Anne's Blog - Come Closer

The Bus, The Zoo, & McDonald's

I have been wanting to figure out how to get around town on the bus since we got here, but honestly I was a little bit nervous about it.  Danni and I have explored our neighborhood as much as we can by walking, and that is great - we have found grocery stores, a mall, restaurants, coffee shops, and a park within walking distance.  But we were feeling a little bit cooped up, and we want to be able to get to things in other parts of town.  So we decided that today, we were going to take the bus to the downtown area.  It doesn't sound like too big of a challenge, right?  Except that the driver may not speak English, the stops may only be marked in Hebrew, I am still learning the value of the coins to count the fare . . .

I researched the bus routes on their website, counted out our 6.6 shekels each (about $2), and we walked a block to the bus stop and waited for bus 23.  It comes every 15 minutes and will get us downtown in 8 minutes.  We figured it out, rode the bus to the stop near the Carmelit subway, and walked to the park with the Haifa zoo.

It was great!  They had a Bengal (white) tiger, lions, brown bears, hyenas, monkeys, flamingos, parrots, and a huge exhibit with chickens and a turkey.  There were peacocks roaming free everywhere, and Danni especially liked the camels:

We had a great time, and then went to the McDonald's across the street from the zoo.  Danni had been wanting soft-serve ice cream, so we stopped for a treat and then rode the bus back home.  I feel like we can get around on our own now, and I am more confident that we can explore the city on the bus, without getting lost.

Election Day

Today was election day in Israel, and it is like a holiday - most people get the day off work, but stores and restaurants are open.  Public transportation was free so that everyone could get to their voting place.  We rode the Carmelit - the underground subway that goes down Mount Carmel:

to the Shuk - the fresh market area.  There were stands with farm fresh eggs, whole fish on ice, and fruits and veggies.  We bought fresh bananas, apples, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn on the cob, the biggest pomegranate I have ever seen, and almonds that were roasted there at the market.  I have never tasted such fresh almonds!

The Carmelit route is 1 mile from top to bottom and takes only 7 minutes, with 6 stops along the way.  The difference in altitude between the top and bottom is 900 feet!  So it is a quick, steep ride and an efficient way to get around town.

Watch for news of the election!  There are something like 30 political parties here - can you imagine if we had to deal with the phone calls and ads of 30 political parties at election time?

We are getting settled in, and figuring out how to do more of the everyday things here, like where we take our recycling and what items can be recycled, where our local post office is located, and how to get around town. We finished the day by walking up to a gelato shop about 2 blocks from our apartment.  It was delicious! 

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat, or Sabbath, begins at sundown on Friday and continues throught sundown on Saturday.  And everything here closes down!  The Israeli workweek is Sunday - Thursday, and stores, restaurants, everything closes Friday afternoons about 3:00.  It really is a day of rest.  And so this is our first experience with Shabbat.  A friend explained to us that on Shabbat, the pace of life changes, and gifts are given.  She sent us these:

and a delicious chocolate dessert. 

Our family would benefit from learning to observe Shabbat - to take a full day to slow down, spend time together, and to practice the kind of hospitality that we have received on our first Shabbat here.  The greeting here during Shabbat is Shabbat Shalom - I wish you a peaceful sabbath. 

Our Apartment

When I heard that I would be living in a 2-bedroom apartment in the middle east, this is not what I had imagined:

That is my living room and dining room.  And this is my kitchen:

The apartment is clean and modern and bright!  I have a washer and dryer, and we even have some luxuries that we don't have at home, like a convection oven, a towel warmer in Dannica's bathroom and a "rainfall" showerhead in our bath.  The owners remodeled 2 years ago and I love the contemporary fixtures and artwork! 

There are some differences, though, that I need to adjust to.  The hot water heater is solar, and we have to manually turn it on or set a timer if we want hot water when the sun is not heating it.  There are no vents in the bathroom, so we have to leave a window open in the shower when we use it.  There is a heating and A/C unit in every room, so we only heat the rooms we are using.  Everything is in metric, so I am setting the oven and thermostat in Celsius. 

 Overall I love it, and now that we are out of the hotel and into an apartment, it feels more like we live here and less like a vacation. I nearly have our suitcases unpacked, and the items we shipped won't arrive for a couple of weeks yet.  This weekend we will work on making the apartment feel more like our home. 

When I saw this giant coffee cup next to a street sign, I knew I could live here :)
We did a walk-through of our apartment today, and are hoping to move in tomorrow. Our relocation consultant also took me to the grocery store and gave me some hints on shopping, since most of the food packages are only written in Hebrew. I'm sure I will still have some mystery purchases!

Welcome to my new blog! A little over a month ago, my husband Don and I found out that we are moving to Haifa, Israel for 6 months for his job. We have always wanted to have the opportunity to live in another culture, and this is a great opportunity for us and for our 15-year-old daughter, Dannica. I never even thought about living in Israel! But if I could have chosen a place, it would be near the ocean and mountains, and have a lot of historical sites to visit. Haifa is right on the Mediterranean, on Mount Carmel, and I can't think of anyplace that has more historical sites than Israel! So it is even better than anything I could have planned for us.

I chose the name Come Closer for my blog for several reasons. I feel that this is an opportunity for me to grow closer in my faith, to experience so many places that I have read about in the Bible. Our family will Come Closer as we adjust from living in a 4-bedroom house to a 2-bedroom apartment. And this blog is a way for me to stay in touch with friends and family at home. So I invite you to follow my blog if you are interested, to Come Closer and share our experiences living abroad.

Right now we are in the airport in New York, waiting to board our flight to Tel Aviv. This last month has been such a whirlwind! I have arranged a leave of absence from my job, visited family in Kansas, visited Haifa and found an apartment, found temporary homes for our 2 dogs, cat and parakeet, celebrated Christmas, found Dannica an online school for next semester, visited my dad in the hospital, and packed for our stay. Don is an engineer, so the first thing he did was to create the "Relocation Spreadsheet." He spread those tasks across a calendar, and every day we checked off as many as we could. As much as I tease him about his spreadsheets, it really was a helpful tool :)

When I post next time, I will officially be an expat, an American living abroad in the Middle East. It hasn't quite sunk in yet. In this blog I hope to share a wide range of our experiences - the sites we see, the differences in culture, the frustrations with living in a country where we don't speak the language (we are learning Hebrew). Dannica will be blogging also, and so if you are interested, you can read what this is like from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl. I'll post a link when her blog is up and running.

We'll be boarding soon for our 10 and a half hour flight. Shalom!