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