Two weeks or two months? Which one is it? I guess we have only been here for two weeks, but it is difficult to believe as we have already done so many different things and changed our plans so many different times! Most of our time so far has been figuring out our plans so get ready to join us in our confusion!
Tel Aviv: We stayed with Ben's cousin, Liad, at his flat in Tel Aviv, a rather large flat actually. We explored Tel Aviv a bit, mostly by foot and a bit by bus as well. I'm not a fan of the buses, although a lot of it has to do with not knowing the language and always feeling like everyone sounds angry and is yelling. This may actually be the case because people in Tel Aviv seem rather stressed out, like most other big cities. We went to the beach one day but the sea was full of garbage. I think part of it was because we went in a little inlet or bay thing, which may have slower moving water and collect more garbage, instead of seaweed touching and grabbing our legs, it was plastic bags! However, we were told it is not always like that, which is good, and will of course go again another time.
One thing I have noticed here is that I am always sticky. After going to the beach the feeling can be described by 5 words beginning with S: Sweaty, Salty, Sticky, Smelly, and Sunscreeny (ok maybe that's not a word, but we can pretend).
We also visited Yafo, which is part of Tel Aviv and is just a bit South. We looked at an apartment there, but decided not to take it as we didn't yet know where Ben would be for army (we still don't know).Next we stayed with Julie Yosefan, she is the mother of Ben's friend Yotam, Julie has helped me look for jobs over the past few months. The whole family is very nice and it was a great place to stay.
Beer Sheva: After the first 5 days in Tel Aviv we headed down to Beer Sheva, where Thea and Mandy live (good family friends of the Morgan's). There wasn't a lot for us to do here in terms of getting stuff done so we did our best to relax and enjoy our time. We did help Inbar and Hemi out at their new apartment (Inbar is Thea/Mandy's daughter). We sanded the walls one day and painted them a few days later...wow that is hard work and Inbar is very pregnant so I'm glad we were there to do it instead! We also visited Brian Moshofsky (someone I went to high school with) who is living in Beer Sheva with his girlfriend Ilan.
For Rosh Hashana Thea and Mandy's families came over and we had a huge dinner. It was an interesting meal with SO many different dishes, two of which I could not bring myself to try (fish head and beef tongue!) Fish head is supposed to be good luck to eat. It was really a good time and I enjoyed meeting everyone. There were three kids there (18, 14, and 8) and it was fun to hang out with them. The 8 year old, Aviv, is doing really well on English and knows way too many words that 8 year olds should not know!! He was funny.
I hit the jackpot the other day when Inbar told us that there were boxes full of books that had been left in the apartment before they moved in....they were all in English! I spent two hours sifting through 6 large boxes of books. Most of them were old and related to war, government conspiracy, or murder so it was certainly a treasure hunt. In the end though I still found a whole bag full of books that I am interesting in reading. I read White Fang and The Call of The Wild first and enjoyed them both (although they are brutal in terms of human/dog violence...Susan don't read them you wouldn't be able to handle it!).
Kibbutz Ketura: After 6 days in Beer Sheva we headed even farther South and we are now on the Kibbutz that Ben has lived on for the past year. This is awesome...we are staying in a nice guest house for free. They are so nice here. Ronit (Ben's Kibbutz host family mom) has been helping us every day with paperwork and things we need to get taken care of on the Kibbutz. We have gone into Eilat every day until today to get stuff done. We met with many of the government agencies and without getting into too many boring details we seem to have the information we need to get things going and everything seems fairly possible, much easier than it all seemed from the US. We have been enjoying our time in Eilat and on Kibbutz even though we are keeping ourselves very busy with stuff to get done. The other night I went with Ronit to her folk dancing class, which was awesome. Folk dancing here is like line dancing but in a circle. This class was very advanced though and they already knew all the dances so they just danced, no instruction necessary. I followed along for some of it, but it was difficult (very fast, many steps, and lots of turns). I really enjoyed it though and want to join a beginners class at some point. I really enjoy line dancing (in college, and when I lived in CA I took a class or two) and this was very similar!
Tonight there is a Bar Mitzvah on the Kibbutz, which means there is a party at the pool and good food at the dining hall. Omer (Ronit's son) has his Bar Mitzvah next month and we are excited to go.
We have decided that for the first few months (3 or 4) we will be living in Eilat. It is the southern most city of the country right between Egypt and Jordan on the Red Sea. We didn't consider this as an option until we got down here and now there are a few reasons to make this move. We discovered that dealing with the government agencies in Eilat is rather simple compared to the horror stories we have heard about in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We decided to make it simple and just stay here for a few months while Ben figures out the army and I figure out my work visa. We found an apartment in Eilat that is super cheap...it's a small (tiny) studio with a HUGE porch and all utilities and internet included. We will also be starting an Ulpan (Hebrew classes), which will be three hours on Mon and Wed. Both the apartment and the Ulpan don't start until October, so we have time to get some other things figured out in Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv. We are excited about our decision to begin in Eilat.
Hopefully soon things may settle down a bit and I will be able to write about how much Hebrew I am learning, but for now I'm super happy just to have made a decision about the first few months and feel much more confident about getting the visa and having things work out.
See below for a map of Israel if you are not familiar with where we have been. Tel-Aviv Yafo is on the west coast a little above the center. Beer Sheva (here spelled Beersheba) is in the center below the West Bank, Eilat (here spelled Elat) is at the very bottom tip, and Kibbutz Ketura (not on the map) is a about 20 miles North of Eilat.
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