Season 2

Well, here we are.  Season two of this great Israeli adventure.
The summer has past. School has started again.  
We are over the one year mark, and we now have less than a year to go.
I just can't believe it.



We traveled home to NC unexpectedly in August.  The Olmsted program strongly discourages any scholars or their families to return to the US during their assignment abroad, so we had hunkered down for the full two years, putting any idea of returning to the states out of our minds.  The policy makes sense, but when Stewart's grandfather died, we knew we needed to be with family for the funeral, and this was considered an allowable circumstance by the foundation to return home.  Stewart was able to go home for one week, while the kids and I stayed on for a couple extra.  The circumstances weren't pleasant, but we still had a wonderful time seeing family and friends.  It did the soul good.  It was also nice to be on US soil again.  Familiar signs.  Familiar products.  Clean public bathrooms.  General courtesies and politeness. Wide open roads.  Wide open spaces.  Trees. Green.  Rain.  Thunderstorms.  Lightning bugs.  Mexican food.  Bar-b-que.  Chick-Fil-A.  Target.
We relished in all of it.

And yet, somehow, despite it all - home didn't feel entirely like home.  Family was there. Familiarity was there.  But something about American culture in general felt a little....well, foreign.  Let me try to explain.  I was expecting feelings of euphoria to overcome me as our plane touched down in Greensboro.  I was expecting to feel particularly nostalgic and emotional being back in the states.  You know, weeping over plush toilet paper and such.  Instead, it just felt normal.  It felt like it always felt.  And then there were the things that now felt foreign - like how Americans eat.... how we used to eat.  How we drive everywhere.  How there is just so much to buy everywhere.  Please don't misunderstand me. I am incredibly proud to be an American, and I wouldn't trade the gift of those three weeks home for anything.  It was such a blessing to all of us, and the kids especially had their little hearts restored to overflowing with doting grandparents, cousins, aunts/ uncles and friends.  However, I think the experience of going home just allowed me to see that the experience of living abroad has changed me.  For better or worse, who knows.

On the flip side, concluding our trip home, as the plane landed at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, cheers and applause broke out around the cabin.  Without any warning a feeling of discontentment and frustration rose up in me.  I could have shot poison darts with my glares. I'm sure of it.  I looked around and thought, "What are you people clapping for? This place sucks."  (Just keepin' it real.)  I gathered my kids, and we were in it again.  The pushing crowds.  The heat.  The angry rants between strangers.  The loud Hebrew going a million miles a minute.  The lack of any ability to form a line or accomplish order.  Dirty bathrooms.  Busy streets. Aggressive drivers. Drought. Sweat.

For three days all I could notice were the things about Israel that I don't prefer (to put it mildly).  All I felt was dread.  Dreading the last nine or so months here.  Dreading the start of school for the kids.  Dreading attempting my terrible Hebrew only to be corrected EVERY SINGLE TIME. Dreading grocery shopping and meal preparation.  Dreading the heat.  Dreading the holidays.  Dreading the season that last year brought a fresh onslaught of panic attacks, something I had never experienced in my 34 years prior.

I think a major contributing factor to my post-states slump was the fact that two dear friends, one being my best friend here, moved away over the summer.  My 'go-to' people were gone.  That made returning particularly depressing.

But, like it or not, we were back. On the first day of school for the kids, we stepped out of our apartment building, and we were immediately confronted with a scene that sums up why I will never fit in here.  There in front of us at 7:45 AM was a Nuevo Riche (particular to our neighborhood, not all of Israel) Israeli mom in her tight minidress, stiletto platform heels, huge gold rimmed sunglasses, hair and make up set, cigarette in one hand, cell phone in the other, yelling at her trailing kids to "Hurry up! Come on already!"  Stewart and I just looked at each other and laughed.  There I was- no make up, pony tail, dressed in a t-shirt, knee length shorts and flip flops.
The American.

Thankfully, humor does wonders to heal and smooth things over.  The fog began to lift.  The kids started school with much more grace and ease than last year.  They both like their teachers and their schools.  They don't have the language barrier they did last year, and they already have friends they know from last year.  We see familiar faces everywhere we go now; it is not the sea of random Israelis that is was last year.  The pressures Stewart felt last year to succeed have abated.  He's doing great and almost through his Master's degree.  The pressure on the kids to assimilate are gone.  They know the language well enough.  They're still American.  End of story.  The pressures I felt to make sure everyone was OK are easing off as well.

I guess to sum it up - after traveling home and then returning to Israel I felt a bit homeless... a bit nomadic. I get feeling foreign in Israel, but why did I feel tinges of discontentment back in the states? Honestly, I don't entirely know.  Maybe it's that our experiences here don't translate.  There is no room for them there.  There is no voice for them back home.  Through no fault of anyone, there is just no way for anyone to understand them unless they walked alongside us through them.  So, all the things we've observed and lived and endured and enjoyed and come to understand fall strangely silent outside of Israel. Except among each other.  That is one of the most beautiful things about this Olmsted program.  Our family- Stewart, the kids, & I have only grown closer.  Stronger.  Through all of it, we've had each other.  We know these moments, these years are rare.

So, now one + week later, I have taken off my 'woe is me/ glass half empty' glasses.  I'm not replacing them with rose-colored ones or extra large gold-rimmed ones either.  Just ones that fit.  I am still a foreigner here.  I always will be.  There is no sense in fighting it.  I don't have to like or hate the things that are different.  I just have to accept them for what they are and move on.  It's time to focus on relationships and making the most of the time that is left.  It will all slip away before we know it, and season 2 will come to an end.

I think it's going to be good.
Shalom y'all,
E

Rockets (Aug 2012)

I recently took a trip with the Israeli Defense College to the South near Gaza, where we were educated on some of the different dynamics of this particular region of Israel.

                                         

We were briefed just outside the Gaza Strip. Israelis have a troubled history with this particular piece of land that dates back about 3,000 years. Biblically, it is where where Samson was killed (Judges 16:30). Today, it is isolated from Israel proper and ruled by the Islamic group Hamas. They were elected to power in 2007 and they seek to establish an Islamic Palestinian state. They are the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

The Gaza Strip is pictured above. It is the Western most point in Israel (across from the Dead Sea). Gaza's actual population is unknown. Depending on the sources, it's somewhere between 1.4 - 2.3 million people. Liberals say more, Israeli supporters say less. Since the numbers are so politically charged, no one has done an actual census there since the late 60s.

Gaza shares a small border with Egypt to the Sinai desert. There are smuggling tunnels from Gaza to Egypt big enough to drive trucks through. Despite an active black market in goods and products, Gaza's primary export is rockets.

Qassam Rockets

This is a small portion of the thousands of rockets that have been fired into the town of Sderot since '01. Many of them are smuggled into Gaza in pieces. None are guided. Some have even been made from streetlight posts that were chopped up and made into projectile weapons. Not surprisingly, Gaza is dark at night.

Because different groups claim responsibility for the attacks, Qassam rockets are usually found with the name of the Jihadi militia who fired them--sometimes written in Hebrew.

Here we viewing Sderot, situated on the NE corner of the Gaza strip. This town faces unique security challenges due to it's location just outside of Gaza.

This is a new school built in Sderot. Notice how the windows are shielded from the sky. What's wrong in this picture?

Below is one of 4 bomb shelters on the school grounds (reinforced concrete always looks better when  it's painted happy sky colors, right?)

The main building took a direct hit last year. Fortunately, school was not in session and no children were harmed. 

  

In fact, the windows did not even break. The school was designed to withstand exactly such a blast. Even the glass is bullet-proof and resisted the bomb's shrapnel.

Over 8,500 rockets have been launched at Israeli towns in the south since 2001. While most of them land 'in open fields', some of them have caused damage and loss of life.

                           

Iron Dome

This is a nifty new Israeli defense system that can track and intercept Quassam rockets in midair. It's so effective that the US has agreed to fund the next purchase w/ $205 million dollars of military aid. The system works well for northern cities, where there is adequate time to lock on and destroy targets. Residents of Sderot, however, only get 15 seconds between the alert and impact.

Although more advanced missiles can almost reach Tel Aviv, that has yet to occur. In general, the big-city-dwellers like us rarely think of these things, but residents closer to Gaza live with this threat looming constantly. Each house in Sderot has a fully-functional safe room, built by the government since 2001, and residents must regularly run to take cover there. Although casualties have been relatively few (22 in roughly 11 years), there seems to be no end in sight for the hostilities. 

This trip was an eye-opening experience for me. I was reminded of the fragility of the situation here in Israel, and how easily I had succumb to the Tel Aviv 'bubble' mentality. I had grown nonchalant about serious problems that real people are facing in this country, Arab and Israeli alike. Not only are some Israeli's living under threat of random rocket attacks every day, there are Palestinians angry enough to saw down street-lamps and shoot them at their neighbors.  

In short...it's a total mess. 

Shalom Y'all,

Stew

SKYPE & Plays in the Park

Anyone who has lived overseas understands the challenges in trying to stay connected to friends and family. Distance can be tough on relationships, so it's important to keep in touch. Sometimes you may not be able to be there in person, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can be there. 

 Here I am 'attending' one of my best friends' wedding. He and his bride were married in a small ceremony in Nashville, while we watched from Tel Aviv via SKYPE. This would be impossible just a few years ago, but we saw it live. Pretty cool.

Will decided to call in to wish them happy nuptials, too. Then he had his own little party to attend...

Will finished his year of Gan with a class picnic down at Park HaYarkon (this is the Central Park of Tel Aviv). The kids sang songs, danced, and even got to see a free theatrical performance put on by some of the parents. Yes, of course I got roped into this one, but it was good fun. The play was based on the book, "Where's My Mommy?" which in Hebrew is "The Monkey has a Problem"

 I had a minor role in the play as the spider. Fortunately, the speaking parts (all were in Hebrew) were minimal. Whatever I lack in pronunciation, I tried to make up for in flare...

Will borrowed my last pair of eyes.

 It think that this picture can easily put to rest any notion of using the my name with the word 'scholar' in the same sentence.

 After the show, all the kids got pillows with their class pictures...very cool. Will sleeps with his.

And finally, on a more personal note, we had to say farewell to a dear friend of ours, Tina. After 12 years in Israel she has moved Westward to pursue new and better work opportunities. She has been a great friend to three different Olmsted families while living here in Tel Aviv. We'll miss you, Tina!

מזל טוב ובצלחה (good luck & success)

Shalom Y'all, Stew

PS- Congrats to Justin & April...we hope to see you two here in TA sometime soon;)