I love milk!

I think it's true. I have been drinking at least 2 tall glasses a day. I'm making up for the small amount I drank in Israel due to the price. Costco has apparently changed their packaging of milk. It has a wider opening at the top which makes spilling more of risk, but I can manage. Lots of things seemed to have changed while we were gone. New stop lights, Stanford's Happy Hour :-(, and the weather (snow 3x already!!!). All trivial I know. Just wierd coming back and things being a bit different. I guess life will become dramatically different in a few weeks anyway with little Nate coming.

While it's so nice to be home, my thoughts often drift towards the good friends that we left in Israel. Especially with all the news on Gaza. I've recieved emails that things are fairly normal in Haifa despite the comotion down South.

Changes. On multiple occasions we have had to hold back our urge to honk when someone is sitting at a green light. We didn't honk much over there, but we heard it ALL the time before the lights even turned green! It's going to take a while to get back to NW driving habits. I went to the grocery store and saw all the checkers standing up, which reminded me in Israel they all sit on comfy chairs and take their time ringing you through the line. Ken was driving in the snow a few days ago and put his blinker on to get into the right lane... and the guy behind him actually slowed down to let him in instead of speeding up to make sure we didn't get in front on him. The fruit in Israel was so tasty and juicy. I had a rather dry box of Satsuma oranges last week. Oh how the fresh squeezed OJ was so yummy!

Swim class. I think I miss the Israeli swim aerobics with all my friends over the age of 65. I've been taking a swim class at the Club up the road and she seems to be an "ultra cheerleader type" instead of the one in Israel who just barked orders in Hebrew. There are only 8 in the class instead of the 30 we had in Israel so we don't bump into each other and if we do there is always a "sorry" exchanged. I feel like I got a better workout in the Israeli class though, maybe I'm not working hard enough? I got used to my friend Abraham always telling me he had a sister in NY and that he knew 8 different languages English, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic...etc. Every other day we would have the same conversation!

Neighbors. I wonder who is bugging them everyday now that I'm here? I mean I required a lot of assistance between setting up Dr. Appointments, getting tourism information and assistance with Hebrew homework.

I guess it's been long enough here at home (or is there too much housework?), to think back and be missing what became "normal" for the last 7 months. Miss you guys!