Week One, Done!

We have officially been in the country of Israel for one week. About three days after our arrival, we got internet service and moved into the house that had been selected for us. The concrete-block, four-story duplex has wrap around balconies on two of the floors, a gas stove, a finished attic and basement, and toilets that flush with such vigor that Gigi makes sure to include it on her video tours of the house. We share the duplex with friends we met in Bolivia in what has been one of our favorite “God did a miracle” stories of our first days here.

So far we have been adjusting well, but the jet lag has been worse than expected. We have been trying not to go to sleep during the day so our bodies can adjust to the new time zone (seven hours ahead of Florida.) Further complicating matters, day breaks at 5:30 am here. While we were in our temporary apartment, Noemie got into the habit of going on to the balcony to watch the sun rise but she didn’t know that at this new house, we have an alarm that is set every evening…. So. We were all up very early on the morning of day 4. But considering that I thought we were under a rocket attack, I was relieved to see her guilty, panicked face. We would still be dragging with jet lag into our 5th day.

But Jerusalem feels safe, chill. Food seems to taste better here. I am able to read Hebrew characters pretty well but I don’t have the vocabulary to know what I’m reading. Some things like yogurt and Brie are the same but most words are a mystery to me still. Thanks to Duolingo my vocabulary is mostly limited to odd animals and whether or not they like specific foods. 

“Where is the restroom?” No. 

“Does the bat like nuts?” Yes. 

(Noemie, using the same program for Arabic is also unable to question the location of "facilities" but can tell you about cold, generous fish.) I have gotten the impression that my Hebrew will mostly be useful for listening and reading. It is inconsiderate to speak Hebrew to an Arab person and I don’t know that one can tell the difference between the two people groups by looking at them. I can’t, in any case, and have already stuck my foot in my mouth by speaking the wrong language. A sullen expression and a grunt or two will be returned and the moment passes, but going forward it seems that saying "Hi" and "Thank you" will be preferred to "Shalom" and "Toda" until I get the hang of this particular cultural quirk.

The Americans I have met here complain that Israeli people are unintentionally offensive, ungraciously direct, uncouth…. but generally kind and well-meaning. I have never heard myself described more accurately and feel very validated and free to be myself. Obviously I’m Israeli and I didn’t know it. 

We have been doing groceries every day at multiple stores per day, the reason being, I think, that Danny wants us to know all our options— from the tiny corner-store where everything is written in Hebrew, to the supermarket selling Oreos and Goya products, to the Russian butcher shop with everything written in Russian…and who sells pork. West Jerusalem prices vs East Jerusalem prices...

Places to go on foot in a pinch, places we can hike to if we feel like an adventure, places we can order from online, places that we have to visit by car at 7 am so we don’t have to pay for parking. Danny is an expert.

We finished the week celebrating Shabbat at our new church. We walked to the multi-purpose building and made our way to the top floor. The sermon was delivered in Hebrew with a translation in English. Song lyrics were projected in Hebrew characters with romanized spelling beside them, and English translation under. Behind us, a lady translated in loud whispers to the Ukrainian girl beside her. The row in front of us was filled by one of several Dutch families in the congregation. At youth group, Tovi played four-square with a Sudanese girl, a Swiss girl, and a Swedish boy. A Korean girl stood by. What is this magical place? It’s like a real life “It’s A Small World.”

Fancy Meeting You Here

Me: [My amazing student] looked really wistful yesterday. I wasn’t sure if she was sad because she was going to miss me or miss CC… she kept making this face  [:: imitates amazing student’s face::]

Noemie: She’s probably going to write you into a book. That’s the face a writer makes before they immortalize you in a story.

——

While I would be flattered beyond measure by such a distinction, I can’t flatter myself so much as to believe that my amazing student would *actually* write me into a novel...but how deliciously tragic would that be?

 She’s a phenomenal writer…

It has come to this. 

We spent three whirlwind years in South Florida…years that included the pandemic lockdown, Dominic and Noemie getting drivers licenses and visiting colleges, Tovi learning Latin, and Gigi getting into one scrape after another. We thought that South Florida was going to be our final post. We prepared for Danny to leave his job and set our minds on the prospect that my job at our church was to last far into the misty future. 

But God thought differently. 

As we reached the end of our extended tour, we recognized that our family had served its purpose during this time in Florida and that it was time to start saying our goodbyes.

Goodbye to the Classical Conversations families where we have attended and served and ministered God’s grace in various forms including wisdom, hospitality, and my favorite—sentence diagramming. Goodbye to my precious class of 10th graders who every day were learning and proving themselves to be the salt of the Earth, the light of the world, children of God, who are a part of the true vine. 

Goodbye to my team of dedicated teachers, counselors, and mentors, carefully chosen by the Lord to help me meet the needs of the children of our church family-- a family we have loved and served on and off for over 13 years.

Goodbye to my sweet piano students, the private school library that I curated and maintained, and the bum sailing camp in Hutchinson Island that ditched us at the last moment. 

Goodbye to our marijuana chain-smoking neighbor who generously odorized our apartment throughout the day; goodbye to the racing motorcyclists whose screaming engines seized our hearts with terror as they tore down Hiatus at 2 am  every morning. We wish you a better life than you seem to wish for yourself. 

And now we are here, looking out over the balcony of what is to be our home for the next three years. 

Helloooo Israel! Danny actually had moved 6 weeks before us so he could get the lay of the land. He learned how to find food, he bought us a car, he learned to navigate the neighborhood on foot, and he drew the housing committee’s attention to our new house’s air vents generously coated in mold. And the termites under the loose tiles. Sigh. 

But yesterday was the big day for the rest of us. We flew twelve hours non-stop from Atlanta to Tel-Aviv. I watched bits and pieces of a dozen movies besides a Gilmore Girls marathon. I listened to a chapter of a tediously narrated Dorothy Sayers mystery. And still the time seemed to drag on and on. Gigi threw up, on and off, for the last hour or two of the flight and through the airport exiting process. (She can walk and puke so effortlessly, it is really a wonder.) Our hard cello case arrived crushed as if the luggage trolley itself had dropped from the sky and landed on it, but miraculously, the cello inside appeared unharmed. 

Our van driver took us and our baggage train to our assigned house which had just finished being cleared from the mold remediation and repairs that had been completed while Danny was in Florida picking us up. Consequently, the house was extremely dusty (you could taste the grit in the air) and we spent an hour chasing out a cat that was waiting for us in our living room on arrival. (He continues to haunt us. The kids named him Caligula.) We chose to go to temporary apartment accommodations to sleep and regroup. There was too much cleaning  to be done on the little sleep I had gotten between my manic airplane-movie watching bursts, and the cat fiasco cost us our broom. Hopefully tomorrow we will begin the work of making our house our home. 

Here's your Hebrew word of the day:

להתראות

I've been trying to say it for weeks! Roughly 'lehit rha-ot,' it means "See you later!"