I feel like a fish out of water because I haven't done this in a while (Eek! How many times have I said that followed by “I’m going to start this up again…”) but I’m now entering a new stage in life with a new adventure right ahead of me and I’m ready again to start sharing my experiences.
As a quick recap, the past year and a half has been pretty standard – working full time in an office job with a prestigious sounding position title and a super non-prestigious set of responsibilities.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I have been sharing a residence with my parents (“A computer, AND a car?!?! Thanks Mom and Dad!” -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA – sorry couldn’t help myself) and doing my best to maintain a social life while keeping myself busy with non-work and non-family activities.
I trained for my first half-marathon which I successfully completed in Dec. ’11 in Las Vegas.
Most recently, I’ve made a concrete decision which will have the most impact on my life going forward – I’ve decided to move to Israel (I’m making Aliyah!).
Having been brought up in a Zionistic family with lots of involvement with B’nai Akiva and having visited and studied in Israel quite a bit, I’ve kind of been on this Israel-bound trajectory for a while. I’ve known for a couple of years that this was something that I’ve wanted to work towards, but it wasn’t until the beginning of 2012 that I finally got my act together, completed my application to the Jewish Agency and followed through with an interview and actual plans. All of those efforts have resulted in the fact that in less than a week I will be boarding a plane at Newark Airport on Monday, March 26th with a direct group flight to Israel. Initially I had wanted to take one of the Nefesh B’Nefesh chartered flights, where everyone on the plane is moving and they have a whole huge ceremony on both the departing and arriving ends. Instead, due to timing (as they only have those chartered flights during the summer months), I decided it would be just fine to take a group flight where a block of seats are set aside on the plane for people making Aliyah and we will be walked through the whole bureaucratic process with an agency representative on either side of the flight and on the plane.
There are a few factors that have influenced this particular timing for me. Last month I celebrated my 26th birthday. I certainly don’t have any real age issues or complexes, but in reality and as clichéd as it sounds, I’m not getting any younger. As I approach my late 20’s’, I’m realizing that any efforts I want to put in to making an investment in my future should probably be started now. For example, there was no particular vocational growth that would have happened at my place of work (any more so than what I had already taken from it) and I didn’t see it as much of an education (other than learning how to become a professional scheduler). As a result, I am fully interested in going back to school to further my formal education, and knowing that I had wanted to live in Israel, what better place to do that than in Israel? Also, going to school in the country where you hope to be living and integrate into the culture, is meant to be a fantastic way to do that where you can immerse yourself in the language, be with the peers that can help you socially acclimate and experience a right of passage, if you will, that others in your own position go through as well.
Speaking of Israeli culture, I’m very aware of the fact that I need to get the engrained “New York Mentality” out of my head and stop expecting for everything to run on time, for customer service to exist and I should probably stop walking so fast (and expecting others to do the same). I had my first slap in the face with reality of an unwanted “exciting” experience at the Jewish Agency in New York. As part of the Aliyah process, you must receive a special visa in your passport indicating that you are moving. When you go to Israel as a visitor, just like in many other countries, you are granted a 3 month visitor’s visa. As I don’t plan on leaving in the first 3 months, I need to have a state-issued visa indicating that I am moving and that the rest of the formal paperwork will be taken care of and is filed somewhere in the Israeli filing system. Going through this process with the Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh, I have the befit of their assistance in dealing with a lot of this formal paperwork. When I went initially to the Agency for my ‘interview’ and review of all my documentation, they also took my passport along with a passport photo in order to submit it to the Israeli Consulate in New York to process my Israeli Visa in my American passport. The Agency then receives the passport back and it is up to me to come pick it up or authorize their sending it to me by FedEx. One of the other benefits offered to me was “First Steps in Israel” meeting held by the Jewish Agency to help the people moving understand what to expect when they first arrive, and what other processes need to be taken care of in the first year of citizenship. Knowing that I had wanted to come back for this meeting that they hold twice a month, I had requested that they hold onto my passport until I come in for the meeting so as not to have to make 2 trips – I’m very efficient. So, on Thursday, I made a trip into the city to take care of all the final errands I wanted do, including a visit to the Jewish Agency. I sat through the hour and a half very informative meeting having learned some really good information and I felt empowered knowing I was better educated about the steps I needed to still take. On my way out, I casually asked if I could sign for my passport so that I could call it a day. To make an already long story just a bit longer, we collectively discovered that my passport seemed to be missing. I was initially met with a whole set of questions that seemed to blame me. “Are you sure that we told you that your passport was ready to be picked up?” Yes, I received an e mail over a month ago. “Might you already have picked up your passport and don’t remember?” No. “Did you ‘accidentally’ click on the link in the e mail and fill out the pay-pal form to have us FedEx you the passport?” No – I don’t even have a pay-pal account. “Yeh, but you don’t need a pay-pal account to use pay-pal… maybe you did that anyway?” No – and even if you would have sent it to me without my having paid for it, wouldn’t I have received it a month ago? “Yeh – that’s true…Are you sure that you asked us to hold it for you? Maybe you sent someone else to pick it up for you?” No – I wrote in multiple e mails that I will come to pick it up when I come for the ‘First Steps’ meeting. “Oh yes, I see that now….” It was this series of absurdities that led them to discover a few wholes in their system. Firstly they thought that maybe they never received the passport back from the Consulate. That idea was quickly thrown out when they found my folder that had a color photocopy of the visa page in my passport. So at least it had come back to the office. Maybe it was in the front with security? No. A full on whole-office search was put into effect while I quietly sat there, freaking out on the inside yet maintaining external composure. I realized that my being a mess wouldn’t be productive and would likely only add to the commotion in their office. I also couldn’t help but think that I didn’t do anything wrong in this situation and G-d forbid that my passport shouldn’t turn up, it would be THEIR responsibility to expedite my getting a new passport and then expedite my getting a brand new visa and still ensuring that I have a prepared passport in my hand by the time I get to the airport on Monday. They kept assuring me that this never happens – which I actually believed because I can’t bring myself to understand a system where passports are lost – and they were positive it would show up. In the middle of literally turning out everything in her desk drawers, the representative that I was dealing with decided to do a search in her e mail again to see what might show up. It turns out that there is another individual whose paperwork and passport were processed about the same time as mine, and his first name starts with an “L” and his last name is “Newman” – not exactly the same as Lewy-Neuman but similar enough. She got him on the phone and asked if he had received my passport – he responded that he had received his own passport by FedEx a month prior, but recently he has been receiving notices from FedEx indicating that they are trying to deliver a package but he hadn’t been home to receive it and he didn’t know what it was because he wasn’t expecting anything to be delivered. His inquiry to them with the tracking number they left showed that the Jewish agency was attempting to make another delivery – So they actually sent my passport to the wrong person. Oops?!?! I think so! Thank Gd my passport was tracked down! It wasn’t until this weekend that Mr. Newman handed over my passport to an Agency representative, and they are hand-delivering my passport to me this evening.
Insane? Absolutely. But in the end, I am just glad that it turned out to be a non-issue from my end, and I’m looking forward to showing up at the airport with all of my proper documentation. I’m super excited, nervous, emotional, worried, apprehensive and happy about all that is going on. Initially all those feelings at once were pretty overwhelming. Now that I’m in the final stretch and just working towards finishing (ok, that’s a stretch – to call a spade a spade, let’s reword that as “starting”) to pack, I’m slightly more composed than I was 2 weeks ago. I think that I’m semi-removed from the reality of it all, but if that’s the mindset that I need to maintain in order to be productive, then so be it. I’m hoping that going forward, I will be more composed and productive, and I’m excited to be able to share more positive experiences and exciting adventures!
