Pictures Say a 1000 Words

Just photos for this post. Ok, and a few words (I couldn’t resist). Many pictures were taken during our walks in the neighbourhood.  There are captions when a description is needed. The randomness of the pictures is what our life has been like so far - surprising and different things to see.

Netting to perhaps protect the growing pomegranates from birds?

Dates growing on date palms :  )

Beach = smiles

After a walking tour of Tel Aviv, we were ready for lunch!

The flags representing the students’ at the Defence College

Interesting tree trunk

At the local community center

So many choices of hummus at the grocery store

The flowers on our palm tree look almost like pasta!

In old Jerusalem

Taking a cool break at an Austrian Hospice tucked into the Jerusalem market

He said it was “make-shift sunglasses”!

Lots of bulk candy at the market

Funny things to see at the roundabouts

Lunch at a local cafe

Nothing discrete about this proposal!

Roman aqueducts at Caesarea

A popular snack that looks like cheese puffs but tastes like peanut butter!

Travelling During a Pandemic and Other Weird Happenings

We are over the jet-lag from the 11 hour flight last week, travelling from Toronto to Tel Aviv (a 7 hour time difference) and here are some of the observations that I can share so far.

Could this be a type of Maple tree?

Artemis, our 11 month old COVID priceless puppy, flew with no problem… but there was some administrative paperwork and costs to get him here. In order to import a dog into Israel, they need a veterinary health check, certifying that they are healthy, have been microchipped, and proof of rabies immunisation (via a rabies titre test).  This exam can only be completed by the vet, and endorsed/signed off by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency within 10 days prior to arrival.  What hiccup could there be? Well, for starters, since Arty is a puppy, he only had 1 rabies vaccine which would likely not show enough antibodies to “pass” the antibody levels required for the titre test.  No big deal, just get another rabies shot, right?  It turns out that 30 days is required between vaccine and titre test.  I found out more about the titre test than I ever wanted to know!  Apparently, there are not many labs that run these tests and the one that most Ontario vets use is through Kansas State University and it can take 8-12 weeks to get the results for these tests.  I could only start this process once Sonny received his official message that we were moving, which was in April/May timeframe.  If you do the math, time was not on our side.  But if you’re willing to pay, you can get expedited results and you should have seen the look on my face when the vet told me that the fee for the titre test was $400 and to rush the results was a measly $500 more!  Thank goodness for credit cards.  The funniest thing (not really funny but a happy end result) was we had to redo the bloodwork because the 1st titre test got stuck at the Canada/USA border.  The lab couldn’t meet their deadlines for expediting the results so they refunded our fee back to us.

This water fountain sprayed water in the wrong direction!

That is only one example of the ups-and-down of getting to Israel (I’ll spare you the other long “stories”). 

For those curious about travelling restrictions, we all got that pesky nasal swab a few days before travelling.  Negative! When we arrived in Tel Aviv, we got another version of that test (this time it included swabbing two nostrils and the inside of the mouth). Negative!  Then in order to “break free” of quarantine, we had a serology bloodwork test that measured the COVID antibodies in our system.  Anecdotally, we heard that 500 was the “pass”.  This time you want a “positive”!  I got 24,000 , Sonny 12,000, and Grayson measured 6,000 (units?  Not sure what the measurement is). Ironically, Sonny and I both received our 2nd dose in May and Grayson, only 5 days before testing.  In my opinion, everything related to COVID is a surprise. 

On Sunday, we made a quick trip to the Port of Jaffa, which has been an active port for more than 7,000 years with Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Egyptian influences.  We managed to find an English Mass, the first full Mass that we’ve attended since February 2020.  It was sparsely attended but it could have been that Sunday is a “week day”.  Israel’s work week runs from Sunday until Thursday.  Shabbat begins Friday sundown until Saturday sundown, when most businesses and stores are closed (think back when Sundays were days of rest and you could only find the corner store open).  We wandered around the old city briefly before we started melting from the heat and headed “home”.

Home of Simon The Tanner where he hosted St Peter, the Apostle

The beautiful old city with stonework

We are still awaiting the shipment of our belongings.  Our rental home is furnished so we’re making do with what the house has.  It’ll be nice to have our own personal things, just to make this home feel more like home.

Ok, I could get use to this “home”

Outdoor living space is so great

I happily report that the Israeli people are very friendly and many speak English, the Mediterranean Sea is a mere 10-15 minute walk from our home, and you can buy alcohol at the grocery store.  On a silly note, Google translate will not translate Hebrew from photos, palm trees do not create enough shade and defensive driving is not universal.

Art is a mystery, too

Seriously, 15 mins walking from our house!

The finest sand you can imagine

The first week has flown by.  My internal clock has adjusted and I’m back to waking around 6am.  It’s very easy to have a coffee or two poolside, listen to the noisiest birds that you can imagine, while reading a book.  It still feels like we’re on a strange vacation and I quickly forget that this will be our home for the next year.  Whenever it’s safe to do so, we’d love to host visitors and explore this beautiful country with you.

New Adventure 2021 Edition

I sit here in my new backyard by the pool (!), listening to new bird song and local traffic sounds beyond the palm tree-lined fence wall.  This new adventure seems to have been in progress for months and I could write pages dedicated to what a military move entails (moving outside of Canada, aka OUTCAN, just triples the planning, stress and excitement).  Our departure weekend started with success because on Friday, Grayson was able to get his 2nd COVID vaccination and Artemis (our 11 month puppy) was approved for travel. We then got COVID tested on Saturday morning and departed Kingston for a beautiful B&B, north of Toronto to make a break from reality (if you can check out Tailwinds B&B in Hillsburgh, ON, it is well worth it!).  Our “long” weekend finally ended with a hurry-up-and-wait check-in scenario on Monday, boarding our 11 hour flight to Tel Aviv, Israel.

Gorge in Elora, ON

Cooling our feet, taking a breather before our travels

After the uneventful flight, we made it! It seems that many folks are suffering from heat waves back home, well, this is regular summer weather here.  It is pretty darn hot here at 34 with my hair indicating that humidity is high!  We are actually located in Herziliya, 15 kms north of Tel Aviv.  It’s a seaside town and we’re about 6 blocks away from the beach.  Of course with the pandemic, we must isolate and given our vaccine status, we will take a serology test to hopefully, give us a “get out of free jail” card so we can explore our surroundings before Sonny starts his course mid-July.

All the bags…

And more bags!!

In 2018, when we were given the opportunity to live in Riga, Latvia, I started this blog to share our adventures.  Latvia was a complete cultural surprise and somewhere that we never would have experienced.  The people, food, and travels were amazing.  Now, much to our surprise, we find ourselves blessed and honoured that we’re in Israel for 1 year. 

Just boarding the plane

Still in good spirits, after travelling over 11 hours

This is a teaser of future blogs.  Stay tuned, more to follow!

A few plants in our small “yard-en” (garden-yard)

Fig tree

Reno's!

Our house!

We have made changes to every house that we've lived in.  They've ranged from painting to building a garage but on this move, we took advantage of our furniture arriving mid-September and have touched on every area of this house.  From the outside, you can see the hostas that I planted to line the driveway and the new blue door.  You can't see the new garage door motor that we installed because the old one conked out within weeks of getting possession of our house!

Before/After

The new front door is blue on the outside and a crisp white on the inside.  The picture doesn't do it justice but it lets in so much light.  We have a new closet door waiting to be installed (a project for Sonny when he is actually home for a weekend).

After/Before

The most impactful change was the removal of  a wall that "sat" in the dining room, off the kitchen, right in front of stairs going to the bedrooms.  It's hard to show in a before/after picture because once it was gone, it's hard to imagine it ever being there! In the before picture, you can see the wall peeking out on the right side of the picture.  

Before/After

There's the wall on the left side of the before picture.  Another big change was ripping out the original carpeting from the living/dining room/stairs and replacing it with a dark brown hard wood.  The walls throughout the entire house have been painted a soft warm light grey.  It feels really clean and crisp.

Before/After

The railings were replaced with a glass/wood combo and the stairs no longer squeek!

After/Before

This really shows how open the main floor is without that silly wall.  There is a lot of light from the kitchen window that now flows into the dining room.

Before/After

The glass railing is quite striking and I'm glad that we decided on it.  It really updates the space.

Before/After

We haven't made a lot of changes to the backyard.  We wanted more sunshine on the back deck but there were a few overgrown cedars that blocked the afternoon sun.  This weekend, Sonny & G pulled out the chainsaw and our deck is now full of light.  On a side note, they discovered a wasps nest and wood/carpenter ants in the stumps so that definitely needed to go!

After/Before

The stairs look terrific without the old carpeting.  The lighter walls really are set off by the darker floors.

Before/After

We didn't touch the bedrooms other than lighter walls and G lost the fancy wallpaper. Maybe in a future move we'll have a go with wallpaper but not this time.

After/Before

We're really pleased with how our ensuite bathroom turned out.  We removed one closet from our bedroom and with that space, we added a shower.  Our European experience had a bit of influence on us and we may have added heated flooring.  Pure decadence but no regret here!

After/After/Before

The basement got new paint and cushy carpeting.  In the before picture of the laundry room, you can see the room was one large space.  We cut the room in two and added a full bathroom.  

After/Before

Truth be told, I found the renovation period stressful.  Timings changed because of availability of contractors and delays in ordering. We were really fortunate that our furniture didn't arrive until mid-September when the painting and flooring were completed.  Now that it's pretty much finished, I absolutely love the results.