Big Student

Shalom, chaverim! We are now officially one week away from making Aliyah, and I'm starting to sweat--er, glow. My brand new JanSport "Big Student" backpack arrived yesterday, and I wanted to share with you how I am preparing to be a student again, but this time taking into account some necessary accommodations to my "middle-agedness."

As you can see from the video (if it isn't showing on the emailed version of this blog, please go directly to the blog itself, which is at www.movingtonahariya.blogspot.com), I am fully prepared. In order, I pack:

1. One massive Oxford English/Hebrew Dictionary, guaranteed to cause lower back pain from its heft.
2. 300 Hebrew flashcards, which I can't read yet, but hey, think positive!
3. One pair of eyeglasses so I can see the whiteboard.
4. Another pair of eyeglasses so I can see what I'm copying down on my paper from the whiteboard.
5. Large economy-sized bottle of ibuprofen.
6. Thermos of coffee as a chaser. Coffee and ibuprofen: snack break of champion mature students!
7. And last but not least, a butt-pad with the tailbone part cut out. This is an absolute necessity for the hard plastic chair I will be sitting on for twenty-five hours a week. The cut-out tailbone feature should obviate the need to pack Preparation H in my Big Student backpack as well.

My mother should be happy seeing me with a backpack large enough to contain my Big Student Butt-Pad, which is one of the reasons I wanted to have Elul shoot this video of me packing it. I'd asked her last summer if she'd consider quilting me a kind of butt-pad snood I could use to attach my pad to the outside of my purse. Very intelligently, she gracefully declined my request and urged me to see alternative devices for butt-pad transportation. She should be doubly pleased that I chose to buy a JanSport backpack, as the company originated in Seattle--her hometown and my place of birth.

Happy Chanukkah, everybody!