Presents

During my teaching practicum in Boston, one of my lessons was about poetry. The objective that day was to teach the class about poems which had no specific meaning, and whose purpose was simply to play with language. The way I approached the lesson was to distribute several Wallace Stevens pieces to the class, and to have them attempt an analysis of the works using the tools we'd been utilizing on other poems. My plan was that, after twenty minutes of their toiling on the meaningless poems, I would surprise them with the truth about the works, and we would proceed with a discussion about why on Earth someone would write a poem without a meaning. Luckily for both myself and my students, my advisor stepped in and told me that it was an awful idea and was sure to breed resentment and hostility. So I changed the plan.

The last time that Sofi (one of my Ulpan teachers) gave us little bags, they had inside several types of candy and a clever poem about Shabbat. Today when she took out of her bag an assortment of brightly coloured plastic packets that had the words "Happy Birthday!" on the side we all had our hopes raised. These hopes were further stoked when we looked inside the bags and saw taffy and chocolates, and another piece of rolled-up paper. The hopes were cruelly crushed, however, when we unrolled the paper to find that we were being assigned a surprise essay. Hurray. Luckily I was able to push off the completion of the assignment by our (Rina and I) taking a brief trip to Mea She'arim to fulfill assorted Judaica needs. Oh, and on the way home we met our cousin Dov Kempinski, just back from his vacation in Toronto.

In other, more exciting news, the present which we bought for my sister before her year Israel, which has since been re-gifted to two other girls spending a year here, has finally been used. Tonight we unpacked our sandwich maker and made the only sensible thing, little mushroom quiches.