I find it strange that it is not until I am lying in bed for the fourth day in a row sick with the flu that I can find the time to write a journal entry. It has been way too long since I have last written, but if you can imagine David and I have been very busy living our Israeli lifestyles. I was inspired to write because of my Nana and Zayda who consistently check up on this website only to realize that David and I have not updated it in two months. I hope that they have not given up and that they find joy in reading a catch-up entry which I hope to be one of many journal entries to be written in the next few months.

I joke about being too busy to write, but that is about the best way to explain our lives here in Israel. David and I have been very busy, or maybe I should just stick with saying that I have been very busy. David would say that he has tried very hard to keep himself occupied but it is hard when you are living in a foreign country only for a year and moved just because your significant other must spend the year in Jerusalem for their first year of graduate school. He has been a great sport and extremely supportive of everything.

I actually debated writing an entry in January during my winter break when I was home in Dallas with David visiting my family. I told my mom this and she responded with, why would anyone want to know about what you are doing in the States. Everyone is interested in knowing what you are doing in Israel, when you are away from the States. I think she is totally right, but what I must say is that my winter vacation was far from vacation. I finished finals around the end of December and was so relieved, they were extremely tough. David and I flew to Dallas where we had set up eleven appointments around town to make a decision about a wedding reception place. It was a lot harder than either one of us imagined, however, by the end of our ten days there we decided on a reception place called Union Station, what was once an old train station down town is now a reception hall. We are very excited and I think my mom is the most relieved out of all three of us. My dad and Geren came into town to visit for a weekend and it was so nice and a lot of fun to see them. We then headed up north to visit David’s family in Canada which was a nice break from the wedding planning and much colder. In fact, the day I left it was snowing. I was bummed to leave it. Now, we are here.

School started up very quickly for me and my classes are great. I have a few different teachers but no new classes and therefore, it is a nice change for me. David, as you might have read or will read in David’s diary, has been hobbling around on crutches as a result of HUC flag football game. We have been told that he might have torn a cartilage in his knee. We are not sure what might happen, he is in physical therapy and has an MRI appointment soon. However, you can imagine that he is pretty much stuck in the apartment. Israel is not a convenient country for those that are handicap. Thank goodness we only live up one flight of stairs.

Besides taking care of David and trying to juggle class, homework, cooking, cleaning, etc. Kelly came into town last week after traveling around Israel with a church group and we had a blast. We rented a car and spent a weekend in Eilat and Kelly and I journeyed through Jordan and toured Petra. It was the most beautiful place I have been since living here. We had a great time. Once Kelly left David and I were off to the north with my school where we stayed at the northern tip of Israel very close to the border with Lebanon. We went hiking (and by we I mean my classmates, David hung out on the bus) stayed on a kibbutz, enjoyed cheeses produced on the kibbutz, went to the Golan Wine factory and participated in a wine tasting, saw ancient sites, and studied from texts as well. It was a phenomenal trip. However, now we are both sick in bed with the infamous one-time-a-year flu that everyone has here, even some of my teachers are sick! We are anticipating feeling better by the weekend because we are both suffering from cabin fever. Now I know what David feels like on crutches for the past three weeks. I hope to be better at writing these last couple of months.