Another year ends. My thoughts on 2014 and the New Year.

Here we are at the end of another year. In some ways the past 365 days have flown by, in other ways it seems to have crawled by as slow as molasses. It has been a year of fun, joy, sadness, frustration and loss. Pretty much as it should be I guess. It is rare to have the opportunity to have the "perfect year" though just once I would like to see what it is like

We did some fun things this past year like drove to the Arctic Circle, visited London, had some wonderful visitors in Stockholm and a trip back to Ottawa to catch up with friends there. It was also the year my Dad passed away and my family ceased to tolerate each other. We left Stockholm and said goodbye to our friends there for the what was then unknown life in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Israel thus far has not been without its challenges, but at the end of the day when I look at the complaints I have they pale in comparison to the problems of many others. Leela Alcorn, the transgender teen who took her own life this week by walking into traffic because of being rejected by her ultra-conservative religious parents, african-american teens who need instruction from parents on how to behave when, not if they are stopped by a police officer to ensure their safety and in some cases stay alive, the continued persecution of the LGBTQ community in countries all over the world for fighting to love who their biology deems correct, refugees of wars and conflicts all over the globe who are caught in the middle of of idealistic and religions zealotry.

For my friends and my family I wish you all comfort and peace in 2015. I hope that this year in the world more problems get solved than created. I wish that people could take a moment to look outside their own lives and comfort zones to look at what is happening around them and take action to make it better. Volunteer, make donations to charities and organizations that you believe in. Start seeing the homeless and the hungry on the street and stop looking through them. I know it is idealistic, but if we all took just a little bit better care of each other the world would be a much better place indeed.

Starting to get settled, sorta

Here we are now a bit over three months in Israel. I have had some interesting experiences and I have had to greatly adjust my expectations on some things.

Things move at their own pace here, and you have to realize that in order to maintain your sanity. The best example is the fact that we have been trying to purchase a second vehicle from one of the other embassies here, who is selling some of their fleet. This has been going on for over a month because the guy who was working on it at the other embassy had to go on holiday for a week, Carl is busy with work and can't devote all his time to making this happen, and the car has to go in my name as we are only allowed one vehicle tax exemption per per person. We are buying this vehicle "passport to passport" as it is known here so it is going from one diplomat or diplomatic mission to another and we are exempt from taxes. Now this is great but we have to have the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel and it has to be cleared with Customs too! All of that takes a bit of time, and being as we are unfamiliar with the process we keep finding that there are one or two mere things that need to be signed by both parties. Hopefully this will happen by next week.

As we get closer to the "holidays" as we know them it becomes very evident that we are in a different part of the world where Christianity is not the majority. Christmas is just another day here, so much in fact that our doctor tried to book an appointment for Carl on Christmas Day. I am looking forward however to traveling to Nazareth next week to go to one of the Christmas Markets there. It will be my second visit to Nazareth. I have not been to anywhere else yet really as I don't have wheels yet. As soon as I have a car there will be many opportunities for day trips as everything is a short drive away. That will allow me to ramp up some photography again too.

I won't lie, it's been a struggle for me to adjust to Israel. The people are lovely, and once they find out we are newly arrived it is always "welcome to Israel!" Language has been a bigger issue than we were let to believe. We were told by many, including those who worked on Carl's relocation in Ottawa that "everyone there speaks English" and we have found that is not the case, but we are working on learning some Hebrew soon. My main course of action is to focus on the things that I enjoy, find things that I like here and explore those and let the other stuff that annoys just fall by the wayside. I can't put so much energy into things that get to me. We've also joined a gym so I am hoping the endorphins will kick in too.

I will endeavor to update this thing a bit more often as well.

Cheers!