I feel like we’re making the transition to suburban American life quickly, in some respects.<\/p>\n
In Israel, I wouldn’t have woken up (and certainly not on a Shabbat, much less Yom Kippur) and checked Craig’s List and found a foosball table for sale at a garage sale less than a mile from our house. Of course, if we had a foosball table in Israel, it would have taken up 100% of our living area. The table was great<\/em>, and a terrific price ($20), but had a “Sold” sign on it. I bought two bookcases instead. Which made me happier than the boys.<\/p>\n In Israel, we wouldn’t have then gone to a little league soccer game. And we wouldn’t have seen Mark score his first goal. His team has a perfect (losing) record, but that’s not for lack of one serious hustler who lives in our house. I should add that he did his first goal right – no putzy ricochet, or dumb goalie mistake. Mark just dominated the ball and the situation and sent the ball driving through the air high above the goalie’s hands.<\/p>\n In Israel, we wouldn’t have gone to Wendy’s to celebrate aforesaid accomplishment, and if we did, we wouldn’t have gotten cheeseburgers, and if we did, it would have cost many times more than $10.70. I recall that the cheapest hamburger at Burger King in Israel was $3. For $10.70 here, everyone gets full.<\/p>\n In Israel, we might have had a restful afternoon, but not poolside. The kids do not get tired of playing in the water.<\/p>\n After dinner, the boys and I headed over (with our new bikes) to a trail that’s about half a mile from us, where we went for a 6-mile ride. The bike trails here are nicer than the roads in you know where. Apart from the fact that everything is so flat, it really is a pleasant place, with lots of trees, grass, streams, playgrounds. We even saw a number of hot air balloons from the on-going Plano Balloon Festival. <\/p>\n Quite a day. In between the above, I’m reading aggressively through a book on the New Testament in preparation for my PhD entrance exam on Friday (3 hours, covering the whole Bible). It’s a good book, but I have to read 150 pages a day to finish in time (that’s my goal; the prep sheet for the test just says to know the whole Bible). I am learning a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I feel like we’re making the transition to suburban American life quickly, in some respects. In Israel, I wouldn’t have woken up (and certainly not on a Shabbat, much less Yom Kippur) and checked Craig’s List and found a foosball table for sale at a garage sale less than a mile from our house. Of\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}