Making a house a home

After a week of sleeping on mattresses all in one room to keep warm, possibly the greatest moment of our lives (bar our wedding day and having children) was about to happen. At about 10am, we stood on our balcony and watched as a huge truck with our shipment from London trundled up the road. We greeted five burly men who started to unload the container and bring stuff up to the flat. The big boss man of the workers (who didn’t lift a single box) walks into the flat and asks us straight up “how much did you pay for this place?” Shocked (as we are English and not used to such outright questions) we told him and then he proceeded to tell us that we had paid too much and that he had a seven bedroom house by the sea in Ashkelon for half the rental price.  Ignoring him, we started to direct the movers to the different rooms to put the boxes into the correct rooms.

When checking to see if everything was there, we couldn’t help feeling that something big was missing. The couches were here, the table and chairs were here, our bed was here, Eitan’s cot was here and then it hit us…Ella’s bed was missing. We had ordered a new bed for her from London which was to be delivered straight to the shippers warehouse. One phone call to the shippers and all was answered…the bed was delivered but our surname (Mendelsohn) was spelt Mandelson on the delivery and weirdly enough, there was a family Mandelson moving to Israel at exactly the same time as us, using the same shippers but rather than moving to Modiin, they were moving to Shoham (not far from Modiin). So our bed was put on their shipment instead and would be delivered to us the following week. Ella would have to sleep on mattresses for another week which she thought was so much fun (thank goodness).

It was just the most amazing feeling to see all of our stuff, all of our home comforts sitting in our flat in Israel. Our couches, our table and chairs, our beds (minus Ella’s), our TV, the kids toys. Nothing beat that feeling that we could now unpack all our things and create our home. Great day.  

DAY ONE

Day One

We were so busy since making Aliyah in March, now I'm finally available to continue my blog. 
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.