Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Jet Lagged



First there was just the fact that I needed to write a blog post. After all, I had a lot to write about. It was summer in Arizona. That's always seemed to lend itself to a lot of whining.

But then, when mulling over vacation spots, I somehow convinced Husband to run wild and free and farther than he'd ever gone before. We suddenly booked four flights to Israel. With two weeks notice.

I could still have written a blog post, but then again, we only had flights booked. We had no place to stay. Can I even try to count how many nights I sat in my office instead of working, with one web browser up with a Google map of Tel Aviv, another of Jerusalem and yet another with Vacation Rentals in Israel?

There were the flights: seventeen hours there and eighteen hours back. There was the jet lag, a day on the way there and a week long after we got back. There was the crazy, mixed-up, beautiful insanity of being in Israel, of going on tours with our guide driving around hairpin turns with a Jewish Bible in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. There was my broken hair straightener, which led to me being assumed for Israeli everywhere we went, with my gigantic head of something almost resembling hair. There was the moment the four of us were crammed into a minuscule grocery store, frantically trying to buy food for the Sabbath, and staring at the all Hebrew packaging around us. We had no idea what anything was. There was standing at the Western Wall, with women all scrambling for a spot to talk to God, standing there crying, one next to another.

And just when I was figuring things out, just when the money wasn't looking like play money to me any longer and I could actually figure out what the change was in my wallet, just when the sounds around me started to sound familiar - like language - we left.

How was your summer vacation? Have you ever been on a vacation and left a piece of yourself there?
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This week Kristen over at Motherese has posted a book review of Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie and will post an interview with me tomorrow. She is also giving away a copy of the book, the winner will be drawn from those who leave comments. Please head over there!

 

17 comments:

  1. Love the photos! I am soooo not someone who could just take off like that. Major over-planning always needed. My vacation? I'm on it. Dropping my son off at college. Long drive back home starts today. Going through Arizona!

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  2. I would LOVE to go to Israel one day! Our vacation was what is always tends to be- traveling home to Texas to visit family. Nothing to write home about.

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  3. What a wonderful experience Linda! beautiful pictures...Israel is on my bucket list. I cannot imagine how inspiring it must be to walk through such an ancient city, so full of history...

    Heading over to Kristen's now...

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  4. Karen, it was insane! Truly, I had no idea if each apartment we rented would actually be there or whether I was wire transferring money to who-knows-where!

    And you were in Arizona, briefly! Hot enough to just drive on through, right? :)

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  5. Jennifer, but there were a couple things amazing about your vacation - wasn't it really long and weren't you ALONE with your husband? That would have been amazing by itself for me! Ours was a toss up between Israel and Chicago, but I finally impressed on my husband that we just needed to get to Israel, sooner rather than later!

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  6. Maria, it was amazing, and I believe it was the same for all the tourists, and there were many, from so many different countries and different religions! Our tour guide opened his bible and took us to the places in it! That was an experience!

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  7. Great pictures, and delighted you got some time away - I know it's been quite the busy year!

    No vacations for the Old Broad (cough, choke), though each of the kids managed to get away briefly which is, in and of itself, a small break for the mother!

    Looking forward to reading you again, after your jet lag.

    xoxo

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  8. I loved your blog and the pictures made me laugh out loud...sorry Auntie Linda:) Rachel and Daniel will look back with such great childhood memories and blogs to help them recall missed memories.

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  9. You went! So wonderful you just bought the tickets and went. Now rest. Then get back to your computer because we cannot wait to hear the stories!

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  10. BLW, what I need now is a vacation from my vacation. There's just something very un-vacation-like about the stress of 18 hours of traveling, about renting an apartment, worrying about different currencies, cooking, etc., that doesn't feel as carefree as, oh, I dont know, maybe Bora Bora? :)

    But still, at least we did it right before the kids were too grown up to do ot at all!

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  11. Heather (I know that's you!), totally true that the kids have the blog as a narrative of their years of childhood! When I was getting the book ready for publication and took a hiatus from the blog they really flipped out. They WANT me to write it! It's weird, but they like reading about their own antics through my eyes, does that make sense? Cute, right?

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  12. Absence, good to see you again! There's so much to write about Israelthat I couldn't even write it in any kind of normal format, I just opened my writer's journal and write a stream of consciousness of all the sights, sounds, everything. To be fleshed out later!

    And then you can imagine what it was like going from Israel to Arizona! Um, different, right? :)

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  13. Absence of AlternativesAugust 26, 2011 at 6:32 AM

    What? Different between Israel Arizona? What you talking about? ;-)

    Just want to let you know I got the book right here! Woot woot! I read the intro and I already love the book! (Do you know that pig ears are a delicacy? lol) I think your mom's story is much better than "Do you know there are starving kids in China?" in getting us to feel guilty about wasting food...

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  14. My friend told me that Israel was the most spectacular place she's ever been. She told my half Jewish daughter (her dad is 100%) that she would love it. I stuck closer to home. I went home to Taos and had an amazing time. I'm going to figure out how to stay the entire summer next summer. Good to "hear" from you!

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  15. Look at your beautiful family! I'm glad you had such a wonderful trip (and cranky that I didn't see this in time to catch you at Kristen's!). I left a piece of myself in Italy a few weeks ago ... literally ... part of my tibia from a Vespa crash. Other than that, I'm quite sure a figurative part of me will stay here in Romania long after we are back in the States and recovered from the jet lag.

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  16. Linda,
    It has been a while...I just got your book in the mail, and I am so excited to read it and share it with all my friends(some of which are children of Holocost survivors).
    All is well in my neck of the woods, vacation to beach was wonderful and my daughter is completely healed. We are looking into going to Israel in the next year or two as a family too. I just love your writing and your wit. Thanks for all you inspiration.

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  17. "Women scrambling for a spot to talk to God." The image of this gives me chills.

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