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