We've only just begun

There are some days that I feel like I have been here forever. My kids seem to fit right in (just as rowdy and rude as the next kid) and even the dog seems to have carved out his niche. And then there are days like today when I am so abruptly reminded that we are new and by no means well established in this neighborhood. For instance, this bright and sunny morning got off to a rather smelly start. We don’t have those large green wheelie outdoor garbage containers that we had in Miami. In fact, while Miami provided one such container for every household, the Rothchild family had to order an extra one on account of our daily contribution to Global Warming. Here, we have Zero. So when our garbage is full, we have to take it up or down the hill to the nearest dumpster. At night, especially when it’s dark and cold, we leave the garbage in our mudroom and take it out in the morning – Israeli style. The Israeli (or at least Efrat) way to take out the garbage is to put it on top of your car and drive it to where it belongs. Only, today we forgot it was there. Oops. Just as we turned out of Efrat and almost at the Highway our daily offering slid off our car and onto the busy road. As Israeli and Palestinian drivers looked on curiously (you think they would have seen this before) my husband had to dodge traffic to grab the bag which was, oops again, now slit wide open. Forceflex my tush. After getting what we could out of the way, we continued on to our grocery shopping where yet again, my greener side gleamed brightly. We were looking for a fairly simple product – confectioner’s sugar. After a brief game of hide-and-go-seek we found it not in the sugar aisle, but with the baking products. Of course. What threw us off was that we were looking for the usual bag of confectioner’s sugar, but where we were it was being sold only in small envelopes. Not being prepared for this I had no idea how many envelopes I would need for the recipe, so I grabbed a whole bunch. Better safe than sorry. Guess the ‘present’ we got for spending over 100 shek at the store? Yup! Confectioner’s sugar! Good thing too, because when we got home I realized that I had exactly enough. We ended the morning by looking at a very charming home that just went on the market. It was all going very well until we heard the asking price. Are we in the West Bank of Israel or the West Side of Manhattan? Like most of the homes in this area, the price is a great example of what happens when the demand far outweighs the supply (and we won’t get into why that is so). All of this had me a bit down and thinking that we had missed the Efrat Boat by 5, 10, 20 years. Yet, somewhere in the midst of all this, we stopped off in the budding industrial area just across from Efrat. There are a few existing buildings, a few more under construction, and a whole lot of space for more. You could feel the potential swarming around in the cool crisp air and see history in the making. I could almost hear the voices of the future looking back on the present and saying “remember the days when the Gush was all farm land?” Maybe we have not missed the boat after all and a bright booming future lies ahead. Perhaps we’ve only just begun…