First Month Observations

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Israel for a month already. The question I’ve been asked a couple times from multiple people is “Do you think you could live in Israel?”. Before I answer this question, I want to state that my answer does not mean that I’m staying past January 25th. With that said, when you take away all of the extra material items that America has, life in America and Israel are not that different. What I mean by that is that the U.S. has a so many Malls, restaurants every 5 feet, Wall Marts in every city, big cars, big houses with lots of land and a million extra curricular activities to choose from. There’s a lot to do in Israel but it’s not so much running from place to place and you don’t have the options in the U.S. The people seem to be a more relaxed and in not so much of a rush all the time. Most people seem fine spending their weekends at the beach or hanging around with their families. The part that makes Israel feel so comfortable for me is the family aspect. Despite the fact that everybody here is Jewish, it’s an incredible diverse country. People come from so many different countries and continents (mainly Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa) but every family I’ve meet so far reminds me of my family. It seems that if you meet somebody at the beach on a Thursday, they are calling you Friday morning and inviting you over for Shabbat dinner. That’s the part for me that made Israel so easy to adjust to and for me to feel comfortable immediately. There might be other places in the world that are more beautiful or have more to do but I don’t think there is anywhere else where I could have moved to for the last month and felt as immediately comfortable and adjusted so quickly. So the answer would be Yes, I know I could live here. I don’t know if I could live here forever but I don’t feel it’s so different to live here as you might think it is.

Tomorrow evening starts sukkot and schools will be closed for the rest of this week and next week which means I’m off for the next 10 days. The blog will be put on hold while I do some traveling in Israel. The plan is to go to Jerusalem tomorrow morning for the night, and then go from Jerusalem to Haifa. After a few days in Haifa I’m planning on living on a kibbutz for a couple days followed by a few days of hiking and camping in the northern part of Israel. Were going to finish the trip off with another couple days in Jerusalem. I spend a lot of time in Tel Aviv on the weekends and in my free time so it will be nice to go see some new parts of Israel. I won’t have skype while I’m gone so if you need to talk to me, call me on the cell phone. Off to get ready for tonight, spending the night in Rishon, here’s Asi and I, Asi is in charge of my program.

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