Three weeks

I'm trying to check in once a week, just so you don't give up on me entirely...

It's been an interesting week. It got more interesting on Sunday when I went to pay for Iyyar's gan (nursery school) and was told that the gan was full. I said, but I have an email right here dated April telling me he has a spot. Sorry, it's closed. We'll find you another gan. No no NO, said I; I know it's closed and I know it's full but one of the spots in that full gan belongs to MY SON.

Ah, but no. It didn't. Because--well, it's complicated. We live in a neighborhood of Jerusalem that I'll call Neighborhood A. We live on the very edge of this neighborhood, which is built into the side of an incredibly steep hill. I haven't counted the number of steps it takes to get to the top but it's well over a hundred--I'd guess it's around 150 feet straight up. We live on the bottom. Right next to us, almost literally in our backyard, is the border of our neighborhood and Neighborhood B. Way back before Pesach, I registered Iyyar in a gan in Neighborhood B. Between then and now, all the ganim in Neighborhood B filled up. Then they had to turn kids away. But they're not allowed to turn kids who actually live in Neighborhood B away from ganim in Neighborhood B. So what they did to make room for them was kick out all the kids who lived in other neighborhoods, like, for example, ours. They didn't tell them or anything, of course, just gave their spots to other children. So when I went on Sunday, Iyyar's spot had evaporated, and after three hours and much haggling and consulting a map and calling my neighbors, he was reassigned to a spot that is absolutely on the top of the hill--not only on the top, but OVER the top slightly, and a block and a half down the other side! The hill is utterly un-strollerable. It's zigzagging stone stairs all the way up. The actual gan is also not on our bus route. The only way to do it is to take a bus halfway up the hill to the point where the (steep steep) footpath begins, and walk it from there. Counting bus waiting time, it's going to be 30-40 minutes to get there, a bit less to get home.

Avtalyon's gan is ten minutes away from us, in the absolute opposite direction.

Pickup times are 15 minutes apart.

This is going to be interesting. What it means is that my husband is going to have to do one run and I'm going to have to do the other; me doing a gan pickup is going to blow any possibility of doing ulpan right out of the water. There is some possibility that another family could bring Iyyar home a day or two a week--maybe we'll get lucky. We'll see, I guess.

The happier news is that things seem on the right track with Barak's school. The menaheles is lovely, the school looks nice, we are meeting the rav of the school tomorrow. There is a hasaa but no idea of the logistics there. And no point getting worried about it till I know. Avtalyon's gan is lovely, as is the ganenet; it's very close and in her home. That starts the week after next.

Stay tuned, &c.