Purim! (Part Two)

Well, we made it!  And it was fun and not too overwhelming :)  Here are more random thoughts:

--I went to the early minyan at the BIG shul and committed a faux pas when I shook my grogger on the *second* "Haman".  Oops.  I guess it's a custom at more than one shul to only make noise on the first and last "Haman"!  (I wasn't the only one.  There were maybe 4 of us in the crowd of, umm, 150).  My kids went to the next minyan at the BIG shul and  they made noise on each "Haman", so I guess you just need to know what you're in for.

--We did our usual morning scramble for costumes (Ilana, at least, was prepared ahead of time) and ended up with

a giraffe:

Rosie the Riveter

a cat (or two cats, once Liat and her family showed up)

and an olah chadasha

--the bus stop was full of people in costume;

--And the bus said "Purim Sameach" (Happy Purim) on the front:

--We were *not* overwhelmed with tzedaka collectors and no one came dancing in our door :)

--I sent Batsheva and Chana on what I thought was a reasonable walk to deliver mishloach manot, not realizing that my phone did not have Google maps on it, which was how I planned out the delivery system.  Since our city has many stairs, there are shortcuts that Waze (the only similar app I had on my phone, which I gave to guide them) did not know.  So it sent them hither and yon on a driving route that did not help much since they were walking ;(.  5 miles later (oops) they collapsed back home.  They were very good sports about it, thankfully.

--Liat's family came for our festive meal as well as Ariella B, which added a lovely "bit o' Malden" to the day :).  Jerusalem celebrates Purim a day later than everywhere else, so, for everyone who ate with us, it was really just a regular day for them.  It seems like the custom is for people in Jerusalem to go someplace where it IS Purim the day before to celebrate then, and, when it's Shushan Purim in Jerusalem, vast amounts of people from the rest of the country descend on J'lem to party there as well (it's hard to get enough Purim).

--Friday morning, BIG shul put together an amazing volunteer event.  As soon as Purim ended Thursday night, there was a collection of unwanted items that people had received in mishloach manot.  Since Purim in Jerusalem was Friday, there was (a brief amount of) time to repackage those items into new mishloach manot for kids in Jerusalem.  GENIUS!!!!

in case it matters to you, I didn't take these photos :)

There were four tables FULL of stuff--one of chips, one of candy, one of drinks and one of cookies.  It was stunning to see the plenty that we are privileged to live with, and made me so glad this huge amount of items wasn't going to end up in the garbage (at least, not *that* morning....)

In the end, over 1000 bags were packed for Girls Town and other similar organizations in Jerusalem. Deliveries were made by people who were already going to Jerusalem to experience Purim there. The whole thing was genius from start to finish!

--Friday morning we turned our clocks ahead.  Interesting that the day chosen for the time change is a Friday!  For an interesting read, check out a Wikipedia page (specifically the 2005-2012 section) that Batsheva pointed out to me about how the vagaries of exactly when the time change would happen each year so frustrated Microsoft that "Windows stopped trying to track changes and just made Israeli time be Greenwich Mean Time plus two hours" (!)