What's new?
Well, as usual I have decided that my life here isn't confusing enough and that I should agree to go back to school for a special certification course for nursing. Why, you may ask? Well, because I am unable to say no to anything basically. (Except last week my kids sent me pictures of puppies and said we should get another one. That was a hard no!)
Anyway, the course began a few weeks ago. I won't say it's not hard but it is more manageable than I had imagined. I'm only a few weeks into it so we shall see what happens in a few weeks.
Obviously funny things have already happened in the class.
I sit in the first row so that I won't be distracted and can catch as much Hebrew as possible. Which basically means I stare at the lecturers. Like seriously stare. Hopefully they don't think I'm just weird 😂
One lecture (at least) also isn't a native Israeli. But has been here probably 20+ years. He is a doctor, lectures totally in Hebrew but the randomly stops to check his grammar. Like hmmm should this word be masculine or feminine. And all I am thinking is oh crap, if he is still unsure, I have zero chance.
Since I've started this blog, another few weeks have flown by. I passed my first exam in the class, I feel less scared during lectures, and I even ask questions occasionally when I'm not busy staring. However, the WhatsApp train of messages that goes on still hurts my brain. I can't keep up without a lot of effort.
Vacation:
Making aliyah (okay fine and having older kids, but mostly making aliyah) has been amazing for my vacationing life!! Part of it is that the food is kosher so I can travel anywhere within Israel that I want easily. Also, we aren't paying Jewish day school tuition. Also, the hubby isn't using the majority of his (always generous) vacation days, in order to take off for the Jewish holidays. Here those are just days off. I mean, not for me because I'm a nurse but for most people.
We had been planning to go away for a few days of Pesach (Passover) and I have reservations at a field school up north. But with my job I won't know if I have the days off until a week or two before, because I can't take official vacation during any holidays but I can work three days in a row in order to have a few days off. If the stars align as they did last year, I could be off but there is no way to tell now.
Well, two weeks or so ago, we got our new schedule (we receive two weeks at a time) and I saw that I was off from Thursday at 3pm all the way through the end of shabbat. So I asked off for Sunday in the following schedule and booked a last minute family trip to Eilat.
If you know me, you know that I am a planner and this was out of character.
If you're not familiar with Eilat, picture Ocean City, NJ but mainly kosher food. And even more hotels. And fancier hotels. Also you can see three countries from Eilat, so sort of the same...
I won't bore you with the details. But I will say. If you want a fabulous quick family vacation with four teenagers (may you all be so blessed) I can't recommend Eilat and my hotel enough. We chose an all inclusive hotel because I like to know my costs up front. And with four teens, food costs can get a bit insane. We basically had four days of family fun. Board games, meals, walking on the boardwalk, visiting the Coral Beach, meals, cocktails (just me), ice skating, board games, and just general fun. Oh, also the hotel room had a rain shower. Huge highlight! We are easy to please.
A few highlights/discoveries:
One of my daughters apparently loves watching National Geographic on television. We don't have TV at home per se (just Netflix) but apparently she loves it. And she likes weird stuff. I watched several hours with her about mysterious plane crashes, wars, drug smuggling, etc... I had no clue she was so ummm interesting...
Did I mention the hotel was all inclusive? This includes wine beer and cocktails in addition to juices and soft drinks. Well, the dining room has two beer taps which are conveniently places near the soft drinks.
So one of my sons (the younger in case you're curious) wanted some juice with breakfast but instead took beer. He came to the table and handed it to me. Then a man looks over at him and says, "so, do you always drink beer with your breakfast?" Haha!! You can bet we didn't let that joke go for the whole vacation.
I learned that my other daughter would 💯 want to go on some scary boardwalk rides. I nixed that because they freak me out. I also learned that if I drink two cocktails before playing board games with her, it does not increase my chances of winning. She almost always wins.
And that leaves me only with my eldest. As you know he is very tall, especially compared to me. When we checked into the hotel, they give you bracelets for the all inclusive. One color for adults and another for kids. The man at reception wanted to give him adult bracelet. I said umm he is 17 he is just tall. He looked super skeptical.
Then as we left Eilat and were going through security at the airport, the security guy is asking me who everyone is. Then asks, are all of these your children (while staring at the big one). I said, yeah, he is just tall, but he is still my baby! Of course I followed that up by pinching his cheek. My kid, not the cute security guy.
All in all, as close to a perfect family vacation as we have ever had. Relaxing, bonding, eating. I think everyone was happy about it except maybe my personal trainer. Maybe I'll just bring him next time.
One last thought:
I feel like the my absorption into Israeli society is evolving in a positive direction. We had a staff meeting this week and not only did I understand almost everything, but I even jumped into the fray to ask questions and give my opinion. I mean okay, my opinion was fairly quiet but a year ago I would never ever had said a word at a staff meeting.
Okay, I'll end this blog before I get busy again. I'll leave you with the following thoughts.
#1 I love my name
#2 originally it was a boy's name
#3 now it's popular for girls
#4 anyone my age with my name is a boy
#5 I can't say a proper 'reish'
#6 this leads to frustration
#7 it also leads to funny coffee names
#8 most of the coffee guys are actually Arab
#9 so I can't blame them really because the struggle is real!!
#10 but coffee is good and the staff is nice
#11 signing off, Arielle, Aryeh and Areel
