I live in Israel. I was born in the USA. We moved to Israel in 1972. When e started out, in Haifa, we used to say that to get anything done, especially at a government office, it takes three separate visits, That was based on our experiences doing various errands and making arrangements like getting a telephone. It was also influenced by our lack of knowledge about local customs and slightly lower level of fluency in Hebrew.
Today we went into town (Jerusalem = it’s the nearest city to where we now live in a small town in the Judean hills). We went for a dental appointment for my wife, mailed a letter, paid a municipal bill, and did our local grocery shopping which involved stops at 2 different super markets in two separate nearby towns. Two stops were necessary because one of the stores has cheaper prices, but doesn’t stock all the items we wanted. We also picked up some large dinner napkins at another nearby store. That comes out to 6 tasks accomplished in a single day.
It seems to me that we have come a long way from that first year. We also listen to the TV news in Hebrew, and often supplement it with a few minutes of FOX news and CNN from the US, Sky news from the UK, and France24 in English. When we last visited family in the US I was very happy to get back home to Israel. America is a lovely country, but I no longer feel totally at home there. It was not a case of running away from the US but rather of moving to a better place in Israel. The media headlines usually talk about our continuous conflict with the Palestinians, but that doesn’t present a complete picture. A recent survey found that Israeli citizens were happy about living in their country. Israel ranked 11th out of some 200 countries that were evaluated, The US ranked 18th.
Wetherhorn 