Year One in Retrospect

Hello everyone,

This is our new short update.

If you’ve been following our blog this year, you’ve probably noticed that we haven’t really kept up too well. That’s the way life is. I will give an abridged version of the past 10 months and a foretaste of glory divine.

· Moved to New York...specifically an apartment in Brooklyn. At first we thought we lived on “the outer edge” of the hip neighborhood of Williamsburgh. But after 9 months of “trash tumbleweed” daily gracing our front steps and solid research, we realized that we were really living in the less “hip and up and coming” neighborhood of Bushwick. Needless to say, “Bushwick” speaks for itself. One day maybe, I’ll write a book.

· At first, we only talked on the phone with our landlord, the mysterious Mr. Chan. Our only communication with Mr. Chan was through the mediation of his father who spoke little to no English. BUT eventually we did meet Mr. Chan, a man of quite normal height and friendly demeanor. So now, I can no longer speak of him in such Masonic and conspiratorial terms. We enjoyed our long apartment and even came to appreciate the camaraderie of the small roaches that daily migrated up from the downstairs Chinese food dive into our lone kitchen drawer. Since the roaches had seemingly settled our only kitchen drawer, we counted it lost and kept our silverware elsewhere.

· We came to NY to teach at Nyack College in the downtown Manhattan campus. We had a great year and learned a lot about what it means to be a teacher in: 1) America 2) NYC 3) a Christian college. We are even coming back for another year.

· We got a taste of cold. Apparently, this was a mild NY winter but we won’t complain. We enjoyed a Floridian Christmas to help break up that New York winter state of mind.

· Obviously, there is so much diversity of culture in New York that we have only skimmed the surface but have enjoyed the bits that we have partaken of.

· Riding the MTA subway almost everyday was (if I can quote Forrest Gump) like a box of chocolates. You never knew who would be your 15 minute companion and, once again, there should be a book written about this dynamic institution of NY life.

· We got to see quite a few old friends and slowly made some new friends.

· On May 19-20 we moved out of our Brooklyn apartment with the help of some faithful students and then flew out to San Jose, California where we currently are. We are teaching biblical Hebrew to a group (of about 26) that wants to learn to read the Bible in Hebrew. The class will run over two weeks, 5 nights a week, 3 hours a night (30 total class hours). It been exciting to be here for many reasons: 1) the group really wants to learn 2) northern-central california is awesome...the weather is amazing 3) there are mountains, trees, grass, and sunshine to look at (if you don’t understand why this would be “exciting”, please move to New York City for a year) 4) we have been amazingly taken care of by the group and immensely blessed. we feel like we are on vacation.

A few years ago, a speech was circulating on the internet that Kurt Vonnegut had given a commencement speech at MIT. That “speech” was written by a Chicago newspaper columnist, Mary Schmich. In that article (which was later recorded to music and became a hit song) it says:

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

We feel like we can now identify with that song on both ends.

After we finish teaching our course in San Jose, we are heading to southern CA to see Sharon’s brother, Yony, and other relatives for a week. After that we are flying out for Israel for the summer. We will be in Israel until mid-August, staying with Sharon’s parents and teaching biblical Hebrew. We will then return to New York to teach another year at Nyack.


So that’s about it.

Shalom and Good Day.

Gary and Sharon