A short version everyone can read, since i'm stuck in procrastination-land anyways.
I went to
groovin_reuven's house for sukkot, since he lives in Lower Merion, which is a 20 minute drive away. I took a train to get there, and somehow managed to get to his house.
Reuven's house is HUGE! A lot of houses in Lower Merion are mansions, and look castle-like, and are owned by Jews. Frum Jews, in some cases. Reuven's house is not a castle, but I would say it borders on mansion, considering that they have a guest house [which is now an office, but still!] a tennis court, a cave in the basement, and at least 3 bathrooms on the second floor.
They also have mincha and ma'ariv at their house for the first two nights, so I got to be very lazy and daven at home but still be at minyan! This is even lazier than an 11:00 highrise minyan, since that required walking up/down stairs.
Reuven has 3 brothers, 2 of whom were home- Jonathan [21] and Chaim [15?]. I think Reuven is the normal one. Chaim beat me and David Wise [Penn med grad student] at scrabble. He was proud of having beat the Penn students.
For first day lunch, I ate at Julie's house. Her sukkah is a bit smaller than Reuven's but we managed ok. We played trivial pursuit afterwards, and I sucked. It took me forever before I was getting questions right. I don't know trivia.
Second day afternoon Chaim and I took a walk to Narbeth and back. We wanted to do a trip to Penn, but Reuven would only go with 3 people, and Chaim seemingly had no way of getting back. He actually could have gotten back, but oh well. Maybe next time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shabbat of parents' weekend was insane. There were 20 billion people at lunch. I actually managed to get along with my parents for most of the weekend. Part of that was that I went to a tisch on Friday night and got an escape, and saturday I also hung out in Hillel all afternoon. A lot of Mafia was played.
I went to
Reuven's house is HUGE! A lot of houses in Lower Merion are mansions, and look castle-like, and are owned by Jews. Frum Jews, in some cases. Reuven's house is not a castle, but I would say it borders on mansion, considering that they have a guest house [which is now an office, but still!] a tennis court, a cave in the basement, and at least 3 bathrooms on the second floor.
They also have mincha and ma'ariv at their house for the first two nights, so I got to be very lazy and daven at home but still be at minyan! This is even lazier than an 11:00 highrise minyan, since that required walking up/down stairs.
Reuven has 3 brothers, 2 of whom were home- Jonathan [21] and Chaim [15?]. I think Reuven is the normal one. Chaim beat me and David Wise [Penn med grad student] at scrabble. He was proud of having beat the Penn students.
For first day lunch, I ate at Julie's house. Her sukkah is a bit smaller than Reuven's but we managed ok. We played trivial pursuit afterwards, and I sucked. It took me forever before I was getting questions right. I don't know trivia.
Second day afternoon Chaim and I took a walk to Narbeth and back. We wanted to do a trip to Penn, but Reuven would only go with 3 people, and Chaim seemingly had no way of getting back. He actually could have gotten back, but oh well. Maybe next time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shabbat of parents' weekend was insane. There were 20 billion people at lunch. I actually managed to get along with my parents for most of the weekend. Part of that was that I went to a tisch on Friday night and got an escape, and saturday I also hung out in Hillel all afternoon. A lot of Mafia was played.