The morning I arrived in Israel, dd16 met us at the airport, and from there we took a train to Haifa.  This was a pleasant 1.5 hour ride, and it was funny but nice how normal it seemed for dd14 and I to be sitting there with dd16, talking as if we’d just seen each other a day before instead of five months before!

We had a lot of luggage – we used just about every pound allotted to us – our four suitcases weighed 49.5, 49.5, 50.5, and 43 lb respectively, plus we each took a full carryon.  We had a lot of stuff for dd16 – mostly food – dehydrated mixes (split pea, 16 bean, meat chili, lentil-chicken), organic peanut butter, 2 lb butter, 20 pkg tuna in foil packs, xylitol, extra virgin bottles olive oil, ten boxes of tea, 2 mini pans of vegetable quiche, 3 mini pans of meatloaf, Real salt, raisins, cashews, walnuts, homemade peanut butter cups – I wanted to get her some healthy fats to supplement the food she gets in the dorm, because that’s the main thing that’s missing.  Oh, and some chocolate to give her friends on Purim.  We also had things to take for other people, so that took up about a suitcase and a half.  I was happy to take it all, but that’s why we were so loaded for our trip – otherwise, dd14 and I are pretty minimalist packers!

When we got to the train station where we got off, we met the dorm father of dd16’s program, which was really nice because I had purchased a ticket to a stop two stations before we needed to get off, and you have to electronically have your ticket electronically scanned before you can get through – and even though the price was the same, our ticket wasn’t scanning properly so we couldn’t get out!  It was nice to have someone help us out with that – not a big deal, but after a long trip and only 4 hours sleep in over 40 hours, I appreciated not having to immediately jump into explaining all of this in Hebrew that I haven’t spoken in over a decade!  The reason he was there was they were picking up a girl from the school, so he told us all to jump in to the 5 person vehicle, with all of our luggage and another person already in it – that was a fun squeeze!

Thanks to his help, we got to the school right on time for lunch, where I began to meet dd16’s friends.  I really wanted to get a sense of what the school was like, so this was a great way to see how everything is run – I took a lunch tray and filled my plate with food, then sat down to eat in the lunchroom with all of the girls.  After lunch we got unpacked in the apartment the school provided for us – this was on campus in the building directly opposite dd’s dorm.  I appreciated that they were so ready and willing to accommodate visiting parents.  Then we took the suitcases of things to dd’s room, up four long flights of stairs, and she unpacked all of that.  At this point, I was starting to feel deeply exhausted, and as I was sitting on her bed, starting falling into a deep sleep sitting up every time my head drooped.

Dd16 knew I wanted to stay up until nighttime local time to avoid jet lag, so she suggested we go for a walk. This wasn’t something I wanted to do, since I felt too tired to move, but once I stood up and got moving I was fine.  We went to the local store and did some food shopping – the food at the school is basically fine but dd16 is having digestive difficulties so she avoids most of the food provided there, and I wanted to make her something that would fit into her dietary restrictions.  (That’s also why I took frozen meatloaf and quiche, for her to keep in the freezer there and have portions she can reheat when she needs something to supplement what they are given.)  It was mentally an adjustment to see prices is shekels and kilos, since it meant constantly doing price adjustments in my head to figure out what was a good price.

But I worked it out and left the store with a whole chicken, onions, carrots, and zucchini for 35 shekels (about $9), then went back to the dorm to cook it all.  By this time it was dinner, so we went to the lunch room again!  I met more friends and staff – all of whom were nice and the Israelis all told me how good my rusty Hebrew is.  🙂  Then we went to make the food I prepared – dd16 hardly ate anything at dinner, and I planned to make some for her to eat that night and to freeze the rest in portion sizes for her to have after I was gone.   This usually wouldn’t take me long, but I didn’t have my usual kitchen facilities at my disposal, so it was a little more involved. Thanks to the help of the very sweet dorm mother, I managed to get set up and get it done.

Then we packed it all up in portion sizes, and finally got to sleep sometime between 10 – 11 pm, nine hours after arriving at the school.

Avivah