at least a few non-raining hours. We have also learned to seize such opportunities and as soon as there is so much as a hint of blue in the sky, we abandon our previous plans and head out for some outdoor activity or another. Mostly we go hiking, and have seen some beautiful places and lovely bush-trails.
Let us decribe to you in detail a specific wonderful day we spent in the small coastal town of Kaikoura. As usual, we took things very slowly in the morning, and didn't leave the hostel until 11:00 a.m., in part due to the gray clouds above. It is worth mentioning that most of the time we choose to go on nature hikes, which is not necessarily what most tourtists here spend their time doing. Kaikoura, for example, is famous for the opportunity to go on a whale-watching cruise, swim with dolphins or seals etc. We, on the other hand, on this specific day, drove some 20 kilometers out of town, to the foot of the relatively unknown Mt. Fyffe, where we hiked a lovely 2.5k loop track in a unique forest of Hinau trees (sorry, we have no idea what the name for them is in Hebrew, if there even exists one). We met no-one on this trail, and had a marvelous time! Hadas walked most of the way (as she has been insisting on more and more recently) and Noga made up a very complicated story about a princess, a wizard and a trampoline. We returned to our hostel, that was very very well-equipped, and the girls made it crystal clear that they are not going to miss the singular opportunity to splash in the outdoor jacuzzi. So in they went (with Dad) for a delightful frolic! One hour to get them to unwind and fall asleep, another hour for their nap, and onward to our afternoon activity (as they sky remained clear enough). We drove to a very special place - a rock shelf that is revealed during low tide only. We walked along this magnificent feature of nature - cliffs to one side, the ocean on the other. Along the way we came across numerous rock pools and fissures still filled with water, and exhibiting many shells, snails, intricately shaped sea-weed and the occasional seal. Noga was fascinated by this abundance, and even spotted one of the snails moving slowly along the rock-face. Hadas methodically made sure that she stepped into each and every single puddle and pool on the way, usually jumping in with a splash. A wonderful day all around!
For us, the parents, it's fun to see how much the girls enjoy the simplest of things. A recent example is one night in which we were tenting. Though we've been carrying full camping gear with us, we didn't sleep in a tent during our travels, due to the rain and cool weather. However, we decided that for the sake of the experience, we should do it at least once, and so we did. Indeed, there was a lot of excitement - bulding the tent, using our camping mattresses etc. Another such example is the ferry on which we crossed the Cook Strait, back to the north island. Designed to contain as many vehicles as possible, this ferry is a gigantic ship, with several enormous passanger decks. In a way it feels like an air plane, but much more spacious, with an indoor playground, bars and even a clown performance for the kids. That said, it's perfectly understandable why the girls enjoyed the cruise so much. For Noga, the crossing day was really an exciting one!
So, as you've probably understood, we continue in having a great time in NZ. We can only be sorry that this terrific travel will soon come to an end, as every good thing does.
Hope you're all well, lots of love,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
Since our previous report, from Christchurch, we spent a few more lovely days in the south island, and then crossed back tothe north island. We are now making our way north along its western coast. We are currently staying for a few days in a city called New Plymouth, located in the Taranaki peninsula. Most importantly, our collective mood in the last week and a half has been exceptionally jolly! Both girls are even more amazing than usual, and are almost constantly smiling and happy. Hadas is quickly developing her verbal skills, and has started putting together two-word sentences, or more frequently, orders and commands :-) Noga has perfected her social skills, and has become impressively adept at striking up a conversation and charming everyone around, naturally mainly any Hebrew speakers we meet.
Unfortunately, the weather has not improved much, but on most days we've been lucky enough to have at least a few non-raining hours. We have also learned to seize such opportunities and as soon as there is so much as a hint of blue in the sky, we abandon our previous plans and head out for some outdoor activity or another. Mostly we go hiking, and have seen some beautiful places and lovely bush-trails.
Let us decribe to you in detail a specific wonderful day we spent in the small coastal town of Kaikoura. As usual, we took things very slowly in the morning, and didn't leave the hostel until 11:00 a.m., in part due to the gray clouds above. It is worth mentioning that most of the time we choose to go on nature hikes, which is not necessarily what most tourtists here spend their time doing. Kaikoura, for example, is famous for the opportunity to go on a whale-watching cruise, swim with dolphins or seals etc. We, on the other hand, on this specific day, drove some 20 kilometers out of town, to the foot of the relatively unknown Mt. Fyffe, where we hiked a lovely 2.5k loop track in a unique forest of Hinau trees (sorry, we have no idea what the name for them is in Hebrew, if there even exists one). We met no-one on this trail, and had a marvelous time! Hadas walked most of the way (as she has been insisting on more and more recently) and Noga made up a very complicated story about a princess, a wizard and a trampoline. We returned to our hostel, that was very very well-equipped, and the girls made it crystal clear that they are not going to miss the singular opportunity to splash in the outdoor jacuzzi. So in they went (with Dad) for a delightful frolic! One hour to get them to unwind and fall asleep, another hour for their nap, and onward to our afternoon activity (as they sky remained clear enough). We drove to a very special place - a rock shelf that is revealed during low tide only. We walked along this magnificent feature of nature - cliffs to one side, the ocean on the other. Along the way we came across numerous rock pools and fissures still filled with water, and exhibiting many shells, snails, intricately shaped sea-weed and the occasional seal. Noga was fascinated by this abundance, and even spotted one of the snails moving slowly along the rock-face. Hadas methodically made sure that she stepped into each and every single puddle and pool on the way, usually jumping in with a splash. A wonderful day all around!
For us, the parents, it's fun to see how much the girls enjoy the simplest of things. A recent example is one night in which we were tenting. Though we've been carrying full camping gear with us, we didn't sleep in a tent during our travels, due to the rain and cool weather. However, we decided that for the sake of the experience, we should do it at least once, and so we did. Indeed, there was a lot of excitement - bulding the tent, using our camping mattresses etc. Another such example is the ferry on which we crossed the Cook Strait, back to the north island. Designed to contain as many vehicles as possible, this ferry is a gigantic ship, with several enormous passanger decks. In a way it feels like an air plane, but much more spacious, with an indoor playground, bars and even a clown performance for the kids. That said, it's perfectly understandable why the girls enjoyed the cruise so much. For Noga, the crossing day was really an exciting one!
So, as you've probably understood, we continue in having a great time in NZ. We can only be sorry that this terrific travel will soon come to an end, as every good thing does.
Hope you're all well, lots of love,
Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora
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