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