Israel Update #1: Snapshots of Our First Week

I'm sitting at the Gepperts' dining room table exhausted from walking. It's been a while since I've put groceries in a backpack. I liked it because I didn't have to use any plastic grocery bags and the frozen peas felt good against my back. The grocery store is only across the street from our friends' fourth floor apartment (lots of stairs). We had to make sure to buy some food before all the stores close for Shabbat.

It's already hot here... and sunny (glad I got new sunglasses. I actually like them this time). It's a nice 72F outside (22C). I'm still jet-lagging, so I'm more tired than usual.

On the train with our new shades, ready to start the day

We hit the ground running... which means we jumped on the apartment search right away. So today is the first evening I've just been able to sit and process. Our friends who I mentioned earlier, Daniel and Jalene Geppert, have been gracious enough to provide a place for us to stay until we find an apartment. I can't express how wonderful it is to have a place to relax, not to mention friends to play board games with. They have been a joy to be around, and are SO generous and hospitable. Also, their baby girl, Ella, is just so cute! I already love her.

Here is a picture of the view from the Gepperts' living room window

Being here makes me miss Matt and Daniela a LOT.

We have done a lot of walking, looking for apartments (looked at four so far), and just seeing the landscape and architecture does something to me: it makes me feel excitement. I'm curious about the people. There is so much variety of skin color and dress. The first time I've ever had to search for an apartment is here in Israel, which is wonderful. I've always dreamed of traveling the world in some sort of anthropological capacity. Dustin is just as excited as I am... maybe even more enthusiastic because he doesn't suffer jet lag half as badly. ha. He's the best.

We went downtown to try to get some things done, like set up a bank account and get new phone numbers and get a train card. When we stepped off the train, it was around 2:30pm and our first priority was food. We stopped and ate the most delicious falafel pitas for 10 shekels each. That is the equivalent of $2.70 each. And they were filling! It made us happy because we can eat healthy for so cheap here. We walked to the bank happy and full and discovered that they closed at 3pm. It was 3:11. Oops! So we went to the cellphone store and they said we needed an Israeli bank account to get a new sim card. Ohp... so then we went and saw an apartment, which was tiny and ridiculously overpriced (thankfully Jalene came with us to help us look at our first apartment and asked good questions). Then we went to the light rail office to get train cards, and all the machines were down--all of them. Apparently it's hard to get things done here. Ha.

It didn't bother me because I still got to walk around Jerusalem and take in all the sights and sounds...

Here we are on the train home after a long day of not getting things done...
Dustin's face in this pic made me laugh so hard!

I feel silly on the train because the beeping sound makes me chuckle. It reminds me of my dog's squeaky toys, or the squeaky rubber chickens. It's not the exact same tone, but it gets me every time. No one else thinks it's funny. Why would they? But this is what I think of when I'm on the train:

We were waiting at a crosswalk and the old man next to me was humming in Middle Eastern semitones. It was very endearing. Another older man was humming similarly at the train station. I feel like people are a bit more free to express themselves here.

One morning we walked by a man in brown leather jacket carrying a giant automatic weapon. He had sunglasses on, so I couldn't read him. Soldiers off duty are required to carry weapons. This was the first time I felt a bit alarmed by it (I'd seen some guy with one of those massive guns chillin' in the movie theater during our last visit. He wasn't in uniform, and was just walking among us in the crowd). I think it was his unreadable sun-glassed face that concerned me, and the fact that he looked a bit older. There was a kid coming towards me on a bicycle, so I hesitated and moved away from the weapon-wielding character abruptly. It probably looked like I was alarmed by the gun. Oh well...

This is different than when we visited for three months. It's a strange feeling, knowing we aren't going home in a few weeks. And yet, this feels like home too. The people we will be working with are all so welcoming. SO welcoming. The friends we made here two years ago were so excited to see us (as we were them) and gave us hugs that made me feel like family.

We attended a two-day staff retreat and they delivered some of the best and most helpful leadership teachings I've ever heard. I might blog more about this later. It gave clarity to some of the issues I've experienced with others in the past, and gave me confidence in the leadership here. Their high-trust leadership style is what I've been looking for in a team, quite hopelessly, actually. These sessions dispelled some of the fears I had developed from the past years of working in ministry. But I think I am ready to get back to it.
I'm going to join my husband and watch a movie and eat dolmas and pitas and hummus(which all taste so much better here)! As they say here when you're off to enjoy the Shabbat, "Shabbat Shalom!"