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

The country we chose to live in

So this is the country we've chosen to live in. A country in which more than 40% of its population has had to run to find shelter from rockets being fired by Hamas from the Gaza strip. A country towards which more than 180 rockets have been fired in the last 24 hours. A country in which in certain areas, a mother has 15 seconds, the time it takes you to pour a cup of coffee, to gather her four children and run to the bomb shelter. A country in which I have to tell my family, who lives abroad, that the news make it sound worse than it is just to keep them calm. Yet, it is the country I feel safe in. No other country in the world goes to such lengths to keep their citizens safe. We have bomb shelters and iron domes and chayalim who proudly go out to defend our citizens.

Yesterday afternoon I took my kids with a couple of friends to a kibbutz near Modiin to collect grapes and step on them to make grape juice. The perfect afternoon for the kids. We were having a great time. And all of a sudden, the sound of a siren filled the air. We were in the field with no shelter to run into. We gathered the children and hid under tables. I had Ilanit, my youngest, who is a year and a half old, duck under the table and i laid on top of her trying to protect her head and mine, while my 6 year old, Nathan, was hiding with the rest of the children nearby. Not being next to both my children and the uncertainty of whether Nathan was doing what he was supposed to in this situations was terrifying. We hid for what seemed like an eternity, but what must have been two minutes until we felt the ground shake and the resound of a rocket hitting open ground. My first taste at this country's crude reality. I can't imagine a mother who has to go through what I went yesterday several times a day.

Today however, as rockets continue to be fired and we find ourselves at what hasn't yet been cataloged as war, but I cannot find a different name for, Israelis went to work, visited coffee shops and restaurants, went grocery shopping and took the kids to school. Because in Israel, life doesn't stop. Because we are Am Israel, we don't let anyone push us over, we are strong and we want to live in peace and will do whatever is necessary to ensure that we continue to enjoy the freedoms that this beautiful country provides.