To Israel and Back

Our blog is taking on the identity of relating milestones in our life with Emily, which I suppose is the natural progression of an adoption blog once the actual process of adopting the child has occured.

This particular milestone offered me (Daniel) an opportunity to attend my high school reunion. I attended the American International School in Israel (AIS) from 8th to 12th grade, graduating there then returning to the United States for college. The school held its first ever reunion -- billed the Grand AIS Alumni Reunion -- July 1-3, 2006. I had closely as class of 1988 representative with a classmate who lives in Sweden, so we both felt a need and desire to attend the reunion. For the record, the reunion was fantastic. But this blog is not about me!

We decided to attend the reunion as a family, so we took Emily on her first overseas flight since returning with her from China to Tel Aviv, Israel. We were in Israel June 30 - July 10, which placed us in Israel during the hostage crisis in Gaza but saw us depart a day before the crisis with Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon. I am pleased to say we felt, and were, completely safe through our entire visit in Israel, which included both the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas.

Emily and Sydney were good company for one another on the flight to Tel Aviv. We flew through Newark in order to get a direct flight from the U.S. to Israel; we figured a lengthy layover in Europe might be more difficult than a longer direct flight. Since the flight to Tel Aviv was overnight, the girls were tired and slept relatively well on the airplane. Sydney had her own seat, but Emily flew as a lap child. This made mommy and daddy a little cramped and hot, but Emily did pretty well.

In Israel, we stayed in Herzlia Pituach (a northern suburb of Tel Aviv) four days, then stayed in Jerusalem for four days. We returned to Herzlia Pituach for two more days before departing. The reunion happened on the first three days of our trip, so we had seven days to tour. Not much to tour an entire country with two kids, but enough for me to return to the country I call home and share it with my family and our close friend, Marnie, who joined us from Germany to help take care of the girls.

While in Israel, Emily had painful teeth. Her two-year molars are pressing into the gums now, as are two canine teeth in the bottom front. She was drooling like crazy, running a fever, and had a runny nose for most of the trip. We think her throat was pretty sore, too, as a result of the drainage from all that drool. So she was miserable for parts of the trip, but overall she seemed to have a good time and charmed people everywhere we went. She disliked riding for a long time in our rental car -- it sounded different from our car, and the car seat was not nearly as comfortable -- so the trip to and from Jerusalem from the Tel Aviv area included moments of screaming. But we were traveling with a 1 1/2 year old child -- what did we expect?

Emily and Sydney were troopers as we toured the Old City of Jerusalem with the stroller. Certain portions of the Old City were quite challenging with the stroller -- I lost a decent amount of weight pushing the stroller through the ancient streets that were never made for strollers or wheelchairs. We spent most of our time in the Jewish Quarter, if for no other reason than it was largely stroller-friendly. The girls rarely complained about the hot sun, about going all the time, or about eating strange new food. In fact, Sydney discovered that she really likes hummous and pita, while Emily quickly gained appreciation for shwarma meat, turkey and chicken especially. And Sydney found out that the cheeses in Israel are just amazing!

As we discovered with Sydney, we re-learned that, given appropriate adaption, one can tour another country with small children. We certainly had to compromise on some things -- we were unable, for example, to make it to the northern part of the country -- but we were also able to take our touring more slowly, giving everyone time for naps in the afternoon and calling our nights early so the girls could go to bed.

We all managed to overcome jetlag quickly, which has always been my experience -- jetlag is always worse coming home. And in general, I must admit that coming home was a rough experience, anyway. The flight was a daytime flight, leaving Israel at noon, so much of our journey to Newark was spent with the girls awake and squirming. Our flight from Newark to our airport was cancelled, so we had to reschedule for a later flight to a nearby airport. TSA officials in Newark were neither kind nor courteous, and we were both pretty fed up with just about everything by the time we boarded our last plane home. We finally returned home around 11:30 PM on July 10, exhausted but pleased to be home -- and confident that we will return to Israel again as soon as we can.