Aliyah. . .

I recieved some great news today, another family from my community is going to be making aliyah this summer, the holy city of Rechovot! Good luck to them and to all of the Jews who will finally be making the final trip this summer!
I've spent the last few days thinking about, what else, moving and living in Israel. I'm writing a paper right now for my sidistic English teacher about the US's history and role in the Middle East, and for some reason I only find myself righting negative stuff about the Arabs and positive stuffa about Israel. But I know that Israel isn't a walk in the park (trust me, I REALLY know!), but a lot of those thing that we Americans feel are 'difficult' are really the kinds of things that, once we get past them, really make us laugh. For instance, I'm reading Laura Ben-David's book about her and her family's Aliyah experience, documenting everything, from a few days before the flight to about 8 months after it. I realized while reading this book that, in Israel or not, we have things like that going on everyday. The kind of incidents that give us a real headace, but if we can just push and look past the hard stuff, we'll realize that it's not really so hard. Plus we'll then have some great stories later.
The one story from the book that sticks out in my mind is when Laura was going to take her driver's test (new country, new license) and how she arrived a day before her scheduled appoinment (at 7:00 in the morning!) and was told to come back the next. I think that was the day the lift arrived so they were up late and the next day she arrived to late to take the test. So the instructor re-sceduled it. When she discovered that the test coincided with her family trip to Eilat she called the instructor and asked if the test could be postponed. She recived a call back that if she didn't come at that time "it is a fail!"
Well needless to say she managed to re-schedule and it was not a 'fail,' but this is a perfect example of an unnerving life experience that, now ,doesn't matter, and it has made for a great story!