Why Israel is our home

Dear friends and family,

My last posting led to a bunch of responses, and I wanted to thank all of you for the support and encouragement. Clearly, the difficulties we experience are not unusual for our situation.
I'm going to start working next week, and combined with intense social activities over the Jewish holidays month, I suspect my schedule will be fairly hectic. So I gotta hurry and blog beforehand, and what's better than the promised highlighting of the positive aspects of landing here?!

The biggest advantage, without a doubt, is being close to our families. Indeed, in the past 3 weeks, there was hardly a day where we didn't meet a family member. It's hard to exaggerate the importance of these get-togethers for us, and especially for the girls. They're really thriving, playing with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
We also have many friends from our past in Israel, and our presence here allows us to see them more, if not very frequently. And in general, relationships between people here are much warmer and spontaneous. It's not rare for our daughters to arrange a playdate on the spot with friends, when they're picked up from their daycare. This is a sharp contrast to our reality in the US, where playdates need to be agreed on days in advance.

There are additional advantages, such as the much better food (at least to our taste), especially the amazing produce, or the wonderful Mediterranean Sea. But in my opinion, there is one central benefit for us here - we really, completely, utterly, entirely understand how things work around here. We are well familiar with the culture. Unlike in the US, we're versed in the nuances.

Let me try and give an example to better explain that last point. In an attempt to demonstrate it also to my US readers (at least the non-hockey fans), I'll examine a piece of Canadian folklore.
There is that cute song which I used to hear a lot on the radio - "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" by Kathleen Edwards, a canadian singer (see clip and lyrics). Let's examine the following portion of the lyrics:

You're cool and cred like Fogerty, I'm Elvis Presley in the 70's
You're Chateau neuf, I'm Yellow Label
You're the buffet I'm just the table
I'm a Ford Tempo you're a Maserati
You're the Great One, I'm Marty McSorley
You're the Concorde, I'm economy
I make the dough but you get the glory

You surely get the idea of the lyrics, but what about the finer details?! When I first encountered the song, I thought - who the hack is Marty McSorley? And what does she mean by "The Great One"??? Turns out the latter is a legendary hockey player, while the former is, how to say, a less legendary hockey player. If you're Canadian, I guess, these go without saying.
I hope it conveys my point.

Have a great weekend, and a happy and sweet (Hebrew) new year to everybody!
Giora

Landing in Haifa, Israel

So we’re back in Israel, landed two weeks ago, and we’re mostly settled into our wonderful new apartment in Haifa. Phew, there is so much I want to tell, but so little time to write...

Some past feedback hinted that my writing tends to be too optimistic. Thus, in this post I chose to emphasize our difficulties. Starting one’s life in a new place is never easy, let alone when kids are involved. Indeed, after a too-good-to-be-true beginning for all three girls, we started running into various bumps.
With Maayan, we had more than a week of crying in the mornings, breaking my heart each and every time. Happily, a couple days ago she got to the point where she has started staying at her daycare without shedding a tear.
Hadas became, almost immediately, an integral part of her kindergarten class. However, she is still encountering many difficulties in adjusting to the new environment, and her behavior, mainly at home, certainly reflects them.
Noga, a new kid among a group of kids who’ve been together for two years, is having the hardest time. She feels fairly lonely at school, a situation she never had to face in such intensity. Astonishingly she’s seemingly pretty happy most of the time, but once she lets out her feelings, it’s evident that she’s not. I can’t tell you how sad (and tearful) it makes me to see her struggling. How helpless I feel as a parent, knowing that I have little ability to make her social reality a more pleasant one. I trust her social skills, and I’m certain that she’ll find her place sooner rather than later, but the way there is tough, both for her and for me.

The above are, without a doubt, the main difficulties, but they aren’t the only ones. Although it’s been more than two weeks, I still feel I’m in a culture shock, returning to the Middle East from the US. It’s not only how people drive around here – that’s way too obvious (although still frighteningly unbelievable!). You see things differently after living elsewhere for a long while, and I am unable to turn a blind eye on the many deficiencies around me. Let me give some examples:

The security guard in the custom offices immediately recognized us as returning residents, saying “you’re STILL smiling...”. Jokes aside, we quickly realized that people on the street rarely smile.
The urban areas are amazingly ugly. No milder way to put it. It’s in everything – the patchy buildings, the black oily stains on roads and pavements, the ad-hoc signs, the total lack of urban planning.
The notorious Israeli tendency to disregard the law has deep influence on one’s daily quality of life. The pavement, theoretically for pedestrians, is frequently occupied by parking cars (just try walking with a baby stroller...). Dog poop is on every corner.

Surprisingly enough, the fact that we’re still waiting for our belongings to arrive, thanks to the port workers’ strike, became the smallest obstacle. Indeed, we’re sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and wearing mostly our traveling cloths, but that turned out to be minor.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about living here, both objectively and specifically for us (being close to our families, to name one). I’d say that all in all we’re doing OK, despite the above.

I hope to write more and highlight those brighter aspects too, as soon as I get the chance.

Hugs and kisses,

Giora

We're still alive...

... and having a wonderful time in the San Francisco bay area, meeting with friends and family and enjoying the perfect weather! And tomorrow we will start the long journey back to Israel. Our trip is practically over.

Since we last posted, we spent 8 days camping in Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. Yosemite was magnificent, though very crowded and touristic. Coming after Yosemite, Kings Canyon seemed like a quiet backwater. Nature is less majestic there, but it was still beautiful, with high cliffs and cool rushing rivers. We found it very relaxing.

We hope to update our latest batch of pictures soon, and will continue updating on the process of settling down in Israel.

Love,
Anat