We made it! We flew Delta and Turkish Air (BOS-JFK, JFK-IST, and IST-TLV), with a total travel time of 21+ hours. Flights were largely uneventful, and Turkish Air gets bigtime bonus points for providing unlimited free movies, TV, music and other entertainment on the flight. Until the boys got those headphones, it was touch and go there for a while.
We arrived in Israel just after 8 pm, Israeli time, Wednesday evening. We had arranged with someone to pick us up at the airport. Instead of wearing a red carnation in his lapel, Pentheus wore his Bruins hat to help the car service recognize him and our family. While we were in route from the airport to Jerusalem, I overheard the driver's wife say to her husband in Hebrew that she couldn't initially understand why I included a link to the Boston Bruins logo in the email I used to arrange the pick-up, but when she saw Pentheus in his hat, she knew immediately that we were the right people!
As we opened the front door and entered the living room in our dira (/deerah/, "flat" in Hebrew), the Cheetah King exclaimed, "Oh, this place is beautiful," and it is. The living/family room is big and bright, with lots of windows and high ceilings. The dira is about 1400 s.f., and has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a laundry room. We haven't quite figured out which bedrooms we will use for sleeping and home office. Since we arrived, the CK has wanted to be near me, so we have been sharing a twin bed. Needless to say, we're all pretty tired. We'll finalize bedrooms today and unpack our stuff. I will hopefully post some pics of the dira later.
There were lots of "signs" we believe indicated that this mini-sabbatical was a good idea: we found the dira with little trouble (thanks, RSG!); our house in Cambridge is being well taken care of; we've been told by the principal of the school we want the boys to attend that they will be able to enroll; etc. The only "sign" that was anything less than positive was that when I left the dira for the first time yesterday morning, the first person I saw was wearing a Michigan State, "Go Spartans" t-shirt. I'm going to ignore that "sign" and go with the others...
Some of you have asked about our initial thoughts and impressions: My first thought is that this is hard, really hard, harder than I think I thought it would be. It continues to take a lot of work to settle in the apartment. We want to feel at home, and not like we're on a long vacation. It was a 20 minute walk to the store in 93+ degree temps in the bright sun with tired and cranky kids (and husband). Because my spoken Hebrew is much better than my reading Hebrew, examining the labels at the store uses a lot of energy. We haven't always gotten it right, e.g., the mango sorbet that we bought for the boys ended up being mango concentrate for juice. After lifting the lids on the multiple hand soap options to check the scent, we ended up buying "green tea aroma" because it was the least offensive. (I have totally taken for granted the option of unscented products.) Because we don't have a car here, we had to arrange for the bags of groceries to be delivered to the dira and, of course, when asked what our phone number was for the delivery, we didn't have it with us. As I re-read what I wrote, it sounds kind of silly but it's difficult to do these things, especially when Hebrew is not our first language and we're so overtired.
That being said, I've been astonished by how excited Israelis seem to be that we are here. At Passport Control at the airport in Tel Aviv, the inspector became animated when he heard our answer to the "how long will we be in Israel" question. When I ordered lunch in Hebrew yesterday at the restaurant and then started talking to the WK in English, the cashier asked if I had come from the States. When I told him that we had arrived the previous night for 5-months, the cashier's eyes lit up as he kept saying "baruchim haba'im" ("welcome") over and over. It turns out the cashier lives in the same neighborhood we do (another sign?); he says it's a good place to live.
Other initial thoughts: There are very few soldiers; I have only seen 1 so far. When I've been in Israel previously, I saw soldiers all the time - at stores, walking around, etc. That being said, it is clear that there is extra security everywhere, as compared to the States. To go into any store or public place (like the grocery store), we have to walk through a metal detector and my purse is inspected each time. Most Israeli dirot (the Hebrew plural for dira) have mini Israeli flags strung up like streamers across porches (even more than the plethora of porch flags we typically see in Pentheus's small home town in Maryland).
We've made arrangements for the boys to have a Hebrew tutor for the couple of weeks before school starts on 8/27. The tutor will not so much teach the boys in the typical manner, as hang out with them. The plan is to take them to the park to "learn the lingo" and on walks where they can speak Hebrew and learn vocabulary words. Every time I say something to the boys in English, I repeat it in Hebrew, so at least they are hearing Hebrew.
Tonight starts our first Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) in Israel. Pentheus and the WK left a few minutes ago to buy supplies for tonight's dinner, and tomorrow morning we'll likely go to one of the many small synagogues near our dira. We're hoping that tomorrow will truly be a "day of rest" for all of us. Starting Sunday, Pentheus will be working from home full-time, and I'll have lots to do with opening a bank account, registering the boys for school, arranging for local cell phones for Pentheus and me, and starting our daily lives here. We can't wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment