Sundays

The notion of having a lazy day on which you can do nothing - Sunday is certainly something that I shall miss.

Today, having woken as late as the monkey would allow, I took said young man to the park whilst Mrs G got together a picnic lunch. We then departed for the Eastern Market downtown. We had a most pleasant wander around the market which will very shortly be moving back to it's revamped location (a devastating fire destroyed most of the original location and it's been in a temporary spot whilst the rebuilding has been done). The weather was stunning, the crowd in good spirits. Excellent jazz from a pavement band kept the mood up and I even managed to find what it was that I'd come with a view to purchasing - a souvenir of DC for our wall in Israel.

From there we headed a few blocks over to the zoo. Like the other national institutions in DC, this has the added benefit of being completely free. We ate our lunch and then strolled through, stopping off at the gorillas and other apes, small mammals house (which delighted our own small mammal) and elephants. The pandas were left for another trip and the big cats had all gone in for an early night by the time we reached them.

We took a slow drive home and feasted on leftovers from our wonderful shabbat meals, leaving time for me to catch up on my emails and Mrs G to sprawl in front of the Tony awards.

One of my Olim put the Sunday experience into an interesting perspective which helps me to deal with the return to the Friday off, Sunday on structure. In Israel we look forward to Shabbat - our day of rest. The moment Shabbat goes out we're preparing for the week ahead and therefore every minute is precious. In Chutz La'aretz we're looking forward to the end of Shabbat so that we can go out on Saturday night and then enjoy our real day of rest - Sunday. that viewpoint really struck me - although it's quite a natural thing to do, it's so wrong if you think of it like that. So, although I will miss having a Sunday, I will be looking forward to what should be my day of rest when we get home.