I've used that quip too many times this past month. How the world turns unbeknownst to us mere mortals.
Here I am, back again in Melbourne, barely nine months after I became an olah - a citizen of Israel. How things have changed since first stepping off that El Al flight, swarmed by Israeli tourists returning from their vacations in Thailand, and me clutching on to a number of bags, coats, and pillows, anxiously anticipating the mountain of paperwork and Israeli chutzpa about to bury me. Beginning at the airport.
But we shall return to that in another post, a post that will be dedicated purely to the aliyah experience and the subsequent adventures/mishaps/surprises/tedium/frustration/elation... I could go on.
However, today, being 'Chag HaSusim (Festival of Horses)' or Melbourne Cup Day in my hometown, and given the dreary greyness that has conquered November's skies, I feel like writing about Melbourne. And all things Melbourne. Why my relationship with this city and her inhabitants is so complex and confusing and ambiguous and lonely. Particularly, how on earth I managed to return oh-so-quickly to a place I thought I no longer called it my own. Well, not entirely.
It's November, the eleventh month, which makes it ten months after making aliyah, and nearly three month after becoming a married woman. Who woulda thunk it.
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And since first writing (and not completing) this post nearly a year ago, things have changed - I have changed - in a way that I could not fully appreciate back then. Persuaded to return to the land of plenty, I reluctantly made Melbourne once again my home. However now, seeing the economic difficulties of life in Israel, coupled with family commitments and a general negative feeling felt throughout the non-anglo sections of Israeli society, perhaps it isn't the right time in my life to be living there.
So, meanwhile, I'm kehilla shopping, apartment hunting, and trying to settle into a Melbourne lifestyle with my eyes firmly set on my real homeland - Eretz Yisrael. I shall return.
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