Family :)

This past two weeks our family came to visit us!  It was so nice to be able to show people we love where we live now and share our experiences with them.  It's also a great feeling to have family with us at our home and in our daily environment - somehow it makes things a bit more grounded if that makes sense.

Zach and I also got the chance to go and see things that we hadn't seen yet - Dead Sea, Eilat, Petra, exploring around the Sea of Galilee a bit more, Jaffa and Bethlehem.  Eilat is a resort city that borders Jordan and Egypt on the Red Sea and was a perfect spot to relax on the beach and get some sun - finally!  It was also a good starting point for seeing Petra which is so ridiculously cool it is impossible to describe it.  Those people could sure carve a rock :)  Floating in the Dead Sea was also as fun as it looks - so weird!

One of my favourite times was when we got some lunch at the grocery store and then took it up for a picnic on the Mt. of Beatitudes (basically a hill on the northern edge of the lake that is still relatively undisturbed and untouristified) It was perfect weather - sunny, blue skies, slight breeze, flowers everywhere and bees starting to venture out again. From our spot on the hill you could overlook the lake and we even hiked down it a bit and found some old shrines in the middle of nowhere - Israel is cool like that :)

Here is a picture that my brother-in-law Jon took:

The last place we saw was Bethlehem - the day was rainy and cold which dampened the experience a bit, but it was also interesting to see a village inside the wall.  I would like to understand it more because it is difficult, even living here, to really get what is going on.  Just purely from the surface, as an outsider, I see a large concrete wall with watchtowers every now and then that reminds me a bit of a prison, or of the Berlin wall.  I know that the issue is complicated - you hear about how the number of attacks and the terror has declined in Israel since its construction, and you also hear about the misery of the people who now have to live with this monstrosity in their backyard, separating them from their workplace, experiencing racial profiling everytime they leave the West Bank.  I know that there are strong political, security and religious forces behind everything - but the large majority of people affected (on both sides of the issue) are people.  People like you or me. Our tour guide at the Church of the Nativity (in Bethlehem) was explaining to Zach that he would like to get married to a girl who lives on the Israel side, but thinks her family will reject the match since he lives on the other side.  It's a weird thing.  Made weirder by the fact that by living in Tel Aviv and only speaking English, we are pretty much isolated from ever thinking about it.  The whole Iran issue has dominated the news and the Palestine issue is not often discussed.  But if you ask, everyone has a strong opinion.  It's kind of funny to read the Canadian news on Israel, and then read the comments on the articles that are often quite passionate but (sometimes) lack any sort of grounding in reality. I don't think it is an issue that can be understood fully, especially if you haven't grown up here and experienced it personally.

Regarding the Iran situation, an interesting thing that has been in the news here lately is an initiative by an Israeli to use social media to express his opinion on the Iran issue - people posting pictures expressing their desire for peace and seeking and receiving Iranian responses.  Reading through some of the comments and seeing some of the pictures gives a good look (I think) at the human side - the side that isn't interested in whose ego comes out the strongest at the end of all of this.

It is definitely an interesting place to live!  Makes all the robo-call drama seem a tad foolish.

Who wants to come visit us next?! :)