The Law of Return: at some point, the vacation must end

Well, here I am, finally back at yeshiva! Now that I once again have access to the internet on my computer, I will be able to post all the diary entries that I have written over my Chanukah break. I will date them according to when I wrote them, so they will all appear before this post.

My family meant to leave the hotel early in the morning, but my family being, well, my family, we left close to noon. The final complication was getting back my parents' cell phone, which my cousin Sarah had inadvertantly taken on the Samuels' shuttle to the airport.

The drive up was nice, and we stopped for lunch at the mall in Beit Shean. It ain't much in terms of malls, just two stories of redbrick: clothing store, movie rental, babyware, shoestore, and a hybrid pizza-shwarma restaurant. We dined at this shwarma place, where the portions were big and the service fast and polite. My parents were even shocked, seeing such courteous service after a week in the big city of Jerusalem.

Other than lunch, the mall was pretty boring. About the only interesting thing there was a faux movie poster that appeared to be advertising a Harry Potter film. However, only four characters appeared on the poster: Gilderoy Lockheart, Professor McGonagall, the cat Mrs. Norris, and Hermione. The poster's title read (in Hebrew) "Hermione." This was utterly perplexing: who would make a poster like this? Why? And why display it in the tiny mall of Beit Shean?

We drove the rest of the way to the yeshiva, and I gave my family the tour of the place: the water tower, Beit Midrash, dorms. And then they were gone, embarking on the long drive back to Jerusalem before flying back to LA tomorrow morning. Safe flight.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of yeshiva life, which is a bit difficult, especially since we have an Out Shabbat coming up. In the game of life, rhythm is everything.