Thursday Thirteen #13 - Life in Israel

In honor of Israel's 59th Independence Day, I give you 13 reasons I love living in Israel:

1. The beautiful, green north - flowers, mountains, the Sea of Galilee, gourmet restaurants and little bed and breakfasts everywhere, even snow in the winter. Northern Israel's got it all. (Yes, Israel has deserts too, in the south, but personally I prefer the green of the north.)

2. An amazing collection of national parks - everything from nature hikes to Crusader castles to antiquities.

3. The Gan HaShlosha Hot Springs - beautiful heated springs in a lush, oasis-like setting. Especially lovely during a stolen day off the week when the rest of the hordes are hard at work.

4. Tel Aviv - small enough to be accessible, large enough to be truly international in flavor. With a beach to boot. Outdoor cafes you can enjoy all year round. What more could you ask?

5. Jerusalem - often fraught with tension and a hard city to live in, but there is no doubt that it is one of the most beautiful cities on earth. At sunset it truly is "Jerusalem of Gold".

6. The weather. 8 months of warm sunshine every year - need I say more? Long hot summers where your plans never get rained out. Even in the winter it rarely goes below the mid-50's (mid-teens centigrade). You have to love a country where winter looks like this, or like this.

7. The Mediterranean Sea - I live just 20 minutes away from gorgeous beaches - on the Mediterranean.

8. Palm trees - how did this NY girl end up living surrounded by palm trees? Not to mention banana trees, and pomegranates, and citrus trees, and...

9. The food - good, fresh, inexpensive ingredients are available everywhere, and esoteric imported ingredients are now nearly as easy to obtain. Most restaurants here still cook everything fresh every day. No iceberg lettuce and bottled blue cheese dressing salads here. And the summer drinks - freshly made iced coffee is available at almost every restaurant and cafe in the summertime, and fresh squeezed lemonade is a staple all year round.

10. The diversity. Israel is a country of immigrants, with people from literally every country on the globe, who together make up this wonderful human mosaic that is Israel.

11. A truly incredible variety of things to do with children - this country really revolves around its kids, and it shows.

12. The predominant culture here is my culture. It's the way I say Happy New Year in September, the way no one assumes I'm celebrating Christmas in December (or wants to know why I'm not), and so many other little things.

And last but not least...

13. The way Israelis truly care about each other. We may often act rough and aggressive, and we do love to argue, but when trouble strikes no one pulls together the way we do. Differences are forgotten, at least temporarily, in a rush to help others. During the war last summer, there were so many residents of the center of the country who opened their homes to total strangers fleeing from the bombings in the north that when my family tried to do the same we didn't find any takers.

I could go on and on (must be the spring - life here just feels great right now), but better yet, come on over and see for yourselves.




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Israeli Independence Day - kindergarten style

Yesterday all of the pre-k and kindergarten classes in our town gathered for a (2 block) parade followed by an early celebration of Israeli Independence Day. All the children wore white shirts and white and blue baseball caps and proudly marched waving little Israeli flags.

When they arrived at the main stage, each class arranged itself around a pole with it's name, topped with a cluster of blue and white balloons where they ate the ever-popular chocolate sandwiches and drank grape juice from little packets (both oh so traditional and oh so unhealthy). There were then a few (uniformly boring) speeches by local politicians and educational leaders, and then the children sang and danced to traditional folk dance music. When it was over, they released all of the balloons, which looked very festive (I'm trying hard not to dwell on the environmental ramifications). After that it was ice pops and group pictures on the grass, then back to school for the rest of the morning.

Tomorrow Itai's class is gathering at the local monument to Israel's fallen soldiers to lay flowers and honor their sacrifice.

And as a culturally interesting side note, we first heard of all of these events two days before, via a note home which instructed us to "put the children in white shirts and get them to school by 8:00", and by the way parents can come watch if they like. No permission slips, no big deal made out of anything. I don't mind particularly, in fact it's pretty refreshing. The degree of care and attention paid during the actual event was no less, but the overall stress and paranoia level was much lower. It's one of the things I like most about living here actually.