After waiting for an hour with Linda and Maayan at the airport to find out the status, we found out that Air Canada was able to take me in as their last stand-by passenger. I don't know what was going through my mind, I had gone this far, and I just couldn't turn around. Maayan had been fantastic setting things straight in Hebrew with the manager. While I waited to get my ticket, we watched the family ahead of us- probably two sisters and a little three year old daughter. The little girl looked almost like me when I was her age with the brown eyes and soft, curly brown hair pulled back in a little ponytail.
Flight home was verrryyy long, much longer than I thought. For some reason I was thinking it was 10 hours but it was more like 12 hours...
Anyway, it was so weird coming back to the US from Israel. It was like stepping in a mirror to another world. Yet, everything was familiar, the hugs of my parents, riding in their cars, finding food in the kitchen... I also felt pretty cold in 70 degree temperatures!
I felt pretty conflicted in the first two or three days, figuring out what I had done. It was almost a snap decision but also a long one too. I realized that coming back to the US will always be difficult as much I enjoy being with my friends and family here. Thoughts of aliyah will be there but what Linda wrote in her last e-mail that it's more important that I make the most of every visit and make them joyful rather than suffer from them.
Even though my trip started out a bit rocky, I always strived to have good days. As Lance Armstrong once said, "There are no bad days, I only have good or great days." I think that this was particularly important to keep in mind when living in a country like Israel. We all kept our chins up, for good or for bad, through everything. Now having been there for another extended trip, I saw why so few American Jews would wish to return for and endure another such trip. It did sound fantastic to be on the beach everyday or explore the Galilee or stroll along the streets of Tel Aviv, it's when you begin dealing with day-to-day issues that took a certain amount of patience, perseverence, and good will to go through them. Especially if you're still learning Hebrew. I could see in my classmates' faces towards the end of ulpan that it was not just the ulpan but living in Israel in general that was getting to them. They're excited to get back to the comforts of geniune customer service, comfortable mattresses, safer roads, and other things that they took for granted in their countries.
In my perspective, there's no such thing as perfect world and we just have to deal with what we're given. Like the ugly and confusing architecture in Tel Aviv and limited choices of pasta.
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