Things to be thankful for!

If you live in Israel:

1) When your kids go on field trips, they are accompanied by someone wearing a semi-automatic rifle slung over their shoulder.....

2) Your car is checked for bombs at the entrance to underground mall parking lots by security. This includes looking in your trunk and under your car using a mirror

3) Your bags are checked as you enter a mall from any entrance for firearms/bombs

4) There is a military presence everywhere you go - and they all carry the semi-automatic rifles

5) Don't look for politeness from anyone. Now Canada overdoes this sometimes, but here it's hard to come by.... it's every man for himself and in the 4 days I've been here, I've seen arguments between drivers, people in lineups at the supermarket and at the airport..... men and women alike. It would seem that Israelis do not have a lot of patience!

6) If you live in a building built in the last 20 years, then your apartment/house has a 'saferoom' built in - basically a bomb shelter. My inlaws place is old, so the 'safe' place is the bathroom!

7) This is noted above, but deserves it's own mention - driving here is crazy... no one lets you in, people cut in front of you all the time, traffic jams everywhere because people wont give an inch, and horns honking all the time.... I'm white knuckling it most of the time!!!

The GOOD:

8) If you have fertility issues, the government will pay for any fertility treatments, how ever many times you need it, until you (hopefully) conceive. There seem to be babies EVERYWHERE!! and lots of twins :) But how great is that??!!

So life is very different here, and yes, it's a bit scary to think that the places you're going could be targeted by a suicide bomber, however I don't really find that this affects me that much... maybe because it just seems too surreal? And Israelis certainly don't go around fearing it. If it wasn't for the security and military presence everywhere, you wouldn't even know that bombings are even a threat (they don't let it affect living their lives).

On an eating note, things have been quite good. The inlaws eat their biggest meal for lunch and then hardly eat supper. I've been following the trend and I'm actually not really hungry in the evening. There is no scale here, so who knows what's going on with the weight, but my pants don't feel tight or anything, and that's WITH the bloating from both TOM (groan.... I didn't even mention the primitive plumbing here!) and the heat :)