As hundreds of new olim arrived this summer on the Nefesh B'Nefesh charter flights, full of dreams and hopes, ready to begin a new chapter of their lives in Eretz Israel, we celebrated our first year of aliyah.
Just like these new olim, we arrived in Israel with our two kids, five suitcases and a 20ft container packed with all of our belongings. We faced a new life, a new language, a new culture.
Today, a year later, our older son is getting ready to enter kita bet (2nd grade), he has made friends and speaks Hebrew with a heavy "reish". Our daughter, who is a year and a half old will be a total Israeli, but for now, I noticed she has a mishmash of languages in her head as she said the other day "Ima, los shoes". My husband and I finished six months of ulpan and although far from fluent in Hebrew, we can carry along a conversation. We know our way around the city, we have managed Israeli bureaucracy as we set up our business in Israel, we lived through a war, we have made friends, traveled the country, we have settled.
I am now asked for directions around Modiin and I can give them! In Hebrew nonetheless!
A few days ago, as I stood in line at the checkout line at the fruit store, I ran into the owner of a local sandwich shop where we eat often, who knows us since the first week we arrived and he was proudly telling the fruit shop owner how he met us a year ago when we had just arrived and now, look at us, we speak Hebrew and we have settled nicely.
To an Israeli, I may be an olah chadasha. To the system, I am an olah chadasha, but when I see the families who have just stepped off the plane, and when I say out loud I am an olah chadasha, I don't even believe the words as they come out of my mouth. I am a local. Ani localit!
