Weekly Summary: In-Between

I haven't updated the weekly blog/mail for a long time, and what better time is it than doing it just before we fly back to the US? The last 10 days were busy times indeed. We met so many people, and I would like to thank each and every one who found the time to meet us, no matter how or when or for how long. It was great to see you all and I'm already looking forward to seeing you again.

We were frequently asked how did we find it here in Israel, or how did we find Cincinnati so far. I have to say that, for me, the jury are still deliberating. There are many things that we don't like in Cincinnati, and we have mentioned a few of them in passing to some people we met here. There are also things that become apparent when you come back to Israel after a while abroad. For example, I am still shocked at how bad people drive in Israel, how dangerously reckless they are and how frequent they use the horn. In three months in Ohio I heard only two honks (not including the fact that the horn honks whenever we lock the car), and one of them was my own doing when I tried to avoid a danger. Here it seems as if people drive with one hand on the cellular and the other on the horn.
I think that the main problem for us now is that we feel a bit "homeless". We haven't settled in Cincinnati yet, and I'm not sure we ever will feel "at home" there; however, we no longer feel at home here. I don't know if it's just because we don't have our "physical" home, or if it's something deeper than that, but it felt a bit like being tourists. Still, all the people I know, love, and want to meet live here in Israel, so probably I still consider this place to be my home. I think that apart from the "physical" home I miss in Cincinnati, I don't miss anything else there. Certainly I do not miss the university, teaching or students. If anything, this visit proved to me how weak my connections with Cincinnati are. I wonder if it would have been different if we had chosen another place, for example Boston, Seattle, or Calgary, which were all candidates at some point or another. No doubt that more people would have pledged to visit us if we had chosen one of these locations. We certainly need more friends there, not just classmates as D has.
D also mentioned how strange it feels to live with our parents. I said that it feels like being a 16 years old again, just without the (few) perks that come with that age. We were living with my dad for a week, and I found that he does his best to manage his new life after my mother's passing. It seems somewhat fragile, and I'm still worried about him. I think that it was a good idea to move out of there while we're still in Israel and we saw him yesterday, but it's hard. My next visit, I'm afraid, will be only in the summer, and even that is not guaranteed, and it's hard to keep an eye from afar. I have to rely on my sister's testimonies, and I think that her words were always more bleak than the true situation was.

In a totally unrelated note, but something I wanted to do a long time ago, I'll try to summarize why I think the Americans are over the hill:

1. They are lazy. They don't like to work, they don't want to work, and they don't work. You can attribute the current financial crisis in America directly to the fact that they, as an entire nation, have ceased to manufacture things for quite a while now. Everything is manufactured in China, or India, or some other 3rd world country.
   
2. They are ignoramuses and insulated who think it's a bliss to be such people. They have no idea or wish to know what happens in the rest of the world. They don't want to learn about obscure places which use the metric system. They don't want to know that there is such a thing as the metric system or why it's better to use it. They think their undrinkable wash-water is a great beer, or that their undrinkable mud-water is a great coffee, or that 30 MPG on the freeway (miles per gallon if you have to know, it's about 12.5 Km/liter) is a good fuel consumption.
3. They live a life of superficial, surface-deep, facade, without any attempt to take anything deeper (except, perhaps, inhaling the smoke of their cigarette). You can see it everywhere before Christmas with all the richly and ridiculously ornamented houses. You can understand it fully when you realize that in order to prepare for a job interview all you need to do is wear your best suit and look sharp. It is almost a profanity to ask them to think, God forbid to understand.
   
4. There is no such thing as American society. As we mentioned in this visit, there are huge gaps between rich and poor, and between the races in America. There are only three things that are extremely expensive in America: nutritious food, good education and good health-care. Poor Americans cannot afford to eat vegetables, they eat junk-food, they can't afford good schools or universities, and they can't afford going to the doctor. You can see this research on how the difference between poor and rich in America has grown in the past two decades regarding life expectancy. American society is a mix of several classes which meet only at the mall: the rich buy, the proletariat sell and the poor people (namely, Afro-Americans) clean the mess after them.
   

I have only one reason why Israel is over the hill as well: we follow everything the Americans do with such zeal that we will shortly overpass them on the way to our demise. If there is one thing Americans are good at and Israelis are unable to do it is to postpone our gratification and to be patient. We need everything now, at this very instant. That's why people cut each other on the road just to be one car ahead at the infinite traffic jam on Ayalon.

So, finally, where is home for us? Home is where our high-speed internet is. :-)