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