Spoiled!

I'll admit it. I'm spoiled. I'm spoiled by the shorter holidays here. How we get more days where we can do more things. In one year, I've basically forgotten how to prepare for a three day holiday. What I mean by that is, I didn't plan any of my meals. Usually I make a nice list of each meal and what I am cooking and then check it off as I cook. This time, I basically bought food. Then I started cooking the food. Then I froze the food. Then I forgot what I had already cooked so I cooked some more food. And then I served food. So it was very unorganized for (ahem) a person who likes things to be organized.  But everyone ate and hopefully no one was hungry. As an added bonus, I still have cooked food in my freezer that I can use for the next set of holidays. Or you know, for when my kids want dinner (every single night!)

News flash: I finally snagged a Rosh Hashana chocolate at Aroma. Thank goodness. I was worried I wouldnt get a picture for my blog!

Now, I know that I promised that in my next blog, I would discuss similarities and differences between my life here in Israel and my former life in New Jersey.

Obviously, holidays are different.
Time in Shul: (when I'm awake enough to go)
Rosh Hashana
Israel 8am-12:10pm
NJ 7:45am-1:00pm (I don't remember exactly) Definitely a fan of the faster pace.

Regular Shabbat :
Israel 8:30-10:20
NJ: 8:45-11:45

Holidays Tunes :
Lots of new tunes, but many are the same. The main difference I felt, was the amount of singing. Here, I feel like the women are very into joining in and singing. It might be because my seat was the absolute front row of the shul (if you want to know anything about the front wall, I'm your gal) But considering how crowded our shul was, I was just happy to get seats. Also, you aren't distracted by anything, except the paint pattern on the wall. If you want to discuss the paint pattern, I'm still your gal.

Food Shopping
In NJ, I did a lot of grocery delivery. It started when I was working close to full time, but had free time at my desk. So I would grocery shop at work. Shhhhh. Then of course, I would occasionally go to the market, and I shopped at the small kosher market in my town for all of my meat. It was pretty laid back, and while it was more crowded before a holiday, it was never crazy.

In Israel, I have learned from my mistakes. Those being that last year I went to actual supermarkets before the holidays. The veteran olim called me on my rookie move. This year, I am rocking the grocery delivery. What that means is that the delivery guy has been here three times in the past week. I should probably invite him for sukkot or something.  Because, since I didn't make a menu, I kept not having things. Also, I went on a baking rampage and went though like 6kilos of flour and 3 kilos of sugar.

Speaking of flour and sugar, did you know that you need to put them in the freezer here? I heard way too many horror stories about pantry moths and such to take any chances. So I get flour, then I need to cram it into my freezer. Reminder that my freezer is smaller than in the USA and I have one instead of two. Then, before using it, I have to sift it. Then I keep it in airtight containers. And while this all seems like a huge pain, I was rewarded last week with finding a super gross (luckily dead) bug in my flour, while sifting. Vindication!

Cost of living :
This is something that people always ask me about. It's hard to compare, but we can try. In America, we owned a home. Also, we are the worst real estate investors ever. We never made money on either of our homes. In fact, when we sold our first home, we had to pay the new owners at the closing. That's how bad we are.  "Hi, so glad that you're buying our house. Please enjoy it. Also, we are giving you this bank check, cause, you know, we just feel generous." Or at least unlucky.

Here, we are renting. First  we wanted to see if we would like this city and neighborhood. Second, we aren't millionaires. If you think housing in NJ is expensive, come to Central Israel! And third, we are pretty happy not to have to deal with major home repairs while still learning the language and such. Bonus, we ended up on this awesome street.

I know that discussing actual money makes people uncomfortable. But I'm Israeli now and they have zero issue discussing money. I mean, when you leave a tip, if you want to put it on your credit card, the waiter says, "How much?" At first that made me uncomfortable, but now it seems normal.

Housing :
We pay about $1000 less per month to rent that we paid for our mortgage. Our place is smaller, but the location is fabulous.

Groceries :
I can't even tell you how many times people have told me that food is so much more expensive here than in the USA. I honestly don't know what those people are eating. Perhaps if you try to keep buying all of your American brands, you'll have an issue. But I did the calculations and we spend almost exactly the same amount, which is approximately $1500/month on food. That includes things like toiletries that I buy at the supermarket and paper goods and meat, etc... I could definitely spend less, but I certainly don't spend more than I did in my former life.  My main American products that I continue to buy: starkist tuna, cereal,  only when on sale, and occasionally shampoo. We use the Israeli brands as well, but if multi grain cheerios go on sale, I probably will own five boxes.

Transportation :
This is a biggie. Public transportation was fairly reasonable both in NJ and here. In NJ it cost my hubby about $250/month to take the bus and subway from NJ to NYC. Here, to take buses and trains to work, it costs about $80. So yeah, pretty sweet deal.

However, owning a car in Israel is like owning two cars in the USA. We paid more for our three year old used "huge for Israel but small for our family" car here, than I've ever paid for a brand new minivan in the USA. But such is life. So we own one car, something we lived with for many years in the USA before switching to two cars, and we are quite happy with one.  Also, if you know me, you know that I hate parking here. I can't even imagine parking a minivan.

Tuition:
Well, you've all heard me talk about this. I basically can't shut up about it. Here, my kids attend public religious schools.  In America, they attended private religious schools. Until I homeschooled them, but that's a whole other blog.

NJ: elementary ~$15,000/kid/year
Israel: elementary ~$250/kid /year

NJ high school ~$27,000/kid/year
Israel: high school ~$1300/kid/year

but you know, I get some kind of discount I think because I have three kids in the same high school. Or maybe I don't get a discount. Maybe it just feels that way because it's so cheap!!! Also, we do have to pay for books. In some schools you rent and in some you buy. Still a small fraction.

Summary
I'd like to reiterate, that as much I complained about tuition while in the USA, it was absolutely not the reason we made aliyah. We made aliyah for ideological and social reasons. We want our kids to grow up here, and experience life in Israel. That's the short story. But the tuition is an amazing fringe benefit.

Yes. Israelis earn less money than Americans. But we have some fabulous benefits as well. Don't let the money scare you. Come with a job (a job in Israel is preferable) but come.

A Few Funnies
Well, this is getting long. I'll end it with a few funnies.

When your kids have school uniforms, which consist of t-shirts that get stamped with their school logo, they often come out in the morning dressed the same.  Then they pose for pictures.

I attended another mother daughter learning event at my girls' school. This time, I'm glad to have understood more of the speeches. And at least I was prepared for the part of the event where 100 girls rush out and start dancing.

The other day, I looked over at my little guy and thought, wow, this is quite the little Israeli you've turned into. Scout uniform and milk in a bag.

And then I received a flyer about the scout sukkot trip. And who made it into one of the pictures? My eldest, except he is wearing his USA boy scout uniform. Haha! (bottom right to find Waldo)