What you have been doing since your year at Midreshet Lindenbaum?

I was at Midreshet Lindenbaum in 2003-4.  Since then life has moved on a lot, I got married 2 and a half years ago to Danny, a wonderful Gush boy, now a kodesh teacher, and I am now one and a half years away from finishing my medical degree.

What made you decide to buy a house in Israel?  

For the first 2 years of our married life, Danny and I worked as the youth directors of a shul in London.  We lived in a flat on the side of the shul and ran programs on Shabbat and during the week.  After two wonderful, slightly crazy years we decided that we needed some time to ourselves and started thinking about where we were going to move.  We looked around in London and couldn't really see anything that we liked.  At the time, Danny's parents (who have been planning to make aliya since they got married and will make it soon, Be'ezrat Hashem) saw an advert in the paper saying that a Rabbi from America was speaking in London to try and encourage Brits to come and join him and his community from America in a brand new community that he was pioneering in Beit Shemesh, i.e. "doing a Rabbi Riskin".  They couldn't go the night he was speaking so sent us along instead.  Rabbi Rosner completely blew us away!  The passion with which he spoke about Israel was infectious and the fervor of modern orthodoxy was something that neither of us had really heard from a Rav since sem/yeshiva, but was the direction in which we wanted to steer our lives.  That night the estate agent in charge of the new project was there and the rest is history.  We bought a beautiful, brand new house in the new community of Nofei Hashemesh and please G-d we will go and live in it as soon as I am registered as a Dr. in the UK.
 
What do you remember from your year at Midreshet Lindenbaum?

 There were so many highlights of the year, all the chagim, the tiyulim, the choir, American cookies (mmmm…)  One of the many high points was Purim.  Rosh Chodesh Adar kicked off the celebrations with a band behind a mechitzah so we could dance and I realized that I was one of the few people who hadn't yet picked out a Purim costume.  A few days before Purim I was sitting in shiur and we came across a classic Aramaic retort, "mayla pila becupa demichta??!!" "are you trying to put an elephant through the eye of a needle?!"  As you do when immersed in a Torah environment, a friend and I decided it would be funny to dress up as an elephant and a needle for Purim -I drew the short straw and ended up as the elephant and had to explain to everyone that my grey T shirt and cardboard floppy ears made me an elephant (hmmm).  The day got even better when I stood up to give the Dvar Torah at the sem seudah and decided to do it in a heavy Scottish accent.  After I had finished, the rest of the Brits were dissecting my accent, when one of the madrichot came over and apologized  "Rachel, I'm so sorry that we made you do the Dvar Torah when you had such a bad cold!"  I reasoned afterwards that this was justified as to this day I still believe that there is no difference between an American and a Canadian accent!!
 
The things that I learned at sem have been the foundation of everything that I have learned since, but I am always aware that I have a long way to go.  The challenge of maintaining kavua learning after you leave sem becomes harder as life becomes more and more hectic, but I have had the same chavruta since I left sem and however crazy our weeks are, amidst teaching at cheder, preparing and running youth activities and of course exams, we always manage to fit in an hour of two of gemara!