First Week in Israel

Wow...it has been a crazy week!  I haven't had time to blog so I'm going to do a quick rundown of each of the first 7 days that we have been here

Day 1

The flight from LA was long, but the kids were amazing on the  the flight.  Yaakov went a little crazy after about 9 hours on the flight and he finally fell asleep on the floor of the plane in front of his seat.  The food on the flight was good.  The kids got some yummy chicken and noodles and the adults got chicken and rice. For breakfast, everyone got eggs and a cinnamon roll.

We arrived at Ben Gurion on Thursday, August 2 at about 1:30 in the afternoon. We were taken to a special area to be processed.  There were about 40 people on our flight and only two other families.  Happily, there was a kids play area, which made my kids really happy. 

They also had coffee and icees and snacks.  The kids even got some huge bags of candy!

The processing took about 3 hours.  Amazingly, Daniel received his teudah zehut (his identity card) even though they said he would have to go to the misrad hapanim for that.  Aryeh also got his TZ since he turned 16 a few days before the flight.  Yay!

After the processing was complete we were taken back to the main terminal where we retrieved our luggage...so many bags. 
They did manage to get us all into a van and all the bags into the van. I was amazed. 

They got us to Efrat at about 6:30.  And we were so happy to see our friends Hyiam and Carolyn Rieffman.  They made aliyah a week before we did.  They met us at our house with pizza(!), toilet paper (!!!) and all the other little things you don't think about when you first arrive to a house. They were true life savers!

The night we arrived, Jolie had arranged for us to have dinner with a neighbor, which was so amazing. We went to dinner at Kiki's house.  She and her husband moved here about 6 months ago from Crown Heights and are trying to bring some Chabad energy into Efrat. 
They were so warm and welcoming.  Such a nice first place to stop. They also let us borrow a converter so we could blow up air mattresses and go to sleep.  They also let us borrow a bed!

We all slept pretty well that first night, but Daniel and I were both up at around 4AM.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2

Friday morning was the first day we woke up in Israel.  We were super lucky that some neighbors had dropped off some cookies and our landlord sent us a fruit platter.  That kept us from being too hungry first thing in the morning.  After we ate and tried to organize a little, we went over to Jolie's house. She is so kind and let us use her refrigerator and her washing machine (amazing) and let us borrow her car (even more amazing!).  Friday at about 11 we went into Jerusalem.  The kids had never been to the kotel, so we really wanted to visit there as soon as possible.

We got on the bus from Efrat to Jerusalem.

Then we got on the 1 (those of you who have been to Jerusalem know what I am talking about).  It was a mad house.  After the first stop, someone got on the bus to check that everyone paid!  It was really dramatic.  I thought he was going to kick people off the bus!  Daniel had paid for all of us, so we didn't have Rav Kav cards to show the guy.  Plus, the driver had taken Daniel's Rav Kav (bus pass).  Well the guy made Daniel go talk to the driver and they worked it all out.

Going to Jerusalem on a Friday is insane!  Everything was so busy, riding the bus through Geula was an exciting experience.  Once we got to the kotel and were about to go through security, who should we bump into but the Reiffmans again!  Amazing.  You are always runing into people you know at the kotel.

We all davened there a little then we walked back toward the center of town to get the bus home.  We had some delicious bourekas.  It was SOOOO hot!  We were all dying by the time we got onto the bus.  Of course, Waze gave us some iffy directions, so we ended up on the slow bus through Efrat, but we did eventually get back home.

Once we got home, we had to rush to shower and change for Shabbos.  Of course. we didn't have any hot water yet (or AC but the hot water was the more pressing problem).  The Dud Shemesh (solar hot water heater) wasn't hooked up yet and we didn't know how to work the regular hot water.  Cold showers it was.  But since it was basically a million degrees, it wasn't such a bad thing.

We spent shabbat in Yad Binayamin with some friends from LA who made aliyah about a decade ago. They have 6 kids, a beautiful house, and made our first shabbat in Israel so special.  Walking into the house with air conditioning was amazing.  Sleeping in a real bed was fantastic, and they have kids just the right age for most of my kids.  Aryeh and Sima really made some friends, which was great.  Aryeh even got to meet a boy who will be at his school this  year.

Friday night dinner was delicious.  They had chicken soup just like Mommy and challah just like mommy and soup nuts and all the food that Binyamin likes!  Finally he actually ate!  It was amazing. All the kids stayed up super late playing with their new friends and Daniel and I got a good night's sleep.

This is getting really long...I'll continue with day 3 in the next post.