First week in Israel

I have no idea how this blog site works but here goes ....

I'm doing this as a record for our family of our stay here so you'll just have to skim through the unnecessary detail.

FIRST NIGHT

We arrived into Ben Gurion Tel Aviv airport on Monday night.  Dario was pleasantly surprised to find that not EVERYONE was carrying a gun as he feared may be the case.  Ben Gurion is such an amazing airport and the children were surprised to see how modern it is. 

It's hot here! Most days are around 30/31.  The poor kids must be sick of hearing me tell them to drink more water.

The children are attending an English speaking school here in Jaffa, run by the Church of Scotland.  It is a small community of 330 children from K to 12 with 40 different nationalities represented in the study body.  Initially we only had Brigid and Marcus with confirmed places and then one week before we left I received an email to say Dario has a place in Year 5.  The thought of poor Conor being left at home with his Mum and Dad was too much so I just remained hopeful that we would somehow get him in.  The afternoon of our first day I got a call to say that there is a spot in Year 7 for Conor but that, because it's two years above his age group, he would have to come in for a "test."  Conor was quite nervous but the "test" turned out to be him writing about himself just to check on his handwriting, grammar and English ability.  They were able to immediately confirm a place for him, which was such a relief.  For many of the children at school English is their second or third language so I don't see the children having any problems keeping up at school.

A typical street in our area

Boganvillias line almost every street