#CampYael no more

Is my gift for planning cool weekend getaways gone?

It has been just a little over a year and a half since we made aliyah and following on the footsteps of my good friend Lisa and her #camplisa initiative, we made it a mission during our first year in Israel to visit different places each weekend. We did some great stuff. We went north, south, we hiked, we went to different beaches, museums, parks, small towns, smaller towns... We did so much stuff that I even started a “cool things to do in Israel” list, which I began to proudly share with others. Mostly I was in charge of coming up with plans and everyone was happy with the results. Up until a few weeks ago that is.

After reading so much about the Darom Adom festival and how the fields are covered with beautiful red kalaniyot (flower-anemone coronaria) and seeing picture after picture of red fields, I planned our weekend outing to Shokeda. THE place to go see kalaniyot according to the many facebook groups of which I am a member. If it’s on the internet it must be accurate I thought, and so armed with my DSLR camera, pretty dressed children in almost matching but non-cheesy outfits, a cooperative husband and a bag full of snacks, we took on the road southward bound.

As we got off kvish 6 we realized we were getting closer. Lines and lines of cars were parked on the side of the road next to a forest and hundreds of Israelis with their wicker mats under their arms were walking towards the entrance to the forest (did I ever mention how every Israeli has a wicker mat for picnicking? Apparently its the kind of thing they can revoke your Teudat Zehut if you don’t have one… Anyways, that might be material for another article). We parked our car and joined the wave of Israelis as they entered the forest in search for the beautiful red fields. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked some more and suddenly we started hearing others say what we had only been so brave as to admit inside our own heads: “where are all the kalaniyot?”. After having driven an hour from home I wasn’t about to get my plans ruined, so I told my husband, “let’s find another field”. So we got back in our car and drove a bit more until we saw another wave of Israelis making their way into the forest and we parked on the side of the road. The kalaniyot were beautiful! All 5 of them! I strategically positioned my kids for a picture that anyone who saw would think “wow” of, clicked on the shutter button and snapped a few photos before making our way back into the car and driving all 120km back home. Upon our return, we discovered there were more kalaniyot in the field behind our son’s school than there were in Shokeda. After a year of planning great activities, it isn’t a big deal to have one disappointment, is it?

A couple of weeks later, after having heard from my friend and coworker about an incredible place called Maskeret Batya, we made a plan to visit. Maskeret Batya is one of the oldest towns in Israel and according to my friend and her pictures, a town full of charm and plenty to do for everyone in the family. We woke up on Saturday morning and headed out to this enchanting town, only to find out that it’s a ‘religiousy’ town and EVERYTHING is closed on shabbat. My husband and my son wanted to kill me, no, I’m not exaggerating, they really wanted to take my life away. They were hungry and there wasn’t even a convenience store open. My daughter is the only one who had my back, but only because she is two and she had no idea what was happening. She wasn’t exactly vocal in her support, but I sensed it was there.That day, I was banned from making further plans without the prior consent of, and further investigation by my husband.

My busted plans must have frustrated my husband so much that the last two weekends, his usual lazy-let’s-stay-in-bed-all-day personality has been completely reversed to a 9 o’clock get up and let’s go attitude for which he has been making the plans. We went to Caesarea one weekend, walked along the beach, saw ruins, spent time with friends, ate a great italian place and came back home happy. Last weekend, we went to Utopia, a tropical rain forest with orchids, animals, musical fountains and plant mazes near Netanya. We then went to Rishon Lezion for lunch and got home in perfect timing for kid’s bath and bed.

I must say, I’m liking this no-pressure-to-come-up-with-activities thing. While I might relinquish my baton to hubby for a while, it’s not easy with my OCD personality. It has been a total struggle to relinquish, so I have committed to this change of hands just until after we go to Banyas, a gorgeous hike in the north and this fantastic beach festival in Dor beach that will require complete and utter dedicated planning over the next two weekends.

Credit to my editor in chief, Adinah Brown

To hashtag or not to hashtag... that's not even a question!

I know my blog is supposed to be about aliyah and how incredibly funny and frustrating at times life in Israel can be, but in all fairness, I did say when I created it that I would use it in part to vent about things that annoyed me, and so here it goes, in fair warning to all of you readers, I’m about to let it out...

What is it with people and hashtags? maybe I should capitalize it so you can sense how much this bugs me. WHAT IS IT WITH PEOPLE AND HASHTAGS????  There, that’s better.

I’m certainly no expert on technology and when faced with a blue screen or an official-looking message from “the Windows” people on my computer I’m fast to call on my hubby’s help, but I am a writer, a marketing writer nonetheless, and so to me, the cross-hatch figure has stopped being merely the thing on touch-tone phones that noone ever used, and become the very necessary, totally infamous #hashtag, so you could say that I posses some sort of entitlement when I laugh make mental corrections of the use of hashtags on my friend's (as defined by Facebook) posts.  

In case some of you don’t know what a hashtag is, which if you don’t use it in ridiculous-excess-Jimmy-Fallon-style is totally respectable, here is a little preamble: a Hashtag is a marker used to group together 140-character tweets by subject. Say you want to group all tweets relating to things that should exist but don’t, then you would accompany all of your tweets about the great ideas you have, such as a “nobody cares” button on Facebook or push-up Pringles cans with a “#WhyDontTheyMakeThat” hashtag. Hashtags are also supported by other social media platforms like Instagram and most recently Facebook.

Well, I am all for the use of hashtags. I think they are a great marketing tool for companies and an efficient way to catalog and later find sometimes useful, sometimes not so useful things. Some hashtags are funnier than others and I do get a kick of seeing what people come up with, but what really makes my day is when #hashtagsgetoutofcontrol and I see people who evidently have no idea of what a hashtag is or what it does, make widespread use of the poor little pound sign making their phrases an incoherent mess of strung-together words. So without further ado, if you feel the compulsory need to use hashtags, keep in mind the do’s and don’ts of hashtagging so people don’t go all  “#whatwereyouthinking” on you :  

1. #Don’t #hashtag #every #single #word
2. #donthashtagridiculouslylongstringsofwords
3. Don’t use hashtags in platforms that do not support them
4. Don’t try to be funny or sarcastic with your hashtags
5. Mind your spelling. misspelled hashtags will left your post out of the group and make you look dumb, like the guy who #dieofbeaties from eating too many Oreos dipped in Nutella
6. If it can be misread, it will be. Susan wanted to throw an album party and she is now kicking herself because her advertising backfired when she used the hashtag #SUSANALBUMPARTY. Proofread your hashtags with the mentality of a 12 year old boy.  
7. Don’t use space or punctuation on your hashtags
8. #FOMO, #LOLOLOLOL   Need I say more?
9. Don’t use irrelevant hashtags that do not relate to a category. #larrydidnotwanttobeinthepicture is not only a ridiculous long hashtag (see #2 above), but how many pictures did Larry not want to be in that you must group them all together?
10. Don’t even get me started on spoken hashtags. Leave the finger gesturing for other uses will ya? and if you see someone yelling “hashtag (accompanied by the hand gesture) oh em gee”, you have my permission to punch them in the face and then kick them while they are down.

Now that you have an idea of the basics, go out and hashtag the hell out of everything!

This is MY land

They say one of the hardest things about moving to a new country is adjusting to its food. The truth is I love Israeli food and since we moved here we have eaten in some of the best restaurants I've ever eaten before. Food is kind of like a passion to me (eating it of course, not so much cooking it), so I like trying new flavors. 

Grocery shopping however, well that is a whole different story. I must admit I have never been one to enjoy my trips to the grocery store and since moving to Israel, my hate-hate relationship with the grocery store has gone to new levels. It isn't just not finding the products you are used to, the fact that 1% milk is as fat-free as you can get, that a year supply of Haagen Dasz costs as much as tuition did in America, that figuring out the names of the cuts of meat requires a PhD, or the fact that the employees of grocery stores here do not seem to have gotten the "customer service" memo and will run you over with their dollies as they take up 3/4 of the aisle while replenishing the shelves. My biggest pet peeve, one that I cannot seem to get over, is the fact that in order to get a grocery cart, I am required to deposit a ₪5 coin in a little slot that causes the chained cart to become lose. I get the idea behind it. Depositing ₪5 ensures that I will return the cart to its designated place once I am done using it instead of leaving it behind in the middle of the parking lot, but c'mon, I am about to spend close to a thousand Shekels inside, can't the supermarket afford someone to retrieve the carts from the parking lot? Is it not enough that I just bagged my own groceries? 

Yesterday morning was like any other Friday morning at the grocery store: a complete zoo. Lately I have been doing my grocery shopping online, which I must say, is a complete wonder, however, my last purchase was short a few things, so a visit to the brick and mortar was necessary. I arrived a little after 10am with my two year old daughter and shuffled through my purse to find ₪5. The best I could come up with was a ₪2 and two ₪1 coins, which meant I had to get change because the grocery cart retrieval requires an exact ₪5 coin. I scanned for the possibility of a lose cart to no avail, so went inside to get change from the "customer service" desk (note the quotation marks are to denote sarcasm). There were three people in line for the same reason I was and the woman at the desk was on the phone. After a few minutes of waiting, armed with my ₪5 coin, I retrieved a cart and started my battle for grocery shopping on a Friday morning. 

I finished rather quickly, except for the line at the register which held me back about 35 minutes, and all the while I was waiting, ideas of using my blog to vent about the ₪5 situation flowed through my head. As I was bagging my groceries, talking to the lady behind me and the woman at the register, they noticed I have an accent and asked where I came from. People can't believe I left Miami (paradise to them) to come here. The woman behind me asked how I liked Israel. Grocery shopping aside, I love living here, so with a bright smile I said "I love it, we are really happy". She was surprised and said "wow, that's wonderful to hear. Even with all the problems we have, you are happy here". Without hesitation, I said "there are problems everywhere, but here these are OUR problems". Even I couldn't believe my own answer, I really meant it. I feel that even after only a year, this is MY land. And so I left, having said shabbat shalom to both women, proudly pushing my sideways-running grocery cart (what's up with that by the way?). 

Leaving your kids with strangers

Israel is a peculiar place and Israelis are a peculiar breed. Nothing new there, but the things living in Israel does to you, that is, well, surprisingly peculiar.

Everyone thinks of Israeli kids and thinks of how free they grow up. Eight and nine year olds walking home from school by themselves is the norm.  Our neighbor’s kid, who is just one grade above our son Nathan, rides the city bus back from school by herself. Our son has started to beg us to let him go to the park alone because some of his friends already do. He is 7 years old!!! No way he is going to the park alone! I am not that Israeli yet. But where do you draw the line? When do you start to let go of our western mentality when “everyone else is doing it”?

There is this restaurant close to our house. We really like it and we go there very often. The kind of often  that when we call for a delivery they recognize our voice, the kind of often that they hug our kids and pinch their cheeks. We feel like family when we eat there, but we never see them outside of the joint.  

Well, the other day I was strolling through the shopping plaza where the restaurant is and ran into the savta (grandma) owner of the restaurant and we spoke for a few minutes and then she offered that whenever my husband and I want to go away for the weekend, we can leave the kids with her for a couple of days. Now even for Israeli standards this is a little over the top friendly, but what stroke me as odd is that I actually thought about it for longer than any mother with a little sense of responsibility for her kids should have! In my defense, my parents and my husband’s parents live on the other side of the pond and an offer like that was tempting, but in Miami or in Colombia, an offer like that would have sent me running for the hills screaming “CRAZY KIDNAPPER” .

With this in my mind for the past few days, I’ve been thinking maybe we need to become more Israeli, after all, when in Rome… Maybe I will start by letting Nathan go to the park before I leave him overnight with the friendly neighborhood restaurant owner. 

Making an Impact

Growing up I had always been involved in community projects, I liked making a difference and impacting the lives of others, but sometimes I found myself going against the establishment because "this is how things have always been done".

One of the reasons I was so excited about moving to Israel, is that I knew that I could make an impact; that no matter how small my presence, every single effort could make a difference. I knew that if I didn't like something, I wasn't limited to complaining about it, but I had the right and the responsibility to change it.

Israel is such a young country and its people are so passionate about making things better, that everyone can give something back, and no matter how small, it can make a difference. I wanted that for myself, but I mostly wanted that for my kids. I wanted to teach them that it isn't all about ourselves, but also about others. That if we don't like something, we can work to make it different, better.

We've only been here a year, and I am still working to find my place, but in this short time, we have volunteered to make a video for Nefesh B'Nefesh to promote aliyah, I've had a few articles published which I hope inspire others who have recently made aliyah and two weeks ago, when someone from the Ministry of Absorption called me to ask if I could volunteer to be interviewed by the local newspaper about our experiences during the past year as new olim, I didn't hesitate. It makes me feel so grateful and so unbelievably good that in such a short period of time, I have been able to in some way, as small as it might be, touch the lives of others who have come to this country with theirs suitcases packed of dreams and hopes and are trying to settle and find their own place in a new land.

I am hoping that with the new year, comes new opportunities to give back, to impact change and to make a difference.  

An olah chadasha no more. Ani localit!

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!

My post was published!

The Colombian Jewish community newsletter published one of my posts!
Read the post translated into Spanish here