I'm Thankful!

This is late but better late than never. Yet the timing of this post couldn’t be more perfect. The last few weeks have nothing been short of miraculous in terms of watching Ivry become potty trained in just three days! We've been waiting for this moment a year and did all the coaxing and bribery that one can think of - but he validated for us that the difference between a soiled pull-up or pair of underwear is his affirmative self. I am amazed and grateful for his self-directed affirmative self. He holds his head high and marches to the bathroom without expecting a bridge. I'm grateful that we haven't used bribes and thankfully, we have managed to also get through this one. I hate bribes.

As a writer, I spend many lonely sometimes rainy Saturday and Sundays (in addition to the other 2 days a week) writing, finding work, checking off the items of m writing plan. I work on revising the first two chapters of my book in order to bring it up to standard, which I started in my sabbatical from my teaching post in Israel last year. I continue to submit articles to online sites on educational topics. I continue to write for my new site (www.newteacherresourcecenter.com) The New Teacher Resource Center and build up a wide readership of teachers and professionals that hopefully, will become my dream community. I continue to try and find a decent online or offline teaching job that matches my credentials and abilities. I write children's fiction and non-fiction and send them off to big publishing houses in Manhattan that are just a train ride away from where I grew up in the Greenwich Village.



I'm grateful for having the blessings that I do to at least to try weave my dreams Uas an ESL professional and writer (no doctorate but considering it) I just wish that sometimes, just sometimes, these decisions were more self-revealing than simply working hard and not knowing what the future will bring. This IS hard.



I'm grateful to have found a partner who is a writer at heart and extremely smart and understanding. He has pursued a position as a manager in the cheese department earning decent wages to provide for our needs. He is my one and only true companion, keeps me sane and rational when it's cold and rainy outside and I feel sometimes alone and stuck in my head.

I’m learning how to hustle and find jobs, keep writing articles and maintain momentum. But I know that this process takes time. Sometimes my thoughts aren’t lucid and clear as other days. I keep giving thanks to god for showing me what it is that I should write about. Almost always, I am shown the answer - whether by a force above or from within - I am my own self-affirming writer.

For now, we are eternally grateful to have come this far.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

To acquaint our international guest Haruka with the holiday, I printed a short synopsis of Thanksgiving from an American point of view, xeroxed a few pages from the 1971 book If you Sailed on the Mayflower. I was impartial to becoming too sentimental. But big Haruka was already happy to feel part of a great American tradition and that was ALL that mattered. I was happy to know that we also made another friend in the process. For Ivry.

Funny how the PCIV thinks we are traditional "American hosts" for internationals when I feel that we are still immigrants from the outside looking in.

PCIV Trip to Frank Llyod Wright's Falling Water (Pittsburgh Council of International Visitors)

The DAwning of a New Era

I must have changed my mind at least ten times during the last half. Obama or McCain? I didn't follow the campaign trail but I felt we needed in my heart a change for a strong leader.

And still, up until yesterday, I still was undecided...

I walked around the college still with unsurety. I even asked an instructor: "who do you think I should vote for?"

"Obama," he replied.

I am generation X - product of Watergate, cold war and Reganeconomics.

I felt largely removed from the election process and the candidacy because of my absence from the US. 19 years.

I came back from Israel's own wars to find a political friend, not an adversary. Somebody who can lead the planet.

In going forward, we can find our own strength and belief in who we really are.
I could definitely understand the joy, the dancing in the streets down Forbes Avenue last night. It comes with no surprise the long polls and the high percentage of minority and women groups.

His victory speech was the affirmation we are all looking for. We are looking for healing, a period that "WE CAN."

Like others, I too want a president I can now call my own. With pride. America has done it.

America has awaken to a new era.. our first African-American president. It will be some years before we see the profound changes of this new leadership.

We are making history and paving the way to change. I don't think anybody can realize now what this means for America.