Our Last Day in Israel

We had one last day to play with. I wanted to do something different enough that we would remember the day. We packed up, had showers, and went to borrow the car. Both Benjamin and Yael were out (Benj had taken his electric bike to the Technion and Yael was rehearsing for an upcoming performance) and Mika was at the zoo with her nanny.  It was a sort of a rainy day, but the rain stopped and started. Mika's nanny was brave to take such a long stroller trip in the rain.

Jon navigated and we went to Akko. When we got there we needed a nap already, so we parked in a lot outside the Old City and slept while it rained. When it seemed like it was raining less, we started to walk along the sea promenade, but then it was raining too much and we turned around. Drove slowly along the road that took us to the back of the Old City but I wasn't that curious (we had been there before and I just wanted an outing, not to get wet) so we kept on going, driving slowly through the regular parts of the town. Got stuck in a traffic jam where there was a school letting out at 1:00, lots of kids in matching purple and black shirts/pants/skirts. Lots of honking horns, for no good reason (Jon says I should stop reacting to the Israeli custom of honking the horn at every possible opportunity).

We found a supermarket parking lot and parked there because that feels safe to me -- I don't understand what the signs say about parking in the towns, I don't understand the stripes on the curbs, and I don't want to deal with police and tickets. We went shopping in this huge store with nothing at all in English, but we understand food shopping. Got some lunch items, some candy for presents, some sweet drinks because Benjamin and Yael don't consume anything fun and sweet. We were like kids in a candy shop, getting gauva/passion fruit juice.

We had a picnic in a park, all by ourselves, because it was sort of a rainy day. No children in sight. The best thing we bought was a delicious beet salad. I saved some for Mika (and she loved it later).

Back at Chez Mika, we hung out with Benjamin and Mika some, then went to have a farewell chat with our Airbnb hosts.  We learned that they have been planning to take down their house (built in the 1930s) and build an 8-story building there in its place. That is ambitious for a retired, globetrotting couple. Benj says this is happening all over Haifa. Our hosts said their neighbors have been objecting to this plan for 7 years but now they have their approvals.  Ugh, I cannot imagine the chaos of having to move out of the house, build an apartment building and move back in again. I told him this was his big chance to make a cohousing community. He said others have suggested something similar. He would be crazy not to, in my view.

Benjamin and Mika drove us to the train station and we were on our own. This time there was no English translation of the announcements about anything, but we muddled through. Got on the right train, got off at the airport, stood in a million lines, showed our passport on seven different occasions, the plane was full again, and we were headed home.

Thirteen hours later, the pilot bounced the plane down through a turbulent landing and we were back in Virginia. We have got to do the work to get Global Entry. It took us almost two hours to get out of the airport. 

So nice to be home. Alissa is getting better. My knee surgery is postponed again while we wait for a two week window of no illness.  My version of Jon's cold was much milder but we need it to be a distant memory before the anesthesia team will allow the surgery to happen. It's all fine.

Up and Out

We only have two days to get Jon to a place where he can get up and walk, pull a suitcase, sit on a plane, so he had to put up with some more nudging and cajoling from the person he is stuck with. Five days in bed can turn a person into a wet noodle. The expression on his face when I tell him he has to do this or that is so reminiscent of his father that it makes me laugh -- when Leon was in his later years and he didn't want to do something he would make that face (eyebrows down on the outside, up in the middle, twisted mouth, kind of humorous and pitiful and leave-me-alone all at the same time).  Too bad for Jon, I can tell that his cough is getting less painful and he is sleeping better. Time to get up.

So we slowly made our way to Benjamin's and watched Mika playing with her nanny (it was a very rainy day, so no trip to the park).  Eventually I suggested we go food shopping since there wasn't much food in either house.  We got instructions from Benjamin -- a little vague but we had some understanding of where we would have to make a U-turn and look for the garage entrance -- and we took Yael's car for our first adventure.  Jon navigated, I drove. It was about a half mile drive, but there are roundabouts and lots of traffic and it was raining and we didn't have precise directions. We found the garage under the mall, parked, took the elevator to a random floor (even though we pushed a button for the Zero floor, it opened up at -1) and found ourself at a supermarket.  Nothing in English but we know how to shop.  Found everything on Benjamin's list, checked out, even figured out how to get our parking ticket validated, and went home triumphant.

Jon rested on the nice couch for a bit and then he and Benjamin went out to the hardware store for adventure #2. Meanwhile back on the East Coast, the CSA was opening up at 7:30 in the morning and I was following the story with Becky, texting. Things started slowly, making both of us nervous that Mailchimp was not working, but gradually the registrations started to come in.

The rest of our day was largely focused on dealing with CSA issues -- when we planned this trip, we knew we wanted to be sitting with our computers on February 1 and not on an airplane, so that is part of the reason we stayed this long. It is best to be available when the CSA opens because questions come pouring in, and this system was unfamiliar to all of us. Becky and Jon and I worked into the night.Things went remarkably well, and we learned a lot along the way, as expected. 

We took a break to go to dinner at Gadi and Hedy's house -- Yael engineered this plan when it seemed like Jon might be able to make an appearance. It would have been really too bad for Jon to see them for only ten minutes out of ten days.  Yael ordered food from a Pan Asian sort of restaurant (sushi, soup, noodles, all delicious) and we went to visit the grandparents while we waited for delivery.  It was a late night for Mika and she heroically tried to stay in good form but there were a few inevitable meltdowns. She gave gracious kisses and hugs on the way out. It was very nice to have another chance to get to know Yael's parents. It is too bad Israel is so far away from Virginia.

Swinging in the Rain

This will be the briefest post ever.

1. Jon continues to wait for his immune system to start helping him out. So far it is not.  The antibiotics don't seem to be doing anything of note. He has moments when he feels like maybe he is getting better, but they are overtaken by coughing.

2. I went to get Mika for a late morning play date. We stopped in to see Jon (and Benjamin who was hanging out here doing work on his computer) and then went on to the playground where we had the entire place to ourselves. Apparently Israelis don't like to get wet. It wasn't raining, but things were wet. On the way home we stopped to watch a cement truck dumping into a pumper thing that pushed the cement all the way up to the top of a building through a hose. Pretty sure Mika didn't understand any of that but it was interesting anyway. 

 

 

3. Went out to lunch with Hedy. She took me on the scenic route down the side of the mountain so we could see out over the coastline, we went to a fancy Mediterranean restaurant right on the beach and had a whole buffet of salads brought to our table.  It was delicious and elegant. There were  windsurfers outside the window bouncing in the waves, wearing wet suits. It was nice to visit, just the two of us. It is very nice to have a girlfriend in Haifa. We did not only talk about our children and our grandchild, we talked about the issue that has been at the top of my mind for the last six months or so -- what's the plan? As is true of almost all of us, there is no clarity yet.

 

4. In the evening, I went over to babysit so B&Y could have a grown-up date. When her parents left, she said goodbye nicely, not feeling the need to make a dramatic farewell. Mika and I buzzed through the nighttime routine without any issues at all (except that she did not like liver, even though she tried it nobly, three times).  She charms me to the core. What will it be like when she can really talk?  So much fun. Right now it is a lot of agreeing or disagreeing with things that people ask her. But she is so ready to work with the people who are trying to convince her to do anything.

 

Maybe not liver but definitely sweet potatoes.

 

I understand that this is about as domestic and uninteresting as it gets, for a travel blog.  Nothing to be done about it. 

Seventh Sunny Day In A Row

I was thinking that when you take a trip to visit family, you don't get to choose the locale.  When we were growing up, we were fortunate to have lots of family in Hawaii (we still are) and we were also lucky that our travel season was in the winter, so going to Hawaii was especially nice.  This is the first time we have had close family to visit in a foreign country.  Usually when we take the time to go on an international trip, we are on the move all the time, seeing sights, going from one memorable or ancient spot to the next. This has been very much like a Hawaii trip, with a focus on the people we came to see rather than the beach or the ruins or the scenery. Haifa in the winter is no hardship. Right outside our door are palm trees and flowering bushes.  From many places within a few blocks of here, you can see the Mediterranean Sea, blue and vast, with a distant horizon. 

Which is all to say that we are still hunkered down on Kadima Street. I walk between our Airbnb and Chez Mika while Jon stays in bed, gradually improving. He is getting better.  And we did get him some antibiotics, on the advice of some of our personal doctors. It is not entirely clear that he needed them but we are supposed to get on a plane in four days and if he has pneumonia, we are stuck here. So in some ways we are smacking this illness with a big flat stick, just in case.

This morning I had the pleasure of taking Mika to the park myself, as her parents had stuff to do and I didn't. On our way, we stopped in to say hi to Jon (she has been asking for him, wondering where he is: "Papa?" when she hears a key in the door). She was glad to see him. We picked some lemons, and she insisted on taking one with us to the park.  She took me through all the paces, swinging (and singing the traditional Hebrew song that every parent sings while a child is on the swings -- because I clearly wasn't competent to sing it myself), going down the slide, telling me when it was time for snacks, taking me on a walk.  This is her daily routine. On our way home we stopped to see Jon again because why wouldn't we?

 

While she took her nap, I created a little larder of food for the bed-bound because it is getting to be time for Jon to start eating again. Rice, soup, a few boiled potatoes, brought home the lemonade syrup that Benj had made out of an earlier pile of lemons.  Came home to the infirmary. It is so easy to spend hours and hours reading and writing and drinking tea and serving lemonade and soup. The day just glides by.

Even though nothing goes quite as we might have imagined, there are many sweet parts to every day.

Mika insisted on Hana peeling the lemon so she could eat it. It turned out not to be a pomolo.

 

Laying Low

Jon spent a second full day in bed. If he doesn't feel better by tomorrow, we will get some attention. Less fever, still coughing, feeling miserable. I spent most of the day nudging him to drink.  

I did walk to the store by myself and buy a bottle of Sprite (they don't seem to have ginger ale here), in an effort to find something more enticing.  Spent most of the morning reading and writing. We did laundry. In the middle of the afternoon I took my cane and went to walk around the block, which ended up being one of the longer walks in my recent history. I didn't get lost, and on my walk I saw all the places we have been to in the last few days : Mika's playground, yesterday's lunch site, the park, the supermarket, the walking path between B/Y's house and the street with the nice trees. Jon says I was gone for 45 minutes. I did have to sit down outside to cool off for a while.

In the evening, I went with Benjamin and Mika to see a dress rehearsal of the community theater musical revue that Yael is choreographing.  Yael's mom was there too, and the four of us sat in the middle of the mostly empty auditorium.  Benjamin had brought a variety of dinner options for Mika so she sat quietly and ate, clapping at the end of each number.  The singing was tuneful, the choreography was appropriate for the performers (who will undoubtedly loosen up a little in the next few weeks, once they get used to running through the whole thing without stopping a few more times) and it was a sweet production.  Not as much fun as a musical because the pieces didn't really have anything to do with each other (except that they were loosely tied together by a narrative performed by two elderly people looking back on 50 years of marriage).  The women tended to sing with more confidence and volume than the men. It was fun, and Mika was an amazing audience member for an hour and a half. Yael introduced her to the cast at intermission. Benj took her away to change her into her pajamas and she came back to watch a few more numbers. With one grandma sitting on each side of her while she stood on her chair watching the singing, she managed to slip vertically between the seat and the back. She didn't make a sound and Hedy and I had to stifle our giggles as we lifted her back out of the chair. When it was time for her to leave for bed, she clapped and yelled "Yay!" to the cast.

Poor Jon. This is not how he wants to spend his days.  Tomorrow we will get some help. Yael's dad is a doctor who can help us navigate.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Jon was sick all day and stayed in bed, sleeping. He has a fever and chest congestion and he feels bad. Took a covid test this morning, negative. But whatever this is, it's taking it out of him. Of course he hates to be sick when we are traveling, but at least we are not trying to move from one place to the next. Staying in one place is the best.  (He is the photo editor of this blog so we have to wait until he is ready to come back to work.)

Benjamin walked to the small market that is open on Shabbat and got Jon some drinks.  I had a quiet morning sitting outside on the patio in the garden that has blooming trees around the edges and unmowed ground cover where grass would be if this were the States. It was lovely. I wrote notes to people and did more fussing with the CSA stuff.

Yael and Mika and Benjamin and I walked up to the commercial center of this neighborhood to have lunch. Tree-lined streets help to define this as an upper middle class area. Mika meandered, cheerful and unperturbed about any sort of destination or timeline.  We ended up at a cafe that is American-style, I guess, but since things are in Hebrew I kind of missed that for a while.  I had shakshuka and salad because I am in Israel. They had more American fare. Mika drank a lot of a spirolina shake (Yael read about it -- it's a seaweed that humans and animals can eat) and gave herself a lovely green mustache. After lunch, Yael told Mika to go exploring and so she did, tentatively. She found someone nice to talk to, and Benjamin joined the conversation and by the time Yael and I got there, we had decided they must be speaking English because they were just gabbing. Nope, Hebrew. Benjamin said later he was working hard to keep up.

 

 I came home to take a Shabbes nap with Jon before heading across the street to babysit.  The parents went to visit some friends and Mika and I had a calm evening of soup, bath, books, bed.  But then about ten minutes later she sat up to howl that she wanted some more attention and I brought her out to join the Newcomb zoom call.  She was a happy participant. And then she went to bed just fine.

We have all been much distracted and worried by Alissa's situation -- she has been in the hospital for a few days trying to figure out what is going on with her eyes. This is a worrisome time, and she has been much supported by her boyfriend and Anna. That story is being told elsewhere, but it is definitely hard to be so far away right now.

This trip has been everything we could have hoped for, except for Jon getting sick and Alissa being in the hospital. What can you do.

Our One Friday in Haifa

Benjamin and Jon went off to the woodshop where they had a reservation from 9 - 12.  They didn't get very far on the project, but they got it to a place where the cut pieces of wood could be stuffed into a little car and brought home to clutter up Benjamin's office.  We kind of know how that goes. The only thing he can't do at home is sand, but that comes later.  Yael asked B. later if he had introduced his father to anyone, and he said he had not because he was afraid there might be bureaucratic issues.  Yael said, "you don't think anyone would notice the two of you are related, and that you were speaking in English in disrespectful tones to each other?" That made me laugh.  Benj and Jon don't work on many projects together, partly because they are very much alike and both super opinionated. No surprise there. But both reported that it went pretty well today, and they were glad they got started.

 Meanwhile, Yael needed some time to hang out with Mika by herself and I needed to work on the CSA stuff some more because time is running out.  So they went out and I stayed in. It was lovely.  I got a lot done, they came home, we eventually got organized to go meet the boys at the shuk, near the woodshop. On a Friday afternoon -- the beginning of the weekend -- that whole area is jammed with people on the street, buying food, eating in restaurants, hanging out with music blaring. There is not a parking space for blocks and blocks, and everyone is behaving badly as they look for a place to park. At one point it looked like there was a tight circle of small cars all blocking the intersection, honking at each other, jamming themselves closer and closer together. After about an hour of effort, we finally assembled at an outdoor cafe on a corner, with a great view of all the action. The meal was chaotic because either B or Y was trying to park the car for some part of that hour, and Jon and I sat and ate hummus and baba ganoush on pita.  When we decided we had eaten enough, we all walked through the shuk -- bags of grains, fish on ice, piles of dried fruit, fresh vegetables, junk,  crowds and crowds of people moving up and down the sidewalk. We got a huge overflowing quart of delicious strawberries and ate them as we moved through the sea of produce and people.  Finally Mika had had enough of the scene and we headed home.

 

 

Jon went back to the apartment to go to bed because he had been feeling bad since yesterday. Chest congestion, some amount of fever -- the same sort of cold he had almost exactly a month ago when he tested negative for everything possible.  We should test for covid again, although if he has it, we are all in trouble. We were healthy on Sunday when we got here. That didn't take long for him to find some more bugs.

There was napping and working and fussing and playing in the late afternoon. We made a salad and some broccoli and headed to Yael's parents' house for Shabbat dinner.  This is a regular thing for the family, but I think they often see each other for a long Saturday afternoon.  Mika ate a hearty bowl of soup and sat nicely in her chair while the rest of us had a big meal. They are gracious hosts, they adore Mika, and she adores them right back.  They have a lot of established routines together, with lots of giggling and singing. She is the first grandchild (and it made me realize how my first 18 months of life must have been, with an adoring circle of adults -- she is off to a great start, with lots of advantages) and she does her part with flair: dancing, directing, running from one adult to the next, flopping on the rug to do yoga with Yael.  What a charmer.

 

Benjamin looked online to make sure there was a pharmacy open on Shabbat and we went to get some decongestant medicine for Jon, after consulting with the grandparents about what we were looking for.  Our plans tomorrow may need to be changed, alas -- we had a date with Jon's second cousin Ygal. It doesn't seem wise.

Driving back up the hill, in the dark, we saw a tall, fit-looking man running across the street, looking over his shoulder. Both B&Y said, "you are about to see a pig."  We looked to the left, Yael said she saw it moving, I was imagining what I was going to see, if anything. But oh my GOSH it was SO BIG.  A big black boar on its hind legs, standing straight up with its front legs hooked over the top of a municipal trash can, pulling the bag out with its huge jaws. Standing up, it was taller than I am. And much chunkier. You see animals like this in dioramas in natural history museums, running across the plains.  I would be petrified to run into something like that on the street in the dark. They said that Haifa has canyons coming in, between the hills, and that is how the boars travel into the city. So there are areas with more pigs and areas with no pigs. Wow. Alas, I did not get a picture.  But we have six more days.

Jon will add the pictures later.

Day Trip to the North

This morning Benjamin texted us at 8:45 to see if we were awake yet. A fair question. One of us was, and the other one got up quickly. Benj had a new plan for the day.

We rounded up Mika from her playdate at the park with Yael's Moms group (they are the cloth diaper/hippy moms).  Mika spends time every day in this park, about three blocks up the street from their house. It has a squishy Astoturf surface, swings, a few other play structures, trees -- all behind a big fence. Everything is always behind a big fence, with gates or doors. 

We headed out of Haifa, going north to a nature preserve in the Hula Valley. Yael had asked a friend for suggestions of places to go with someone who was walking-impaired (she was talking about me, but Mika has very short legs and wouldn't get very far either). They had golf carts there!

As we left the city (which is pretty big and sprawling, covering the whole ridge with high rises and low rises), we got back out into country that I recognized from our last trip -- lots of fields, ocean off to the left, big highways, greenery.  I like the scale of agriculture that is along the roads. It is human scale, you can see to the ends of the rows. I know they use a lot of equipment and possibly not that many humans, but still the whole thing looks manageable and intensive.  The soil is dark brown. Wouldn't say that we saw much evidence of organic farming (big spray rigs going), but farming is farming and they are growing some food here. Artichokes, olives, fruit trees. There were big swooping vistas with hills and valleys, green on the hills (Benjamin says this the greenest time of year, doesn't get any greener than this).

After about two hours, we pulled into a big parking lot that was full of buses and cars. Felt like a holiday, but we don't think it is.  It was a sunny, clear day, about 70 degrees F.  The guy at the gate said we should buy one handicapped ticket for me but we didn't. I am not handicapped, I am just walking with a cane, and it works pretty well. I feel like Uncle Babe. 

We rented a golf cart, bought some sunscreen for Mika and joined the crowd. Like most of the tourist destinations we have been to in this country, it was low-key and they didn't seem to have any worries about safety or rules. I guess anyone can drive a golf cart, really. The roads were one way, they had arrows on them, the terrain was flat and if someone was dumb enough to drive right into the water, that would be their problem.  They also rented regular bicycles and recumbent bikes that looked really hard to pedal (especially the women with the long skirts). This place seemed to be a good place for families -- the same kinds of families that flew with us from Dulles (little boys with tzitzit and kippot, men in black hats, women in wigs and black skirts). We were not in a hurry because we had 90 minutes to travel 1.2 km, and after about 75 minutes we found we had only made it halfway. We dawdled through the "botanical garden" (which was really a path with little bridges crossing over waterways, and some green stuff growing low to the ground and some bushy trees) and we had a brief pause at a picnic table to recharge Mika with a banana.  It took us a while to find the real birds, but there were lots of little ones bopping around on the ground.

Across the waterway (not a creek or a stream, more like canals) there were hundreds or thousands of chunky white birds, grazing. They were cranes, en route between Europe and Africa. They stop here in January and February. There is a joint project between the Jewish National Fund, some other group that preserves nature and the local farmers -- they have created a refuge for these cranes so they won't go and eat all the crops around here. I did wonder why all those birds stay in that one big area. They feed them corn. They call it a Crane Foraging Area but it is really a Crane Feedlot.  But no one eats them, they get to leave whenever they want.  

We learned some more interesting facts about the birds that come to this nature preserve (about 280 kinds) and then we turned in our golf cart and headed back. Benjamin asked Google to find us a restaurant on the way back to Haifa and it directed us to an unlikely looking tiny little place called Basil (in Hebrew). Pizza and salads. No one else was there, we sat outside at a table, the view was limited but the food was fine. 

On the way back home, Mika slept part of the way and needed some fruit to keep her going the rest of the way. She doesn't have too many recognizable words but she likes to identify the people in the car (dada, papa, points to me and I say Grana, points to herself and I say Mika). Benjamin, after some thought, once said that Mika's top four favorites, in this order are: mama, the swings, banana, daddy.  When I told Yael this, she thought about it for a moment and agreed with his assessment.  But she does love her daddy. And she does have words that I don't understand. We added "golf cart" and "Haifa" to her vocabulary today. 

Yael didn't come with us because she had other things to do all day, and in fact we didn't see her after we left her in the park this morning. Mika breezed through her evening routine with one or the other of her doting adults, eating soup, playing for a while, having a bath, and going to bed. Jon and Benjamin started working on a project they will do tomorrow -- they made a cardboard template of a curved entryway bench that will hold shoes and detritus.

This nice weather wraps up pretty soon, and we will hit a long, rainy spell. So it was wonderful to see the great outdoors today. And we got to see Benjamin and Mika for a whole day. Doesn't get better than that, except that we didn't get to see Yael. But we have a whole week left.

In the visitor's center.

The traditional picnic table picture.

She remembered golf carts.

Can't identify any, but they are birds.

These are the corn-fattened cranes -- not sheep.

A nutria, or coypu -- also known as a spiny rat. Brought from South America for fur-farming, but was less than satisfactory. Released into the wild they soon became a destructive invasive species, don't you know.

Creating the template for the bench. Hopefully we will see the real thing tomorrow.

This is Definitely the Doting Grandparents Trip

We failed to improve our sleep schedule on our second attempt. One or the other of us was sleeping some part of the night, but we are still on East Coast time, mostly.  Should be all adjusted by the time we go back home.

Jon made cafe au lait, using the equipment in our tiny kitchen. This is not our usual hot beverage of choice, but it was good.  Some Israeli yogurt and healthy, chewy granola and we were on our way out for another day of grandparent activities.

Mika is under the weather, with a runny nose and a reduced appetite (that's how people know she isn't feeling like herself), but she still has many moments of engaged cheeriness, in between expressing her discontent at not feeling 100% perfect. Jon went food shopping again, Yael taught a voice lesson downstairs, Benjamin worked in his office, Mika had a short nap. I had a lazy afternoon, waiting for all of us to be ready to do something at the same time. Mika and Benjamin and Jon and I went down to the beach (they live on the top of the ridge, so it's a long downward plunge to the coast, but it takes about ten minutes). The sand is fine, the beach is lightly populated but not warm enough to have people lounging. We plunked down to play in the sand. When you are 18 months old, you don't really have a program in mind, other than knocking down small piles that other people make, or filling a paper cup by hand.

And that was pretty much the excitement around here.  Jon made dinner, the parents had stuff to do (Benjamin to jujitsu and Yael to rehearsal) so we stayed home and put Mika to bed.  Well, this is what we traveled 6000 miles to do.  Bathtime and books and bed. She is an expert at bedtime, even in her current snurfly, chest congestiony state.  

 

 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

First of all, we didn't wake up until 11 AM (which is 4 AM at home) because we went to bed very late.  I have no memory of sleeping that late ever in my life, but that's a long time, and who knows. We walked downhill for about 100 feet, crossed the street and arrived at Benjamin and Yael's.  

Our AirB&B is behind the fence on the left and B & Y's house is behind the wall on the right.

 

They live in a big apartment that belongs to Yael's parents, with enough rooms to have an office and a sewing/craft room plus all the required living spaces.  The layout is odd but the story is that an architect designed it for herself, and we all know how quirky architects can be. Benjamin has a lot of comments about design features that failed, mostly to do with doors that don't open all the way or drawers that can't open when doors are in the way.  But it is lovely to have so much space available to them in such a convenient location.

I had forgotten how warm it might be here in the middle of winter. It was sunny and 70 degrees by the time we got outside.  Flowers blooming, leaves on trees, palm trees, nice air.

Mika and her nanny came home from their morning at the park. I had the sense that Mika was still experiencing us as apparitions from another time and place. She picked up a book and asked me to read it, immediately.  Eventually she was convinced to have some lunch, which she fed herself very ably, a spoon in each hand some of the time.

 

 

While she was still eating, her parents and grandparents left her with the nanny and we walked up the street for lunch at a neighborhood cafe. This is the height of civilization, to live within easy walking distance of a good place to eat. Good salads, good sandwiches, all just perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Mika's nap, we loaded her into her stroller and Yael took us on a walk to the supermarket. More civilized living. Just a few blocks from a supermarket that has everything we needed. We really need to have a chance to live in a city again, even if only for a few months a year.  

 

Benjamin and Yael made dinner while I was on a long call with someone in Oregon and Becky in Virginia (so one of us was in an 8 AM meeting, one at 11 AM and one in a 6 PM meeting), trying to finish up the details of setting up the CSA.

I got to have more grandma time, watching Mika playing in the bath, and then she retired for the night. We sat around on the comfy couches all evening, keeping Benjamin from doing work that he had intended to do. He will have to work fast in the mornings when we are still sleeping.

This was a very good mellowing in day.  Some day we will have to look beyond this neighborhood but there is no rush..

 

 

Direct Flight from Dulles to Tel Aviv

It has been THREE YEARS since were on an airplane. We have missed two whole winters of travel to foreign destinations, and this year was going to be a third one because I had a knee replacement scheduled for the middle of January.  I was never excited about that timing but these surgery dates are hard to get, and I waited about four months to get that one.  I got through all the various pre-surgery hurdles, until the very last one, a covid test a few days before the procedure. Failed that one, to my surprise. I have never felt like I had covid but every single cold symptom makes you wonder.  So, the whole thing was put off indefinitely and they told me to isolate for five days. Even though Jon and Rebecca and I had been in the same house for months and years and none of us has ever had covid, I wore a mask for several days, and they wore masks until they decided it was pointless. We all tested negative and just had to continue to wait out the quarantine.

So, of course I thought it would be a long time before another appointment opened up and I started to re-think the plan.  Decided I would rather travel now and get a new knee later in the winter.  By about Day 3 of the quarantine, I had a new plan.  Cleared it with my doctor who was very sorry about the delay and apologetic about how little they know about covid, even after all this time.  He said the anaesthesia people do not want to take chances so they want a big buffer between a covid infection and a surgery.  Fair enough.

Less than a week after I tested positive, and then negative, and had no symptoms and infected no one else, we packed our bags and headed off to Dulles Airport.  The security layers were impressive. At the last gate, one more stop through passport control and then each of us was directed to our own table and inspector. Jon sailed through, and I had a long conversation with a security guy. He said, "did you take any medication?"  I said, yes, I had ibuprofen a few minutes ago. He asked if Jon had taken anything. I said yes he did. He asked me what he took and I remembered the names of the two meds that Jon is on right now. He seemed impressed by my answer, indicating that it matched what he knew. I said, "he told you what he took?" and he said yes. I wondered why that conversation ever happened. He said I was sweating a lot and I said, "it was a long walk and the bags were heavy and I am fat." He protested that I wasn't fat, and I told him that indeed I am, and that is what makes me so hot.  The whole thing was very odd, but friendly.  He tested my bags with the explosive-detecting swipes a few times, he took notes, and he let me go.

Note the pick-up minyan in the back of the room.

 

The waiting area was filled with large families, women in wigs and long skirts, toddlers looking like mainstream American toddlers, men praying over on the side in a standing group.  A direct flight to Tel Aviv.  We were in the minority, me in pants and a tank top and Jon with no kippah. All the English was spoken with American accents, and all the Hebrew was fluent. Every seat on the plane was full.  The kosher meals were delivered first, and there were dozens of them. We were on our way to Israel from the minute we got through the last security check.

The flight was uneventful except for two medical emergencies. Don't know how they were resolved but two different people needed attention and we were told to say out of the aisles.

We figured out that the last time we were in Israel was February 2015, much longer ago than we realized. When we got to the airport, it was very familiar and didn't seem culturally overwhelming, even though there were no specific directions in English about doing the passport control thing yourself with the camera. We found out where the train was, got a ticket from the machine, got on the right train (believe me, Jon is nervous about every step of this, and so I am not) and got a seat.  Jon talked to Benjamin and found out I had chosen the wrong station in Haifa, but he told us the right one and it didn't matter. No one arrested us on the way out.

Benjamin picked us up, we went to his in-laws' house to pick up Mika.  Haifa is a hilly town with winding streets, lots of cars parked on both sides of the street, and I felt glad that we were not in a rental car for once. Benjamin was whipping around the corners. These are his winding, hilly streets. 

When we got to the house, Mika was still in her high chair finishing her dinner, and she wasn't in a hurry to be removed from the table. But she did seem surprised to see us, and it seemed like she was looking at her four grandparents all in the same room -- for the first time ever -- and wondering if we all knew each other.  We saw her a month ago, so she remembers all of her grandparents right now. She is still chattering away in her own blended language, and still looks mighty pleased with herself. As she should. 

Jon found us an Airbnb that is just up the street from Benjamin and Yael, so after we saw Mika for a few minutes before she went to bed, we walked up the hill to our little apartment.  We didn't see any pigs in the yard, but that's because they have a tall fence.  There are wild pigs that roam through Haifa, like the deer that roam through the US suburbs.  Pigs can be problematic, digging up gardens and lawns.  Pretty sure we are not supposed to feed them -- but if wild boars were not scary, it would be almost perfect to have a roaming garbage disposal moving through the city.

No good pictures today because it was dark by the time we got off the train, but these photos are for documentation purposes.