Day One
After all the excitement of our moving day and finally arriving in Israel as Olim Chadashim, we were completely exhausted. We had planned to stay at family for a few days so that we could get ourselves organised and actually see our flat rather than just studying the same ten photos of the flat that our friends had sent us. We took it easy the morning after. We woke up late (ish – thanks kids) and whilst we tried to relax and absorb the fact that this wasn’t a holiday but actually the place where we lived, we realised that we were itching to start working through the long list of things from the Jewish Agency telling us what needed to be organised and in what order. For example, we needed to sort out a bank account first before we could set up our health insurance so that we could actually pay for the health insurance. Sounds logical. With two kids to keep entertained during the immense amount of paperwork that lay before us, we began planning the next 48 hours.
Before we began arranging all the meetings
necessary to set ourselves up as Israeli Citizens, our first stop was our new
flat. We were desperate to see our new home and as we found our way around the maze
like streets of Modiin (all the streets look the same), we pulled up at the
flat. Walking up the stairs, we are greeted by this voodoo style doll sitting
on a chest of drawers outside our front door, courtesy of our neighbours. Talk
about freaky. We looked at each other,
already thinking that we might have crazy neighbours and opened the front door.
Walking in, we suddenly realised what the word ‘unfurnished’ meant in Israel.
Literally nothing. Not even a toilet roll holder in the bathroom. Trying to
think optimistically about how great it was going to look when all our stuff
arrived, we sat down (on the floor) and that is when reality really hit. We had
a lot of work to do!
We opened up the door to our mirpeset
(terrace) and Ella raced outside and spent the next half an hour running up and
down and playing. It was about 20 degrees outside – boiling hot for us
Londoners but a chilly day for Israelis and most importantly, not raining! At
that moment, we knew that however much work there actually was to do, this was
the right decision. The fact that Ella could just go outside and play (despite not
even having any toys yet to play with as they were still sailing on the
Mediterranean) was testament to the fact that our quality of life had soared
and it was only Day 1.
