So this is Christmas...

This morning I woke up and it was just another day. December 25th—nothing special, nothing happening. 

I never thought I would say this but I'm missing Christmas. In America I was annoyed that Christmas music began playing earlier and earlier every year. (Mariah, I love you but all I want for Christmas is to never hear that song again.) The idea of kids going to sit on santa's lap creeps me out and the mad rush of people in the mall between thanksgiving and December 25th makes me insane. 

But here there is none of that. And there are some things about Christmas I do miss. I miss my mom being "santa's elf", spreading Christmas spirit when she wears her Santa hat for the month of December. I miss seeing beautifully decorated trees in houses I visit, ornaments from the years their kids were in elementary school hanging as memories. I miss Christmas lights all over the streets lighting up the dark winter with something warm. 

But alas, I moved to Israel and over 80% of the country could care less. December 25th is just another day here and so even the Jews aren't celebrating with their usual Chinese food and a movie. It's days like these that make me contemplate what my life will look like moving forward as an Israeli. Christmas was a wonderful part of my childhood (as an American and part of a mixed family) and I want my family to have a taste of that. So now comes the challenge of how will I do Christmas in Israel? I suppose I'll cross the bridge when I actually have a family to think about. But for now I'll miss Christmas. 

Merry Christmas to my family and to everyone else in the world celebrating, religiously or not. I hope you all feel "the Christmas spirit". 

Will the real homeland please stand up?

Last week I returned from my first visit back to the States since my Aliyah. At 11 months into this whole thing I was really curious about how I'd feel being back in America, in my parents' house, away from here.

Essentially it went like this: I ate yummy (mostly treif) food, I hungout with my mom and dad or visited cousins, went shopping and drank Starbucks . Livin' the life!

No, but on a more serious note this visit felt very much like just that—a visit. My room at my parent's house is looking less and less like "my room" as my parents start to use it for other things. Most of my friends no longer live in Sacramento and very few of them have the time to take off work to come visit as often. My life, outside of my family and childhood memories (and Chinese/Mexican food, Starbucks and Target) are now in Israel.

My bed here feels more comfortable. Hebrew words dribble out of my mouth. I seriously missed having tahina on all my food. Naturally I arrived jet-lagged, but I never really adjusted to the time difference until around a week before I had to leave again because I'd wake up at 5am and just decide to answer work emails.

This isn't to say I didn't enjoy my trip. I really am so happy I got to "live" with my parents (and even my brother) for 3 weeks. We'd wake up and have coffee and breakfast together. I insisted on having Shabbat dinners together. We celebrated Thanksgiving and even a few nights of Hanukkah. I got to see my grandparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins and had a lot of quality time with all of them.

But as a conversation with one of my Israeli friends revealed to me, America might be the land of my birth, but Israel is my homeland. 

Here are some fun photos from my visit. I've been very busy getting re-situated and catching up with work, but I'm going to try hard to update this thing again soon!