ALL ALONE IN TEL AVIV

So, after three weeks in The Land, Rina and Julia returned to Australia on April 17th. It was very sad to see them go, and as we waved goodbye to them we realised that there was now no escaping the two main pieces of business at hand: David's looming trip to the US and the fact that we would need to leave Judy's flat - ideally to move into our own! - the day after he returned.

We were both more than a little deflated by our recent experience of learning all the ridiculous requirements we would need to rent a flat - in fact, we had had our moment of realisation on Julia and Rina's last afternoon in Israel, as mentioned below... So, finding a flat became a bit of a half-hearted effort, especially as we were increasingly involved in all Mark Pearlman's arrangements about David's talk for Yom Haatzmaut.

In fact, the Yom Haatzmaut event became the focus of the days following Rina and Julia's departure, and then, before we knew it, David was heading off to Ben Gurion and was flying off to New York.

Just before that, however, we learnt something very interesting about Israel...that the secular holidays...in particular, the memorial days or Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron...are taken very seriously and everything shuts down. It's amazing, the whole of Tel Aviv ground to a halt and no shops were open, sirens sounded to remind everyone to have their minutes of silence...and all the Israeli tv channels either were switched off for the day or only played memorial programs...very interesting cultural phenomenon that just came from the left field for us...