Speaking of Weather...

Please G-d, we will get more rain this week.

There's a fun website called "ירושמיים" (well, it's fun in Hebrew; the English version is prosaic) with weather forecasts for Jerusalem. Even from the site name you can tell it's whimsical: Yerushamayim is a combination of the Hebrew for both "Jerusalem" and "heavens". Ha ha ha.

ANYWAY.

Their forecast for Thursday is as follows:

Which translates as: Sporadic rain (weaker). Cold, as in, "If it's so cold, why isn't it snowing?"

Ha ha ha for real, this time.

And if you're wondering how it can help but snow with temperatures between 4 and 8 degrees, that's because temperatures are given in Celcius. Because all the cool kids measure temperature in Celcius.

Kindergarten Weather Forecast

I got a really cute phone call last week. When the phone rang, I didn't recognize the number, but the area code was for the city where Mooshub lives, so I wasn't totally shocked by the opening gambit.

"Hello, is this Doda Mali?" (Doda is Hebrew for "aunt" and Doda Mali is what my nieces and nephews call me.)
"Yeees. Who is this?"
"This is Mini-Mooshub's kindergarten teacher!" (The reason for the voice's confusing combination of juvenile tone and adult enunciation was now apparent: I must be on speaker with either just mini-Mooshub or her entire class.)
"Hel-looooo!" (I can totally match your smiling explanatory tone clearly necessary for addressing a bunch of 5-year-olds, and raise you some extra enthusiasm points. At least once I know that's what game we're playing, anyway.)
"We've been davening for rain in Eretz Yisroel, and Mini-Mooshub helpfully gave us your phone number. Can you tell us if it's raining in Eretz Yisroel?" (OK, that's straight-up adorable. I know I'm still missing a huge chunk of backstory, but this is still unbelievably cute. I only wish I could say, "Why yes, it is raining!" Unfortunately, it isn't. Luckily, one of the two times it's rained during these 2 months of a dry rainy season was a few days ago.)
"Oh, wow, that's so lovely! It's not raining right now, but it did rain last week. Thank you so much for davening!"

We exchanged goodbyes and hung up. Overwhelmed by the cuteness, I told Husbinator about the call. Being the sort of person who immediately understands what's going on in all social situations, he explained what actually happened in that phone call. It's not that we've had an unusually dry rainy season, so little kids in America have been roped into praying. It's that while Israelis have been praying for rain since the beginning of Cheshvan (late October this year), non-Israelis have just started praying for rain on December 4th. Right, I grew up in non-Israel. I knew that we start praying for rain at different times.

Hence the phone call requesting a weather forecast  about two days after the little kindergartners started discussing rain prayers. Ah. Still right up at the top of the adorable scale, and now understood.

Oddly Specific Accomplishment

A few days ago, I reached a goal I didn't even know I had: I read and understood a (Hebrew) Bazooka Joe comic.

I remember my frustration as a child that I couldn't even read the font of the Bazooka comics, let alone translate the jokes.

Recently, I bought a pack of Bazooka-flavored Must gum. Without thinking, I opened the box and read the back as I popped in my first piece of gum. I finished reading before I remembered that I couldn't understand it... And realized that actually, I could. I didn't even notice how weird the lettering is until I checked to see if it's the same font from when I was a kid. (It is.)

Luckily, it seems that I haven't been missing much.

Still, I've made good progress!