December11 stuff

Today is Hanukkah ….. Leroy tells me this as it is celebrated at school . Weird , it belongs to the Jewish faith . I’m not sure of the days significance or why a public school would be invested in it . What I do know it’s the start of 8 days of celebration with the lighting of symbolic candles and various other activities.Leroy brought home some spinning top thing called a dreidel. You spin it to land on certain inscriptions that can reveal a victory .Apparently it can be used to gamble with .The Jewish version of two up. Judaism is isolated to select pockets in Australia( Elsternwick) but maybe it’s a little more open in California . There’s definitely a Jewish thread here in LA. It all feels just a little odd , but hey this is America ,oddities are the norm . Maybe theyre open minded enough to share multiple religious beliefs ( Christmas and Hanukkah). On a total change of subject ,we are back on the relentless school fundraising cycle . The hard sell is on . We know that our neighbouring school is posting out letters to every parent that hasn’t donated the required amount . Your privacy is school business or should I say the business of the ‘affluent club’ This is ran by select parents who run the drive ( same at our school ). These parents are in a position to exert pressure on other parents The politics in the schools here is foreign to most Aussies. Unfortunately our boys school( public) has to make up a shortfall of 1.4 million dollars .Recently there’s been the Sketchers run , the book sale , the yearly book sale , the coupon sale , The socks and shirt sale ,the Halloween fare and ticket sale , Christmas donations , the 15 days of giving, and a theme that changes every week . This doesn’t include the lump sum that your expected to donate for each child ( a thousand bucks ) . Ok I’m isolated here but there are benefits , hardly any one knows us at the school . I’m starting to think it mightn’t be a bad thing .